Skimming to Learn

Quickly skimming a book or article can improve your overall learning about the topic

The art of skimming is a too often denigrated skill. When I encourage people to skim a book, long article, or any other type of reading, I’m often met with stares of disbelief that I would encourage skimming over what must surely be important material. Well, I am definitely encouraging skimming.

Skimming is not only a generally useful skill, but I think a vital one for good self-educators. Since I think skimming nonfiction books is a particularly useful form of skimming, let’s use the example of skimming a book about a subject you want to learn. Yes, of course you might want to read the book in its entirety, and in many cases I would encourage that, but there is tremendous utility in skimming a book first to lay a foundation. Especially if you are new to the subject area you are studying.

When you carefully skim a book, you are constructing for yourself a basic, foundational schema of the subject matter — a mental map of sorts. If it’s a subject area entirely new to you, this mental map will help to organize your learning. It will help you identify high-level topic areas on which to focus your learning. It can serve as a simple introduction to the subject at the same time.

You might read the book’s introduction, then skim each chapter’s headings and…