Q&A: Developing Focused Reading Skills and Deep Understanding—and How Not to End Up Losing on Both Ends?
Developing Focused Reading Skills and Deep Understanding—and How Not to End Up Losing on Both Ends?
Question
Hello and blessings. I’m 18, and I first came across your thought about 4 years ago. Reading your articles has really developed my reading and comprehension abilities, and I wanted to say that what’s special about your articles compared to other texts is that the reading flows, and you manage to simplify very complex topics. That way I’m able to read your articles and books very quickly even when they deal with very complex subjects. Do you have any recommendations for improving reading speed and the speed of deep comprehension, so to speak? And another thing: it seems that you try to grasp everything in terms of the breadth of the areas you deal with and how difficult they are—neuroscience, science, philosophy, Torah, Talmudic analysis, and the like. In your opinion, for a person to spread out over broad fields and over years, should he first of all specialize in one specific subject and only then broaden out, or start directly with several fields? And how do you avoid ending up losing on both ends?
Answer
Hello Yishai.
First of all, I’m very glad that my words are helpful to you.
People have often asked me for formulas for making progress in all kinds of areas, but I don’t have any. Each person is built differently, and therefore each one has his own ways (not necessarily just one way).
I do think it’s worthwhile to have a central field in which you develop expertise, but alongside it, it is worthwhile and possible to progress in other fields as well. Especially if you are not going into professional details but focusing on the fundamental aspects. I discussed this a bit (that is, the value of it, not the ways to achieve it) in column 572.
One recommendation I can give is that when you read or hear something, don’t do it only in order to enjoy it or to learn and encounter more things. Try to think about what you are reading and place it within the general framework you are building for yourself. That framework will then be built up slowly over time. It sounds like a marginal, technical matter, but know that it is very essential. It matters a great deal how you read/learn and why. If with everything you read you focus and summarize for yourself what it assumes, what its claims are, what it has proven, and whether it is correct in each of those respects, then in the end you can summarize what it taught you that was new and place that within the general framework you are building. If you persist and broaden your perspective, then slowly more and more things will connect to your framework.
Discussion on Answer
For example, migo as the force of a claim fits into the framework of legal reasoning (see my booklet on migo). There is a collection of examples in which the existence of a dissenting opinion affects the other opinion. There is a collection of examples of logical loops, and it is possible to classify the forms of resolving them. And so on.
Can the Rabbi explain a bit more what is meant by “place it within the general framework you are building”? (An example would help solidify the understanding.)
Thank you.