How To Absorb Textbooks Like A Sponge

Author: Matt DiMaio

Don’t read textbooks linearly like I read novels.

Repetition is the mother of learning.

Steps (1-4 creates a map of the chapter, 5 helps connect the dots in the mental map)

1. Flip through each page
   • look at the pictures
   • see what the pages look like
   • get a sense of how long the chapter is
   • how much of it is words compared to pictures/graphs
   • does anything jump out to me?
2. Look at the summary/quiz at end of the chapter
   • helps understand what’s most important in the chapter
3. Read the bold print in the chapter
   • bold is the stuff they want me to see
4. Read the first and last sentence of each paragraph
   • first sentence is the introduction
   • last sentence sums up the paragraph
5. Read the chapter and take notes