Three-pass reading and concept mapping of scientific papers and other learning material
An effective method for boosting your reading efficiency and learning from scientific papers and other knowledge heavy texts.
As a knowledge worker, you are often facing the need for reading rather large numbers of scientific papers. I am a data scientist and in relation to projects at work, I often find myself trawling the web for scientific papers touching the topics we are working on. Typically, the first round unveils 15–20 papers that are somehow related to the project. Maybe one or two if these are worth a deep investigation and perhaps a reimplementation of the method. At some point, I started to feel that some of my reading was wasted time — not 100% wasted but maybe 70–80% or so.
I realized I needed a more efficient process for reading, which was my motivation for developing the three-pass reading and concept mapping method. I read a lot of scientific papers, but I would say the method works on other short texts as well.
Preparations for reading
I print the paper and the template below to support the reading. The template ensures that I read papers in the same way and log insights and TODOs during the reading process. My template is of course colored by my professional field (data science) and you…
