Читать книгу The Positive Woman - Gael Lindenfield, Gael Lindenfield - Страница 39

Reading can have many uses – it can give information and offer relaxing distraction, but if used in collaboration with thinking it can stimulate imaginative and energizing thought.

When you picked up this book, did you open it at the beginning and begin dutifully reading each page in sequence? I hope not. Although I, as an author, have tried to work to some kind of order (and may feel quite protective of that order if my editor should start wanting to move bits and pieces around!), I do know that the way I have arranged information is not going to suit the needs of very many readers. So I would like to think that when you picked up this book, you did a quick flick through to see what bits were of interest to you as an individual with particular needs and that you then selected the chapters you wanted, and needed, to read. If you did this you may not, of course, actually need to read any more of this section because you have already developed a flexible approach to reading!

For those of you who are choosing to read on, here are some tips which have helped me and many of my clients:

• Vow to make reading a pleasure and don’t tolerate boredom. Whenever possible skip the boring bits and give yourself full permission to change your mind. (I dread to think how many hours of my life I used to waste reading books to the bitter end just because I had started them!)

• To aid concentration, always check that you are sitting reasonably upright but comfortably.

• For speed-reading a text, use a pencil or similar marker to guide you along the lines. This technique is supposed to increase reading speed by as much as 100 per cent, because it focuses attention and improves concentration.

• Read the contents tables and the beginning and end of chapters before ploughing through a long text. Use the index to find particular sections of interest and go to those first.

• Keep you eyes working efficiently by regularly looking away, blinking or cupping your hands over them.

• Make notes in the margin, or on a card which can double as a book marker. At the end of each chapter, or after no more than 20 minutes, enter these notes to a Mind Map like the one illustrated in the next exercise. This will help you retain the information and save you rereading the whole book.