Fire Up Your Comprehension! The Art of Understanding

5 Surprising Comprehension Influencers

Social media influencers inform, interact with, and affect their followers. Similarly, the following 5 factors influence comprehension by telling us what’s important, integrating new and old knowledge, and shaping what we do.

1. Did you know that emotions have a lot to do with comprehension?

Yep! Your feelings matter! First, if you don’t care about something, your attention will fizzle. Second, if you don’t “want” or “like” or “need” the experience, the brain skips over or through it because it’s not useful to you. If you trudge through the experience anyway, it will be boring. Negative emotions lead to ignore, dismiss, or busy work reactions.

So, ask what are my emotions and what are they doing for my understanding? If they’re negative, think about the upside, the positive view that will get you to understanding.

2. Did you know that its easier to understand new information if you can link it to your prior knowledge?

Comprehension is very personal. It’s like building your own house: the shape and size of the foundation determines what you can put on top of it.

Prior knowledge, or what you already know about a topic, is your foundation. Know a lot about cooking? Bring on the gourmet recipes! Know very little and you’ll be lost with the duck confit, fugu, or baked Alaska recipe. It’s like doing a 1500-piece jigsaw without the picture!

If you’re short on background knowledge, hit up YouTube, a book, or an expert for a quick fix.

3. Did you know that comprehension methods are personal?

Comprehension of even the exact same situation varies from person to person. This follows, of course, from #2 but it’s different. This is the building the building part.

Each of us has different raw materials to work with. We have slightly different word definitions, ways of figuring out new terms, and criteria for deciding what’s important. We also have different attitudes, beliefs, memories, and knowledge about the topics and situations we’re trying to understand. (That’s why two people can be at the same party and one finds it boring while the other loves it.) 

Want to comprehend more? Check out your methods. Sharpen those that don’t produce much. And, include others in your process. If they’re not available, imagine how that author, speaker, creator, friend, etc. would see the experience. If they’re around, talk to them. Share your views; try to understand theirs and ask how they got there.

4. Did you know that time affects comprehension?

What happens when you’re late? Or don’t have enough time? You rush. We all do.

What about when you’re tired? What happens to your thinking? Before nodding off, is it hazy, superficial, repetitive, confused, slow to go anywhere? 

What happens if you plan a task when the environment doesn’t match – say writing a report when family members want your attention? Or getting dinged with a lot of texts while trying to listen to a lecture or even watch a movie?

When you don’t have enough time, tasks and experiences get short-changed. When the allotted time isn’t high quality in terms of your energy, thinking crawls and even goes in meaningless circles. And when the environment isn’t right or you’re multi-tasking, you’ll have major distractions, concentration issues, and very poor comprehension.

Time management coupled with a little forethought is the solution. When you can, estimate how much time an experience really needs. Think of adding a cushion. Then, pick the optimum timeframe for a full, high energy, attentive experience.

5. Did you know that you need mind control to make good comprehension happen?

All comprehension is done in the mind. The brain does its thing – perceiving via the senses, looking for rewards and dangers, giving us happy or stress chemical boosters, seeing patterns, storing and accessing memories, initiating behaviors.

But it’s our mind that really makes sense of things and knowingly comprehends. The mind is our consciousness, our awareness, what we tune into. And that makes awareness a light switch situation: it can be on or off. When it’s off, it’s in passive thinking mode. When it’s on, we’re engaged in active thinking.

Passive thinking is thinking, but it’s where the mind is wandering around, bringing up seemingly random aspects of life. It happens when we’re bored. It happens when we’re doing easy, predictable things that don’t need a lot of attention, like brushing our teeth. It happens when we’re vegging, letting the mind rest, and day dreaming. It has its uses, but comprehension is not one of them! If you’ve ever read a page and not known what it said, you’ve experienced this passive approach.

Active thinking is the comprehension and learning mode. It’s intentional and mind controlled. Emphasize the word act: it’s all about taking action. Active thinkers use conscious thoughts and strategies to control the brain, find what’s important, and do something with it.

We all are passive thinkers during the day. But active thinkers recognize that those moments are distractions that don’t produce comprehension. So, they switch to the active thinking mode. How? They take control of their thoughts with deliberate strategies like those in the next section.

Active Thinking Aids that FIRE Up Comprehension

We create comprehension. It doesn’t just happen … although it can feel that way. The brain makes connections so quickly – 60 bits per second – that we’re unaware of the steps it goes through. And that’s a lot of processing and chance for error when we’re passive thinkers. Active thinking slows all that down, greatly improves accuracy, and creates energetic, good feelings as well!

Have you ever been fired up about something? Or felt “got it, got that, got that too!”? That energy is what you want when you’re trying to build understanding. That’s when you know that your efforts are active and have the best chance of reaping great results!

We can all FIRE up our system to get that energy going! We can Focus, Inquire, Reason, and Expand the connection making process. When we do, we feel it. We’re getting it, on fire, on a roll, accomplished, outstanding, noteworthy, or even at the top of our game. In a word, we’re comprehending!

And there are bonuses! FIRE strategies can be super-fast! A thought moment is often all that’s needed. In addition, while FIRE has 4 stages, the truth is they blend together quickly. A focus spark becomes an inquire and reason flame that expands into a blaze. Finally, while there are many strategies – 19 are presented here — you don’t need to do them all. Pick, choose, and use what works for the experience.

Focus

Be fully present. Don’t let your mind wander off. Get motivated! Do things that deliberately get you on task or in the situation.

• Eliminate Distractions
• Don’t Multi-Task
• Preview
  • Glance at or imagine the beginning, middle, and end of tasks, texts, and situations.
• Get Curious
  • Look at or imagine interesting parts and things you’d like to know more about.

Inquire

Questions need answers. Ask them and you’ll put your brain on alert to make the connections that matter to you.

• State Your Intention
  • Ask yourself what would success look like? Set a goal.
• Call Up Prior Knowledge
  • Ask your brain what do I already know about this?
• Fix Knowledge Gaps
  • Ask yourself where can I go to get more info and a simpler version?
• Manage Your Time
  • Ask yourself what’s the best time and place for this activity? Should I break this up into smaller tasks?
• Pinpoint What’s Important
  • For texts, turn titles, headings, and key words into questions like these: What is …” Why is … important? How does …work? Read to find the answers
  • For tasks, ask yourself what’s the most efficient way to work? What’s the most effective way to work?
  • For conversations, ask questions about the speaker’s key words and points. Encourage dialogue.

Reason

This step builds the message. Choose the method(s) that gets the brain to accomplish your goal. Avoid poor thinking.

• Mark And Take Notes
  • Use marking, note taking, and annotating to isolate what’s important and provide for efficient review.
• Think Critically
  • Be open to others’ ideas and evaluate fairly.
• Analyze Logically
  • For texts, outline or map the structure of the main ideas.
  • For tasks, list the steps.
  • For all activities, look for logical patterns, such as chronological sequence, causes, effects, similarities, differences, categories, etc.
• Seek Evidence
  • Rely on expert sources.
• Solve Problems
  • Identify what you know, don’t know, want to achieve, and how to best proceed.
• Learn
  • Predict what you need to know. Then, work with one small chunk at a time, comprehend it, review it, and practice recall.
• Reflect
  • Find a quiet space, describe the experience, identify your feelings, evaluate, analyze, draw conclusions, and/or make an action plan.
• Avoid Fallacies
  • Be on the alert for common logical fallacies or times when the brain jumps to a conclusion or doesn’t use logical thinking.

Expand

This step is the reaction phase. It gives the message importance. Now is the time to use the insights that solve the issues, help us grow, and make us smarter!

• Review
  • Use good memory methods to capture your comprehension in long term memory.
• Use It
  • Make the new part of you. Practice. Apply it!
• React
  • Check your thoughts, beliefs, and feelings. Strong ones activate brain chemicals that promote memory.
• Recognize Your Gains
  • Mentally point out the novel ideas, new details, unique information.
• Praise Yourself
  • Notice what you’ve gained! Tell yourself I know more about …, Good job! Well Done!
• Reward Yourself
  • Give yourself pleasure breaks, treats, and even gifts to celebrate your energy, efforts, and spent time. You deserve it! Plus, you’ll build up future motivation.

In the End …

Virtually every experience is a comprehension event. We’re designed to take things in and make sense of them. That starts with building a message and ends with our reactions.

Comprehension is controllable and improvable. How? Pay attention to the 5 influencers and choose to use the strategies that FIRE up your active thinking!

5 Comprehension Influencers

• Emotions
• Prior Knowledge
• Personal Methods
• Time
• Mind Control

FIRE Up Active Thinking

Focus

• • Eliminate Distractions
  • Don’t Multi-Task
  • Preview
  • Get Curious

Inquire

• • State Your Intention
  • Call Up Prior Knowledge
  • Fix Knowledge Gaps
  • Manage Your Time
  • Pinpoint What’s Important

Reason

• • Mark And Take Notes
  • Think Critically
  • Analyze Logically
  • Seek Evidence
  • Learn
  • Reflect
  • Avoid Fallacies

Expand

• • Review
  • Use It
  • React
  • Recognize Your Gains
  • Praise Yourself
  • Reward Yourself

Think of the influencers and aids as brushes and paints. They’re your tools for the art of understanding!