Generating interest with long boring texts

How do we read content that is genuinely boring? Why, we generate interest in any way we can. Interest is a key component for retention, it focuses the mind on the content, on the markers, on links and so on. One of the surprising fact we found, was that fast readers had higher retention than slow readers. Why? Because they could skip through the boring and not important stuff to what really matters, You could eventually prioritize all boring material out of your attention span, but this is not what you want.

The most straightforward way to generate an interest is sports interest: see if you can speedread and retain this boring content, ignoring slight pain of boredom for the greater achievement of mastering the task. If sports is your thing, you could get your interest as easy as that.

For more inquisitive people there is an old creativity technique called 5 W -H. Ask what, where, when, who, why and how. Basically you look at the subject from every perspective you can imagine  trying to generate the most full picture or find the gaps in the mental image. This will help with technical or financial record. Ask yourself: what are they hiding between the lines, what conspiracy is behind this formulation, and you will be  amused while mastering the material.

If you are a technocrat or a manager you should actually be more concerned of how you can use it. Try to link possible usage to every aspect  of the content according to strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Or try to analyse how they got this result, what this material is made off, and where the new article is different from anything that came before it. Try to attack the content from every perspective and see that it brings new opportunities in your career. Probably this is true, you just do not know how…

When the material is boring, generating interest will increase your reading speed, retention, visualization capabilities, creative associations and the benefit you get from reading. Even more important it is FUN, and therefore we  can safely recommend it.