How to Find Main Ideas from Any Book
I have mentioned in the lesson of Mindset that only 4-11 % of text contains main ideas and rest of the content builds on this 4-11 % text. In this lesson, I will cover how to find that 4-11 % of text. This lesson will be useful when you are doing 1st reading (refer to previous lesson)
Finding main ideas is not a scientific process. It comes with practice and experience. What I am sharing below are different tips and strategies you can use to find main ideas. Some tips work every time and some don’t.
Let’s get started:
1.Begin with end in mind.
This was one of the steps in the system I have shared. When you have clear purpose of what you want to get out of the book, half the battle is already won. You have to read only that material which will solve your purpose. You can skip rest of the text.
2.Overview/preview:
While you do this step correctly, you will know structure of the book and style of author. Once you know the structure, it becomes easy to find the text which will achieve your purpose and what text to skip.
Let me give you an example explaining both the above points: One of the all-time classics in self-development book is “The power of positive thinking” by Norman Vincent peale.
When I reading the book my purpose was to understand what positive thinking is and how to develop the skill.
While previewing and over viewing the book I can easily notice the style of author. He first introduces the concept and then spends rest of the chapter giving you examples and case studies relating to the concept.
If I want to achieve my purpose then, all I have to read is first few paragraphs of the chapter and skip rest of it.
If my purpose was different, then my strategy of reading would also be different.
3.What to look for and where to look :.
When author writes a book, his purpose is get his point across to the reader. Every author goes an extra mile to make everything simple in his book.
He will organize all his ideas in relevant chapters, makes important text bold. etc..
So, to get main ideas in the book, you have look and read the text where the author has gone an extra mile to simply it for the reader.
Normally, that text would be:
a. Headings
b. Text which is bold / italic/ different font.
c. Many books have a section in the beginning of each chapter “What will be covered in this chapter.
d. Summary at the end of chapter
You will find lot of main ideas there.
4.Intuition.
Trust your intuition and go where your intuition leads you to. You will be surprised at results you can get.
5. Other strategy which is worth mentioning here…
Read first sentence and last sentence of paragraph carefully. Many authors introduces a new idea in the first sentence of paragraph and closes it in the last sentence of the chapter.