Here is another example to grasp the rough structure of a document.

When I was a student, my teacher handed me an English paper (*1) to read. It was a precedent example of my research.

If I read this, it may result in the disappointment that my idea is not new. That unconscious thought killed the motivation.

After neglecting the paper for a few days, I thought the state was wrong. If I stay in the state without motivation, I never read the paper.

To get out of the state, I need to break the task into smaller parts and bring the goal near me. So I first printed the paper. Then I highlighted the chapter heading and keywords with a red pen in 25 minutes. Instead of an unclear and distant goal "to understand the papers in detail," I made a clear and near goal by delimiting the time and focusing on getting a rough structure.

In this 25-minute work, I understood that the starting point of discussion is close to mine, but the story goes a different direction from mine on the middle. As a result of this understanding, I got another clear goal to know why did the author move in a direction different from my expectation. Also, by the rough understanding of the structure of the paper, I knew where I might find the answer.

The rest was easy. The reason why the story went in a different direction was that the paper chooses an option B, though I thought it should be an option A for this purpose. I knew the point where my idea and the idea of ​​the author go different by grasping the overall image roughly.

*1: I am not a native English speaker. Reading English papers takes a higher cognitive cost to me than reading Japanese papers.