10 Steps to Earning Awesome Grades (While Studying Less)

5 Active Reading Strategies
For decades, professors who all belong to the ultra-secret society of Acronym 
Lords (now that I’ve told you about it, they’re coming for you) have been trying 
to push active reading systems that can be neatly packaged into - you guessed it 
- tidy little acronyms.
These systems, like SQ3R (Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Review), SQ4R (add 
Reflect), and others contain some useful techniques - but I think trying to rigidly 
follow one every time you read is far too time-consuming. I’m not the only one 
who thinks this; Cal Newport, the founder of the excellent Study Hacks blog, 
wrote:
“I’ve never met a high-scoring student who used a 
system like SQ4R. The reason: they’re too time-
consuming! What these students do instead is 
discover simple, streamlined and devastatingly 
effective heuristics that can be easily adapted to 
specific classes.”
The only acronym-based reading system I recommend is SCAR:
•
Stop
•
Complaining
•
And
•
Read
So, instead of appeasing the secret acronym society members and 
recommending a cumbersome system, I’m just going to give you 5 active 
reading strategies you can adopt as you wish.
Note: Again, including images of each technique would mess up the formatting 
of the book - but you can see examples in my 
Active Reading video
.
Use the Pseudo-Skimming Technique

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10 Steps to Earning Awesome Grades (While Studying Less)
23
The longer a reading assignments is, the more likely a large portion of its 
paragraphs will be filler - stuff you don’t really need to read. According to Cal 
Newport, filler paragraphs can include:
•
Background story
•
Asides
•
Exceptions (because professional scholars want to be thorough)
•
Extra details
In many cases, information of these types won’t make up the bulk of what you’ll 
be tested over later - so paragraphs containing those types on information 
should be quickly scanned.
However, a good number of paragraphs in any reading will contain important