How to Read Textbooks like a Pro

Something I have been applying lately

Textbooks are the only way to learn a concept efficiently. They contain the most amount of information and describes concept in the detailed format, plus it has question in it to test your learning. I came across this video which talks about how to consume textbooks like a sponge, and I have been trying to apply it to my learning as I study reinforcement learning (notes). I am writing this here instead of just learning it in my mind, so in case I ever forget this continues to be there. So following are the steps to consume any text book quickly:

Flip through all the pages

We read the textbook as a novel, going over the text one by one and making notes not knowing how it all fits togeather. So step 1 is to just flip over all the pages of the chapter and see what are the images or graphs or anythign that pops out. The aim is not to read but simply look what there is.

Go to Questions

Almost all the textbooks have each section end with questions and at the end a quiz for all the questions. Doing this gives an idea what the ideas in the chapter and section are. You can remember this as it helps when you are finally studying the content.

Read the bold text

Read all the bold text in the chapter, from the titles to subheading and bold sentences. This gives you the 'dots' you need to connect by learning things. The main problem when studying is not knowing the 'dots' but having an idea how somethings connect. By doing this you already have a mind-map of things and when sttudying you can connect them.

Read 1st and Last Sentence

In any good book, the first sentence of each paragraph opens up the discussion and last topic summarises it. By doing this you now will also know the gist of all the things that are in the text. By doing all this your awareness has increased of all the things. This gives a brief overview of all the things you are going to study.

Now proceed to read the chapter as you would normally do. Highlight whatever you think is important and make notes, especially of complex equations that would occur. If possible make notes as beutiful as you can so not just you, but everyone can understand what the concept is. Another thing to do when you jave to memorize stuff, is to take a big blank paper and start making a graph of topics something just like this.