for technical books the idea is to treat each chapter as a book on its own. So you would keep doing activation passes on that particular chapter until it gels. When it has gelled enough you move onto the next chapter.
While not a technical answer this idea might help you to understand the Whole to Part concept.
When painting a landscape an artist will sketch the whole scene first. You can recognise the picture from this sketch yet it feels incomplete. As the artist adds the colours they are applied in broad strokes placing in the untertones or main colours first. With each additional pass of the brush the artist starts filling in the finer details in different parts of the picture. When you stand back and look at the 'completed' painting you notice that all the information was there in the original sketch yet now we are able to appreciate the finer details of the individual portions of the painting if we desire.
Alex
