Idea 57: Develop the skill of scanning
‘What, have you not read it through?’ the Scottish author James Boswell once asked.
‘No, Sir,’ replied his friend Dr Johnson. ‘Do you read books through?’
Life presents us with too much information, so we have to learn to be selective. Otherwise our mind would drown in a torrent of words.
Scanning involves the action of quickly glancing down the body of a text so that the mind can rapidly take in the gist of what is written.
The word ‘scan’ comes from the Latin scandere meaning ‘to climb or leap’, so imagine yourself jumping quickly from stepping stone to stepping stone without getting your feet wet in the text.
It should be a wide, sweeping, methodical search, quick but not hasty. Festine lente, ‘make haste ...
