Why Bookmarks are not to be used in books - The staggering science between the dumbest of things we do

There are two ways of reading a book.

One is to read it whenever you get time. Fiction or Non fictional Stories are mostly read like this.

Number two, is when we select a topic to read and finish it off in that particular sitting. This is like splitting the book into readable sized articles and completing the articles in one sitting.

Technical/Philosophical/Informative books can only be read in this way. You cannot read half the article one day and the rest on the next day. Come on! Of course you can, but there wouldn’t be proper information flow and you won’t be able to have a bird’s eye view of the information contained in the book.

We've all used them.

Bookmarks.

They can be a piece of paper or a thread of cloth that comes with the book, or the silly paper bookmarks that are inside the books when you buy them.

*Now, by bookmarks I mean, the bookmarks in a physical book; nothing digital. *

Now imagine yourself in a new country. You would find it awfully difficult to navigate to a place without GPS or instructions. But once you’ve gotten familiar with things in the country, it is easier for you to navigate without the GPS. Maybe you’ll take shortcuts, which the GPS can never guide you with. That makes you slowly to stop using GPS and use the information in your head to travel instead.

So, what changed within you that you stopped using GPS?

You have obtained knowledge, a bird’s eye view of the setting of the place, which guides you effortlessly, much better than any GPS can.

Bookmarks are like these GPS trackers which help us to locate a page in a book, to continue reading the book in the future from the place you left it off.

But bookmarks also prevent us from fully experiencing and getting a bird’s eye view of the book. Over a period you are going to be familiar with the book even with the bookmarks, but no one is going to read the book that long, to let longevity turn to familiarity.

Ahem. Ahem. Crickets.

Bookmarks are OK with novels, but bookmarks are extremely counterproductive when used to read an informative book. Absence of bookmarks will make sure that you know what chapters are there in the book, the exact concept you read before closing the book, and will also remind you with exactly what you are going to read the next time you open the book.

Hey, that’s my style. I might be wrong; or this tip might enlighten you for good. Do what you gotta do man.