Dive deep, don’t just skim the surface
Iwas recently reading a book by Sherry Turkle, a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a psychologist, in which she discusses why we can’t do deep reading and why skimming or scanning is the new trend. I was intrigued by the thought and as I started digging deeper, I felt that what she wrote actually holds true.
Though we may deny it, most of us know that now we are unable to read a book in a single sitting. We can’t blame our busy routine because time is not the problem. The problem is our fast-working mind which is now getting accustomed to multitasking, denying us even a moment of relief. It is hard for us to sit and relax, to read a book or even a single page without our thoughts running wild. It would be fine if the thoughts were about the book in our hand. However, the thoughts are about anything but that.
We have become so habitual of scrolling next and skipping stuff that concentrating on one task feels like hard work. We work on our computers or laptops and simultaneously scroll down our Facebook and Instagram feed. This habit of always being on various apps/devices has made us incapable of doing and enjoying a particular task without our mind running astray. In such a situation, how can we expect to remember anything we read?
Some time back, my sister and I were taking out photos from a cupboard. Among those postcard-sized photos was an autograph book. As I flipped through the pages, I couldn’t help but feel in awe of the beautiful verses written; some long and some short. I called my father to ask what it was all about. He told me that it was my grandmother’s autograph book. “Something similar to a slam book that you people have now,” he said.
I was impressed. I didn’t know people wrote slam books when my grandmother graduated. There were poems by Rabindranath Tagore, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Sir Henry Wotton, Adam Lindsay Gordon, Thomas Middleton, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Edward Young and some written by my grandmother’s classmates.“this was when people read poems and classics by heart and not just for the sake of course work,” my father said.
Honestly, I thought people were not that conversant in English during the early 1950s. But there I was, reading better and expressive poems than most youngsters nowadays post; people quoting poets without the help of Google. How common is this now? Have you ever written a quote without looking it up on the internet? I know I can’t do that. All I remember from Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar, which I read in school, is “Et tu, Brute (Even you Brutus)?”
We know what we are reading, but can’t repeat it anytime soon without looking it up again. Why? That’s because we have allocated our attention to multiple things. With a book in hand and multiple things hovering in our mind, what captivates our brain? With unitasking, we give instructions to our brain to focus only on one thing and not wander somewhere else. This is why when we pore over a book, it stays with us longer.
As I was writing this, my younger sister said, “They are such beautiful poems. All my classmates can write in slam books is some silly rhymes with ‘never forget me’ on the top.” This makes me wonder if the next generation is even reading anything else other than their course books?
WE HAVE BECOME SO HABITUAL OF SCROLLING NEXT AND SKIPPING STUFF THAT CONCENTRATING ON ONE TASK FEELS LIKE HARD WORK