Highlighting Your Way to Productivity
Have you ever studied or read a textbook with a highlighter, hoping to highlight important sections, only to find yourself highlighting every other sentence?
Yeah, we’ve all been there. Highlighting can be a fun and interactive way to study, but it can also distract you from actually studying the material you’re looking at.
Photo by Mitchell Luo on Unsplash
Instead of thinking critically about what we’ve just read, we’re too busy thinking about whether or not that piece of information should be highlighted as important. And sometimes, when we go back to study what we’ve read, we will tend to focus only on those highlighted sections... which can lead us to miss a deeper understanding of the big picture and relevant connections.
Highlighting 101
Highlighting is not an entirely bad studying method. If highlighting keeps you engaged as you read a text because it gives your hands something to do, then don’t stop doing it.
But if you’re highlighting simply for the sake of it, you won’t get anywhere with your studying.
Here are some tips that could help you highlight your way to better productivity:
1. Read the text first
We highlight to make note of what we think are important. But if we’ve never read the text (book, article, etc.) in full before highlighting, how are we to know what’s important and what’s not?
When you highlight during your first read through of the text, you may end up:
Highlighting anything and everything
Highlighting information that have little relevance to your learning
So, read your text completely first without highlighting or taking notes. Then, on your second read-through pick up your pen and favorite highlighters. If you don’t want or have the time to read through the text multiple times, then at the very least finish reading a paragraph or section first before you begin to highlight and take notes.
2. Don’t replace highlighting with your own notes
Highlighting may seem like an easier alternative to taking notes, but it’s not. When you take notes, you are processing the information you have just read because you have to put it into your own words and maybe connect some dots to other information you’ve learned before. Writing your own notes can also help you better memorize information because you’re actively thinking about what you’re reading. Highlighting is a much more passive activity.
Instead of highlighting the text, try highlighting your own notes.
3. Use multiple highlighters
If you have different reasons for why you are highlighting certain words or passages, then you should be highlighting with more than one color. Color coding your highlights will make deciphering your notes much easier when you look back! But make sure that you choose colors that are readable and different enough from each other!
For example:
Yellow: definition
Green: important
Blue: examples
Pink: to review
Or, you could even use same colors to draw connections and categorize:
Events that take place at a specific location
Every time a character, idea, object, theme is mentioned
Events that take place at a certain time
How ever you choose to use your highlighters, make sure that you have a system. The system doesn’t have to make sense for other people, but it does have to work for you. Remember, highlighters should help you study better and more efficiently.
4. Highlight in different ways
If you don’t have that many colors (and you shouldn’t have too many to begin with anyway), try highlighting in different ways. This could look like underlining a sentence, creating a box around a passage, etc. Whatever you choose to do, be sure to keep track of what each style means for your note-taking purposes!
Highlighting when done right is a great study method. It can help you think critically by allowing you to categorize information and draw connections within the text. However, it may not work for all subjects and occasions. Highlighting may be a great way to study a novel or a long text for a literature class. But it may not always be the best for when you’re studying chemistry and calculus.
And don’t forget, even if you are reading a text online as a PDF, you can still highlight the document by using Adobe Acrobat Reader.
Highlighter Recommendations
Pilot FriXion Light Erasable Highlighters
Tombow Kei Coat Double-Sided Highlighters
Stabilo Boss Highlighters
Zebra Midliner Double-Sided Highlighter
Uni Propus Window Highlighters
