Content Format Shapes Your Ability to Grasp It

I reread a few books annually or biannually, because they’re that important to me. Any book in this category I have in hardcover or paperback, and mark up liberally with my notes and commentary. There’s both a comfort and a hazard of rereading a book that you’ve marked up. It’s comforting to see your notes and add to them. It’s hazardous because our eyes tend to focus on what we underlined and highlighted before, rather than reading afresh and getting new insights. You’re going to miss something because you entered into the “echo chamber” of your previous reading. 

Therefore, I recommend you change up the format to get back to freshness.

I recently bought a new copy of Drucker’s The Effective Executive and found new insights that I had not “seen” before. I have different editions of other books (e.g., The Lord of the Rings) and find it refreshing to switch from one to another, enjoying the alternate layout.

I switch from Kindle to paperback for some books, or vice-versa. Listening to the audio version of a book will also yield different insights. Listening to podcasts and reading the transcript are not the same experience, just as watching someone present live in person is different than reading the transcript or only listening to the audio.

Even changing the font of a printout can trigger new perception. Or printing in landscape orientation instead of portrait orientation. Or different colored paper.

Don’t underestimate how much the format of the content shapes your ability to grasp it. I can’t explain the full reasons why this is, but my proof is in my experimentation and hearing similar stories from friends.

Also, here’s an important reverse case for communicators (and all leaders must be communicators): How you choose to present information shapes how well people can absorb it.