Both speed-reading techniques say it is important to focus on headlines. Terada Masatsugu called chapter titles and headlines ”preceding organizers.” It appears before the explanation of the text and supports organizing (assembling) the pieces of information by showing keywords of the following text. Because it is such valuable information, if you find a preceding organizer during speed-reading, you need to pick it up.
In the way of reading the source code learned in (1.3.3.2) Reading source code roughly, we collect information from folder hierarchies, file names and function names. It looks similar concepts.
In the Whole Mind System, we focus on the table of contents and the headline in the investigation stage before reading. In detail, the followings are to pay attention:
- the cover and back cover of the book
- the table of contents
- the written date
- the index
- the first and last page
- the headline
- the subheading
- the part with the bold letters
- the part with the neighbor dots
- the part surrounded
- the figure
- the table
- the explanation of the figure and the table
- the summary
- the abstract
- the questions at the end of the chapter.
I also agree with him to focus on the table of contents and the headline from the standpoint of the author of books. Because the headline takes more cost than the main text. The author and the editor discuss and adjust several times from the following perspective:
- Is the depth in hierarchy correct?
- Does it match the contents?
- Can readers understand the story when they read the table of contents
Since it is information that has been maintained at a high cost, it is useful in high probability to get a map of knowledge. (Related: handicap theory)
However, it depends on the author’s writing style and the editor’s editorial policy. Some books do not have structured headlines. In such books, sometimes there are jokes and excessive propaganda in the headline.
I do not trust the titles and subtitles of books. It is often not a proper summary of the content for commercial reasons. Especially when comparing the original title and the translated title, I wonder why it changed.
For example:
- “Sprint - How to Solve Big Problem and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days” was translated into “SPRINT fastest work --- the most reasonable way for every job to work.”
- “Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints - A Systems Approach to Continuous Improvement” was translated into “Dr. Goldratt’s logical thinking process - Create the strongest company with TOC!”
- “Thinking for a Change: Putting the TOC Thinking Processes to Use” was translated into “Intelligent people’s thinking process - immediately usable problem-solving skills with figure and logic.”
The figure is noteworthy. Creating figures is more expensive than writing. The author made figures when the author thinks it important to describe as figures though it takes much time, or the author wanted to describe something important, but he can not describe it as sentences. On the other hand, in the case of a book focused on illustrations or easy-to-understand, sometimes there are figures which do not need to be illustrated. To make figures itself become the purpose.
I think that bullet point lists are also noteworthy. In the sentences of the ordinary text, the words line up one-dimensionally, but the bullet lists keep the tree structure. As in the table of contents, the structure in the brain of the author is expressed in a tree structure.
Although it is limited to my books, you can skip footnotes and columns when you read the first time. It is the information I want to mention in relation to the story described in the text, but if I include it in the story, the story becomes “a winding road.”
In such cases, I indicate that “a road is connected to here” as “intersection” called a footnote or a column. It also indicates that you can go ahead without going through it.
On the other hand, I’m happy if you read it when you read the book again. I think that it is worth mentioning those information. Although it costs less to eliminate them, I kept them.