Mission Impossible: Reading Complex Documents in an Open-Plan Office?
You have a long complex document which you have to read today. Your desk is in an open plan office. You can hear your colleagues answering their phones, although yours is switched to voicemail. Every now and again people walk behind you on their way through the office. You are finding it really hard to concentrate. It is really important you have a good understanding of the reading material. What's your best course of action?
This is the situation that many be familiar to a lot of people. Sometimes people have the easy options of being able to book a meeting room, or work from home. For many, there isn't a choice. When I was doing some training at a company that had several floors of open-plan offices, I asked the people on the courses what they do to manage the reading task better. They get round the noise problem by coming into work early, or working late, when it is quiet. Sometimes they can find a vacant desk in a quieter part of the office. Some use ear plugs. Some wear headphones to block out the noise. Others ask their colleagues to be quieter and wear baseball hats to signal that they don't want to be interrupted.
The interesting thing is that, although for white-collar workers reading occupies six to seven hours of each day, the typical open-plan office is one of the worst places for reading. Even if you have switched your phone to voicemail, the phone conversions around you are bound to be distracting. The Daily Telegraph, on 22 May 2010, reported a Cornell University study in an article entitled Why hearing mobile phone conversations is so annoying. As with much research, it confirms what we already know. Researcher Lauren Emberson is quoted as saying, 'It is harder to tune out, you can't pull your attention away from it and you are more distracted by it'. Half of a phone conversation is much more distracting than hearing a whole conversation, such as your colleagues talking to each other. It is not usually reasonable to expect a whole office full of people to stop making and receiving phone calls whenever someone is reading. Good solutions to this problem might be for the reader to use ear plugs or to wear headphones. These solutions will block out the noise of the phone 'halflogues'.
Asking your colleagues to be quieter is a good idea. However, one thing that they may not be aware of is that walking behind someone who is reading is almost certain to be distracting. Sudden noises or movements behind us are attention grabbing. It is a survival instinct. The movement or noise could be a threat and demands our attention. What can you do if you are in a busy area? Well, if someone in a low-traffic area is going to be away from his or her desk for a while, possibly that person would not object to someone else sitting there to read during that time.
Sometimes, interruptions are inevitable. That's fair enough if it is an emergency. Sometimes distractions can be something we have grown used to, such as the ping of email landing in our in-boxes. Most of the time email can wait. It is standard time management advice to switch off the arrival signal and tackle the email at specified times, as well as having agreed response times for email. One Blackberry user told me he uses Alerts to minimise distractions from low priority messages. If the message were from his boss, or his wife, or had urgent in the subject line, he would be alerted and respond immediately. Otherwise, he would check his Blackberry at pre-planned intervals during the day.
People adapt to challenging situations. These are just some of the strategies the open-plan office workers use to manage reading tasks productively. If you have any tips on this topic that you would like to share I would love to hear them!
Anne Jones, February 2012
Have you ever felt guilty about the unread books on your bookshelf? Time to take action!
You bought the book with great enthusiasm, but for one reason or another, it is mysteriously languishing unread on your bookshelf. Sounds familiar? What's more, there are quite a few other books, bought with the best intentions, which you have not got round to reading. If this is the situation and you'd like to get the most from the books you've bought, then these ideas may help. You don't need to be a speed reader to be able to do them. Firstly, gather together all the unread books. Have a look at them and try to remember why you bought them in the first place. What you also need to do at this stage is to prioritise. Which books are the ones you think are likely the most important ones for you to read? Rank them in order of which you think are likely to be most useful, to ones you think will be least useful. Who knows, you may come across books which you can discard. Maybe they are out of date, or you feel that you no longer need them for some other reason. Put them on one side and decide what to do with them later (donate, sell, recycle, etc). From the remaining pile, pick one book. Choose the one that you feel will be the most useful to you. Put the rest away for now, preferably somewhere out of sight. If the book is a novel, plan a ten to fifteen minute sampling session. You don't need to do it immediately. Decide when it would be convenient to do it, within the next day or two. Read the beginning of the book for five minutes. If you still are not enthusiastic about reading it, try to guess how the novel ends. Then read the end. Now, I know a lot of you will be exclaiming that reading the end at this stage ruins the suspense. However, if the plot is very predictable and you have guessed the ending correctly and you were bored by the opening, it is may not worth be reading the book anyway. If the ending is interesting, it is possible that knowing what it is may enhance your enjoyment of the book. (This may sound unlikely and it is not what is generally assumed. However, an article by Alison Flood,writing in the Guardian on 17 August 2011, referring to research by Nicholas Christienfeld and Jonathan Leavitt of UC San Diego's psychology department, suggests that knowing the ending could make reading more enjoyable. The researchers used short stories with an ironic twist. The article is entitled Spoilers actually enhance your enjoyment.) You might also want to read a short section from the middle of the book, if you are doubtful about whether you want to read it. Having sampled the book, you can make a decision about whether you'd like to read it. If you do decide to read it, plan when you are going to read it. If you did not like the book and you have to read it for work or study purposes, at least you have made a small start. As a result, you will be more likely to read it. Of course, if you did not like the novel and you don't have to read it, then you could dispose of it. There are plenty of published books for you to enjoy, without spending time on one that you don't like. Perhaps you could give the book to someone who might appreciate it. We don't all have the same taste in books.
For study and self-help books, a survey works really well. Again, for an average paperback, set aside ten to fifteen minutes. Have some sticky notes or book marks handy. Glance very briefly at each page in the book. Place a bookmark where you see anything of interest. Aim to get through the entire book in ten minutes. At the end of the ten minutes, you will have a good idea of what is in the book. This make motivate you to want to read it, or parts of it. You may decide that reading the book is pointless, as you have got the gist of it from the survey and that is all you needed. If you do decide to read the book, plan when you are going to make a start on it and how much you intend to read at that time. You will be much more likely to do the reading if you schedule it.
Carry your chosen book around with you if you can, as you may find you can read a little bit of it while waiting for an appointment, or on a train, plane or bus journey. You could set yourself a challenge to find out how quickly you could finish it.
I think it is a good idea to tackle unread books in this way. Work your way through the unread pile and experience the satisfaction of clearing it, a book at a time. There are millions of books we could choose to read and we each only have one lifetime. As the Romans used to say: Ars longa, vita brevis. Art is long, life is short. Spend time reading material that you think is worth your precious time. There are so many wonderful books to read and so little time read them!
Anne Jones, January 2012
The top three things writers can do to improve readability
Imagine that you want to improve the readability of the draft of your article. It is jam-packed with information. In one way this is good, as there are plenty of ideas. In another way, it is a bit of a disaster, as the writing does not seem to flow. In fact, it seems a bit lumpy and indigestible at times. When I went to see a student writer this week, this was exactly how he felt about his draft. 'It feels a bit heavy', he said, looking at what he had written . 'What's the best way to make it more readable?' We discussed three things which would help when he re-worked his draft.
Firstly, we thought about how readers absorb information. When we are reading, our brains hold ideas in temporary storage. Psychologists call this storage 'working memory'. It is limited as to the amount of information it can hold at one time. For example, when we go into a room to fetch something, we sometimes forget what it was we went to find. Another idea has pushed out the thought about finding the item. Writers need to respect the limits of working memory and avoid overloading it with too much information at once.
OK, so how do we do this? One obvious way is to avoid sentences that are too long. If the sentence is too long, the readers forget what you said in the beginning by the time they reach the end. Trying to remember everything becomes too much of an effort. Readers may well lose the thread of what you are trying to say. They may even stop reading and think it is not worth the bother of continuing.
Managing the information flow makes a big difference. Writers can help readers by giving some careful thought to the structure of their writing. Be realistic about how many ideas readers can hold in their heads at one time. How many do you think you can keep in working memory? Remember what happens when you are being given directions to somewhere or you are following a set of unfamiliar instructions. How long is it before you think, 'Oh well, I'll ask again when I get to that point', or you have another look at the recipe or list of instructions? Three ideas seems to be a reasonably safe bet.
This approach of limiting the flow of ideas to improve accessibility is not new. Barbara Minto explores it in relation to business writing in The Pyramid Principle (Prentice Hall, revised edition 2009) and I love Cliff Atkinson's application of it to PowerPoint presentations in Beyond Bullet Points (Microsoft Press, 2008). You start by establishing the main idea of the article. If you had to summarise your article in one sentence, what would you say? The next stage is to think what your three supporting ideas are. Then you add your three key explanatory points to each idea and three details to each explanatory point. And there you are! You are building the readers' knowledge in layers. You are gradually adding information at a rate at which it can be absorbed. This approach is very useful. It helps us plan our writing and we can be confident we are not overloading our readers with information at any stage.
The last idea we discussed was how to help the readers remember the information. What can work well is to create a story around it that uses a challenge the reader might face. It's a good way to invite readers to use their imaginations and make personal connections to the ideas you are putting forward. The story introduces the main idea and flags up what the solution to the challenge is. In the case of this article, it is the three things that would improve the readability of the student writer's draft. Hopefully, this made you curious to know what these three things might be. Was this the case?
Well, how did the student writer get on? Were the three ideas useful? A few days after our meeting, I asked him what his opinion was. He said, 'I was able to plan it from scratch into something more cohesive. I altered the style so that it made for a more interesting piece.'
Anne Jones, December 2011
What's the best way to recover from interruptions? How can I get back into the reading flow?
You are reading an important document. Despite all your best efforts to minimise distractions and interruptions, you are interrupted. Having dealt with the interruption, you want to pick up from where you finished and get back into the reading flow. What's the best way to do it?
Well, one thing you could do is to make the best of the situation. You could use it to improve your recall of information in the document. There has been some research about interrupted tasks and memory. Bluma Zeigarnik noticed that waiters would remember diners' food orders until the orders were completed. After that, the memory of the orders vanished. She investigated what happened when tasks were left incomplete. People were given a variety of simple tasks to do. They had better recall of the tasks that were interrupted than completed tasks. This suggests that it might be a good idea to test your recall of the information you have read before you resume reading. Is your recall still good? What are the key points so far? Check back if you think you have forgotten something. This quick self-test will help build your recall of the information and will help you keep it in memory longer.
Other research suggests that if you start a complex task, you are more likely to complete it if you are interrupted. It seems to increase motivation. You can console yourself with the thought that you may now be more motivated to finish the task. If the document you are reading is boring, it may help you get through it!
What do you do to get back into the reading flow? I'd be interested to hear your ideas.
Anne Jones, November 2011
'The baby kept me up all night.' Top study tips for the sleep-deprived!
'The baby kept me up all night.' It was not a promising start to the training session. The mother, a university student, was exhausted. It is harder to concentrate when you are tired. The student had to write an essay on Charles Dickens' Dombey and Son. The book itself is quite lengthy and there was a great deal of additional reading to do. Although tired, she learned how to read twice as quickly, a huge time saver. We talked about strategies she could use to make the most of study time.
The simplest one, which is particularly useful if you are tired, is to read in short bursts of ten to twenty minutes. Test yourself immediately after reading. You could create a one minute summary recalling key points. Check back if you are uncertain of anything. This will help you remember more of what you have read for longer. Take short breaks.
Preparing for reading tasks can make a big difference. During the training, the student used a previewing technique with a biography of Charles Dickens. This involved her quickly looking through the book, glancing at each page, bookmarking anything she thought would be useful. Keeping the pace brisk, ten minutes should be enough for a short book, twenty for a long one. The student was able to identify parts of Dickens' life that related to Dombey and Son. This material would be useful for her essay, as Dickens drew extensively on his own experiences when writing. She could return to her bookmarks and read the sections in more detail later.
The preview has a number of benefits. One of the really important ones is that it can reduce stress. If you have a stack of reading to do, you can feel overwhelmed. Using this technique, you know what is in the book. You can prioritise your reading time. You are in control.
It is very useful to use the preview to find out what the expert questions are in relation to your studies. In this case, a quick look through books of literary criticism or even past exam papers will help identify the important issues in relation to Dickens. If you are tired and sleep-deprived, this strategy can make a big difference to the effectiveness of reading. The reader's brain will be more alert to information relating to these issues. Again, it helps put the reader in control and will give a good idea of what to look for while reading the actual book.
Sleep is important for health and for learning. By using speed reading and these simple and effective strategies, the student may even be able to free up some time for a much-needed nap!
Anne Jones, October 2011
When you can't see the wood for the trees
Study skills are not exactly the most exciting aspect of university life. They are, however, the key to academic success. Imagine a bright, hardworking student who wants to be a top lawyer. The study skills which got her to university are not getting her the highest grades which she needs. What isn't working? What needs to change? What will work? It is time for a study skills check.
A good place to start is with motivation. How you motivate yourself affects how well you learn. Carol Dweck researched what people thought about themselves as learners and how it affects their performance. Those who believe their intelligence is fixed do less well than those who believe they have untapped potential. There are big differences in how they set goals, think about and respond to difficulties and challenges. They think differently about how they perform as learners and have different self-talk about learning. Even when students know that it is important to stay positive, they can still be saying to themselves, 'I am stupid. I don't understand this'.
Checking current working methods is essential. According to Geoff Petty in Evidence Based Teaching A Practical Approach, Nelson Thornes, 2006, lecturers tend to think about the subject differently from students. Students may struggle with the detail of the subject, whereas experts tend to work from principles and to see patterns and store remembered information in chunks. To get the top marks, students need to work from the viewpoint of principles as well as to understand the relationship between ideas in a given topic. Students need to learn how to think like lecturers to get the top grades.
It can often be revealing to look at notes. How information is classified is important. Organising the information helps us remember it. It makes a difference if, from the start, we are making notes in ways which use the thinking skills we will need in exams. Venn diagrams and tables are good for exploring similarities and difficulties. Sorting information in various ways (most important to least important, timelines, process sequences, etc) are all useful. Mind Maps, in particular, are great for structuring information, as the colours and images help with memory. Getting sorted can sort out study skills problems!
The ideal, of course, is to be able to see the wood AND the trees. We need to have a good grasp of the principles of the subject as well as the details. Do we understand what the principles are? Why these principles exist? We need to know what the main ideas are in respect to each principle. We need to know how these ideas relate to each other. Each idea needs examples to support it, with reasons for each example. We may need examples which would illustrate where an idea would NOT apply. It is a hierarchy of learning. It is the deep learning that we need to demonstrate to get the highest grades. It makes sense to begin with the end in mind. Let's organise our notes so that this structure is easy to learn.
The law student identified what was causing difficulties. We did a study skills check. We looked at strategies that she could try in the context of what she currently has to do. We ended up with a lot of small things that will make a BIG difference and a HUGE confidence boost. She definitely has the will to succeed and now she has the skill!
P.S. People have asked me whether I could do similar study skills checks for them. If you are interested, please get in touch. If you live near Newcastle upon Tyne, this can be arranged at a student-friendly price!
Anne Jones, August 2011
Sorting through old books and dusty memories
I come from a family that has always loved reading. This summer I have had the somewhat melancholy job of sorting through boxes of old books, deciding what to keep, what to sell and what to donate to charity. It is raining heavily outside and it is the kind of job best done when you're stuck indoors for that reason.
The inscriptions on some books are interesting. 'To Henry Williams with best wishes from Arthur Hutton Wilson, Xmas 1947' on a copy of Milton Shulman's Defeat in The West. To put this in context, Henry Williams was my grandfather. I understand that Arthur Hutton Wilson had been Grandad's commanding officer and both had been at Gallipoli in the First World War. After the war, Grandad worked for the Hutton Wilsons' family firm at Urlay Nook. Members of the Hutton Wilson family would telephone and ask to speak to 'Gunner', as they called him. I expect that Gunner and his former C.O. would have discussed the book. It is a fascinating read. After the German surrender in World War II, Shulman interviewed the senior German officers who fought in Germany and France. The book gives an insight into their experiences during the war.
My mother, a Queen Alexandra nurse, who was with a field hospital set up on third day of the Normandy landings, had first-hand experience of some of the events described in Shulman's book. Other than a booklet of memoirs of the 75 British General Hospital 1939 -1946, photographs and a cherished card signed by her nursing colleagues attending a re-union years ago, not much remains from that era.
Mum loved cooking. She would clip recipes from magazines. These, together with hand-written recipes she had copied from somewhere, or got from someone, are tucked inside her cook books. I may even try cooking them one of these days!
Yes, the books needed dusting. However, the memories they brought back are as vivid as ever. They maybe needed a bit of dusting too.
Anne Jones, July 2011
Are you asking the right questions?
Imagine that on your desk you have assembled a mass of data, reports and background information. You have been asked to write a report and make recommendations. You will need to develop your own set of expert questions and to understand what the areas of uncertainty are. You will be identifying and evaluating risks. You will provide an overview, together with a thorough appreciation of the detail. Asking the right questions will be the key to your success.
How do we identify what the key issues are? When we are first getting to grips with a new topic we can use the journalist's questions (who, what , where, when, how, why and what's the outcome?). As soon as we start studying in more depth, the expert questions become more evident. We have to critically examine the information we have, noting any limitations to that the data we have, especially its reliability. Keeping up to date is really important. We may be able to find out what the latest information is from a variety of sources, such as reading, discussions with colleagues and attending conferences. How does the new information relate to what we know already? What questions does it raise for us? At this stage, we are ensuring our breadth of thinking. Have we considered everything we should have? What gaps are there in our knowledge? What additional information do we need? Is it available? Asking questions about the information is a great way to get the thinking process going.
When you have reached the point where you have drafted your recommendations, it is time to ask more questions. Is the report about a worrying issue? If we are in a stressful situation, our thinking at the time can seem rational. However, in those situations we can overlook the obvious. We may have more choices than we think we have. If possible, try to find a disinterested person whose opinion you trust. Ask that person to read through your report. An outsider may well notice something that has been missed. Another tip is to make sure that you have considered emotions. Are they included in your thinking? How are people likely to react to your report? A good way to check you have thought of everything is to use the thinking processes described in Six Thinking Hats, by Edward De Bono. I know from experience how easy it is to miss something important, particularly in a stressful situation. It can be a hard lesson to learn. Allow some time for this stage. It is important.
Think carefully about your audience before you deliver your report. You not only have to evaluate the information and the recommendations you are making, but you need to think about the effect on the people reading the report. You need to make sure you take them with you through the points you make. Repeat important points and restate them, to ensure that they are clear and easy to understand. If you can, ask people you trust to read your draft. Learn from the responses of your audience. Did they follow you closely? Or did you get too far ahead of the parade?
Of course, once your report is published, you will discover the answer to that final question: ' Was I successful in what I set out to achieve?'
Anne Jones, April 2011
A Mind Map for the Book Club
I have recently joined a local book club, which meets to discuss each month's book choice. Of course, I read this month's book quickly and I really enjoyed it. To prepare for the discussion, I made some notes about the book. It's The Long Song,, by Andrea Levy.
As I am a keen Mind Mapper, I created a Mind Map of notes about the book. The branches I used are: plot, setting, themes, viewpoint, characters, style, themes and context. Context is a bit of a catch-all. It can include how the book relates to other books by the same author, how it compares with other books that have similar themes and how it reflects the culture and spirit of the times.
Because the branches represent the questions I want answered when I read, my brain is ready to leap into action when I start reading. (What is the plot? Who are the characters? etc.)
I can add to the Mind Map as I read, or create it afterwards, as I did with the example you see on this page.
The great thing is that I will be ready to discuss the book at the meeting. With all my notes on one sheet of paper, all I have to do is glance at it to remind myself of points I'd thought about. Another thing I could do is to add to the Mind Map as the discussion tales place. If I colour-code the additions, I can note who said what. It is a fun thing to do and it will encourage me to listen carefully to what is said.
Anne Jones, March 2011
Do you read everything fast?
This question is one I frequently get asked by people who aren't speed readers.
The short answer is no. The longer answer is that I can choose when to speed read and when not to.
I tend to choose to speed read if I have a lot of fairly tedious material to read. I often speed read if I have read something a long time ago and I want to refresh the memory of it. Sometimes I speed read if something is really interesting and I want to find out more. Even when I feel I am reading something relatively slowly, it is usually faster than most people read.
There are times when I definitely don't speed read. Like many people, I have favourite poems that I like to read and re-read. I like listening to poetry read aloud. When I read poems by myself, I often hear the words in my 'mind's ear'.
Speed reading is a very useful skill to have when you are really busy and you have to prepare for a meeting at short notice. When this happened recently, I was able to use the time saved to think about the situation that had prompted the meeting. As a result of the extra thinking time, I felt I was better prepared when we sat down for discussions. My choice of speed mainly depends on my purpose for reading and the time available to do it. The main constraint is how the reading is presented. Narrow columns and small print allow readers to take in more words at once. Large print, double line spacing and long line widths slow the reading rate of even the best speed readers.
Anne Jones, February 2011
Finding the right book
Well, we all know the old saying, 'You can't judge a book by its cover'. It's important to check that the book we are buying is right for us, especially study books. We need to examine the contents and style of books to discover if they are what we want. Of course, we can do this online using Amazon's 'Look inside' feature. However, not all books on Amazon have that feature. Sometimes, when we are not quite sure what sort of book we want, it is useful to look through several books to get an idea of what's available. It is not altogether easy to do this using online searches. Recently when I did a search, I ended up with pages and pages of book titles which were clearly not relevant to my needs. Sometimes it is difficult to refine the key word search without excluding books that might be useful.
If we visit our local bookshops, we are likely to find that they are stocking a more limited range of books than in previous years. The exception might be books that have local appeal, such as local history books and local tourist guides. The sale of local books provides a lifeline to local bookshops, who find it hard to compete on price with online retailers for most of the other books they sell.
Finding the right book within bookshops isn't always easy, either. A lot depends on how the book is classified, as to where you will find it. It is a good idea to look in different parts of the shop. Sometimes there is a more academic area as well as a more popular one. How the books are displayed in larger chains of booksellers relates to deals done between the bookseller and publishers, not necessarily on the merits of the books. The first book you see may not be the best one for you.
Public libraries aren't as well stocked as they once were. It is worth checking, if you are interested in specialist books, whether you can subscribe to your local university's library. Of course, lots of books are available online. Out of copyright books are available free from a number of sites, including the Gutenberg or Bartleby sites. These sites provide a wonderful resource for book-lovers. They can be useful if you know what you want and it is available. Having the right book can make all the difference. It can motivate us to want to read it and inspire us to further study. Dull books can have the opposite effect and can discourage the keenest students. A well written book, with clear explanations and a good level of analysis, is always worth the search. Anne Jones, January 2011 This is a question that one of my students recently asked me. If you are new to speed reading, it is a very good question to ask. In this month's article, I will explain what I do when I speed read. If you are a speed reader, you can compare your experience with mine. When we read, our eyes tend to stop on longer words, rather than shorter ones. We must be anticipating where the next stop is going to be, whenever our eyes pause to see. I recognise the shape of the words and process them as groups of words. I know I see all the words when I speed read. The short, common words matter. A preposition can change the whole meaning of a phrase. For example, the meaning of 'get' changes dramatically. (Get on, get out, get in, get over, etc.) One of the key things I look out for are negatives, such as no, not and short form n't in particular. The shape of the words is important. People don't like reading material that is entirely written in capital letters for that reason. It makes it much harder to recognise the shape of the words if all the letters are the same height. A good speed reader will hold more words in working memory. Recognising the shape of the words and processing them in groups is the key to developing the skill. It also improves comprehension. The speed reader can hold more of the sentence in working memory and can make better decisions about it. I think about reading as a whole paragraph process. Firstly, I am searching for that main idea. I don't necessarily read in linear sequence. It is more about mentally putting areas of text together. The details attach themselves to the topic. Over the years, I have also come to appreciate the importance of the examples for memory. Often they are recall prompts for the concept. It is essential to have an awareness of the paragraph structure (topic, supporting ideas, details and examples). My question always is, 'What is this paragraph about? ' Keywords are, of course, really important from a memory aspect. Most of us, by age ten, have used a strategy of mentally repeating words to improve recall. Far from suppressing sub-vocalisation, I will use it to improve recall. I think this is where the idea that speed readers just read keywords comes from. I know I give more attention to keywords if I need to memorise information. I still see all the words. If I want to speed up, I just mentally hear the keywords faster! Speed reading is a great skill to learn. If you do it thoughtfully, it can provide you with many insights as to how you process information. It can make a huge difference. You can use it to manage your reading workload much more effectively. If you haven't learned how to speed read, you might like to consider coming on one of my courses. You'd be very welcome! Anne Jones, December 2010When you speed read, do you look at all the words, or just the keywords?