Seven Tips For Creative Reading
Photo by Cane Rosso (license)
This is a guest post from Jarkko Laine, who is Insanely Interested in Everything.
I read all the time. It helps me learn new things, become a better writer, entertain myself.
But most importantly, reading feeds my creativity.
A week ago, I had no idea that creative reading is an official term. And I would guess that when you look at those two words, you can’t think of anything else than creative writing. Even my fingers wanted to type”writing” instead of “reading”. Still, although I was unaware of the term, I was doing it all the time.
– reading can also be a creative process for developing and then better understanding your own ideas as they relate to the ideas of others. Creative readers make sure that they know what the author is saying while, at the same time, devoting their energies to actively constructing otherwise implicit relationships between ideas, events, and contexts. That is, creative reading involves imagining how and why different positions represented in the texts might be made to relate to each other.
Reading can be a creative act.
But how do you do it? The New Humanities Reader, from which I took the above quote, offers a structured approach: read the article twice, writing down questions on the first pass and looking for answers on the second.
Good advice - if you’re a student reading for an exam. But not so good if you want to build a daily habit of creative reading. If you want to create a storm in your mind and come up with tons of new ideas you need to make sure reading is fun, lively, and unorganized. Here’s how I do it:
- Read different books from many authors:
Read what different people have to say on similar topics. Read ideas that seem completely unrelated to each other. Compare the points made by the different authors to find what’s common and where they disagree. Connect the unrelated ideas to each other and create new ideas. - Read many books at once:
My main motivation for this trick is that it keeps me reading. But it also makes it easier to collect a nice mix of ideas: read a chapter from one book, then switch to some other book for a few more chapters, then read some blog posts, skim through a magazine. Blend and start over. - Read inspirational material from your own field:
If you are a web designer, reading blogs like Smashing Magazine is a great way to get your creativity warmed up. You’ll see what others have come up, which is an excellent tool for getting yourself in a creative mood. The problem here is that while you get a lot of ideas, they more or less follow the lines of the ideas that have already been done. - Read text that challenges your thinking:
I’m in the middle of reading Seth Godin’s Small is the New Big. In the book, Mr. Godin picks different aspects of business and marketing and looks at them from a new point of view, challenging the conventional thinking. By reading books or blogs like this you will soon realize that not everything is what it looks like. After that, your next step as a creative reader is to go and figure out your own interpretation on how things really are.
- Read writings from outside your area of expertise:
There is nothing new under the sun, they say. But still, something that is old news for someone in - let’s say - the field of medicine can be new and exciting when you bring it to the domain of web design or freelance writing! - Read different types of books:
Picture books, novels, fact, science fiction, poetry, short stories, quotes. Also, don’t ignore newspapers, magazines, blogs or cartoons. - Always have a notebook ready:
This way you can write down your ideas when you get them and will not forget about them before you have had the time to consider whether they are worth pursuing or not.
But most importantly: read. Then read some more.
And finally, one bonus tip: talk about the things you read! With your friends, family, or on blogs like this one. In fact, now is the perfect time to start practicing: Write a comment and tell what reading means to you.
How do you read?
Why do you read?
Do you think reading should be creative?
Jarkko Laine is a professional software developer and all around curious person who is Insanely Interested in Everything. If you liked this post as much as I did, you should also check out Why I Read All The Time And How You Can Too.
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Great post, Jarkko!
I actually just finished Godin’s book a couple of weeks ago. While a lot of the ideas were interesting, I must say that I prefer to read blog entries actually on a blog rather than reprinted in a book.
As to how I read, that varies quite a bit depending on sort of text it is. I almost always find it easier to read fiction than I do informational material, as a story pulls me in, but I tend to just skim over non-fiction. That’s a bit of a problem when I’m trying to better my JavaScript skills or take my freelancing to the next level, so I’m currently trying to become a more active reader by taking notes and putting things into practice right away.
I think part of the difficulty I’ve had with being an active reader in the past is that reading has been such a normal part of my life that working to improve that skill seems sort of like learning to walk all over again.
That also connects with why I read. When I read purely for enjoyment, I don’t have to practice the normal disciplines of active reading because the story/subject itself holds onto me. But when I’m trying to follow an action plan or learn a subject I’m not familiar with, the reward is largely external, and so harder for me to keep in mind.
Should reading be creative? Absolutely. But I’d distinguish between two types of creative reading. The creative reading that comes naturally, and the creative reading that requires a more active and analytical approach.
Have any thoughts, Jarkko?
That’s an interesting distinguishion - and one more interesting thing is that the boundaries between the different parts of it are different to different people.
To me for example, reading a business book is something in between, both pleasure and learning. It’s already different from reading a novel which pulls me in completely: I usually read business books in short sprints - something like one or two chapter at a time.
Then there are the programming books. Those as well, can be divided to different groups. There are the inspiration books (books related to new techniques, maybe some process ideas…) that are already a bit heavier to read than the business books, but still can be read in a similar way.
And then there are the books that require more action. You just can’t read let’s say a Rails book without trying the things in action. So, reading a book like that will force you to be next to your computer - reading and coding at the same time.
Great question, Joshua!
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