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Ways to Read More Books

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Re: Ways to Read More Books

#91

Post by oskarth »

TTPrograms wrote: post #46

This may be an unusual opinion, but I read a lot, and I've found non-fiction books to just not be efficient means of educating myself anymore. Most topics can be illustrated and described in far fewer words than a book takes. I get about a third of the way through a lot of books and say "ok I get it", as the author basically just continues to say the same thing in different ways. I'm sure this is incentivized by curr…

When you say non-fiction, do you mean pop science books? I'd be very surprised if you grokked a math, hard science or programming book after just reading the first third introducing the subject.

Re: Ways to Read More Books

#92

Post by nfin »

vog wrote: post #69
mamon wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's only works if a) cost is high enough compared to your income b) you are a reasonable person, and value your money enough to care I tried to use this tactic many times, mostly to hone my programming skills - didn't work. Damn, I recently entered a postgraduate program at the university, for 2500$ cost - didn't help much, still can't force myself to spend more time learning things.

A similar phenomenon are the various ways people try to trick their procrastination habit, not with money (fake price) but with time (fake priorities). However, as you correctly noticed, these techniques don't work well. That's normal, don't worry if these simple solutions don't work. Maybe you think they should work, because you often hear from people for whom "that one weird trick" worked. Or that one complicated t…

How do you find the highly qualified? How are they called? How do you find the fitting one, without having tons of money to through out like a big manager would have (but probably enough, specially if the result is promising)

Thanks!

Re: Ways to Read More Books

#93

Post by nfin »

anigbrowl wrote: post #58
TTPrograms wrote: post #46

This may be an unusual opinion, but I read a lot, and I've found non-fiction books to just not be efficient means of educating myself anymore. Most topics can be illustrated and described in far fewer words than a book takes. I get about a third of the way through a lot of books and say "ok I get it", as the author basically just continues to say the same thing in different ways. I'm sure this is incentivized by curr…

I get that. Books that are written or edited with a view to maximizing sales rather than reader satisfaction are going to go for the lowest common denominator, and if you're a quick study then over time you'll find more and more books beneath your comprehensive capability and then your boredom threshold. Unfortunately the best books on a given may be too difficult for the general reader, and a bimodal distribution em…

Do you have a list of favorite blogs? Need just to mention the top ones (great would be google+ blogs, so I can register them there, or how do you manage them, if more than a couple?)

Re: Ways to Read More Books

#94

Post by Tomis02 »

jcoffland wrote: post #88

A lot of people waste their time reading the latest NY Times best sellers when they could be learning. Who cares how many trash novels you read? You might as well watch TV. Read for quality not quantity and pursue other avenues of learning. Kahn Academy has tons of excellent and free courses on YouTube. Or actually do things. Build something, plant a garden, fix your car, learn a language, write. Passive consumption…

Didn't you hear though? All successful people read. It's obvious that reading made them successful, not their upbringing or environment. As long as you read as much as possible, does it matter what you read? Be like Bill. Be successful!

I was being sarcastic, obviously.

Re: Ways to Read More Books

#95

Post by adrift »

jonnybgood wrote: post #22

The game changer for me was actually learning how to read a book. I no longer approach books the same way after having read How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler [1]. Once you have a method down, you can go through books rather quickly and retain knowledge. My biggest epiphany is that you don't need to read a book in its entirety to know all that it has to say. [1] https://www.amazon.com/How-Read-Book-Intelligent-Touc…

Could you give a summary of what you learnt from it?

Re: Ways to Read More Books

#96

Post by aluhut »

Fifer82 wrote: post #56

I would thoroughly recommend trying some modern Audiobooks if you have not tried them yet. It may remind you of your grandmother but seriously, they have replaced most of my entertainment. I even got a waterproof speaker to listen in the shower! The full cast audiobooks are especially awesome. I have "read" just over 500 books since 2009 so no idea how many hours I have lost in total!

I wonder how this was not on the list as it is the most obvious solution. I spend most of the reading time while commuting. In winter by reading in summer on my bike listening.

It took some time to get used to it but it works!

Can you recommend a speaker? I thought about that too but never took it really serious.

Re: Ways to Read More Books

#97

Post by IIIIIIIIIIII »

tristanho wrote: post #34
hairofadog wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also found the survivorship-biasy part of the article to be a bit goofy, but I found other parts to be pretty spot on. I have fallen out of the habit of reading this past year (I think in part due to stress over political news) and I've been looking for ways to bring it back into my life. These things hit home: * While I don't think reading will make me successful, I do find the habitual focus/relaxation aspects of…

I think the "survivorship bias" argument for reading is a bit overplayed. There's practically _zero_ of these mega-successful people (Gates, Buffett, Zuckerburg, Musk, etc.) who don't read. Astonishingly, I can't think of a single one. While that doesn't prove causation, it definitely points at it! Do you want to try to be the first successful person who didn't read? It's not that reading was this one magical trick t…

> There's practically _zero_ of these mega-successful people (Gates, Buffett, Zuckerburg, Musk, etc.) who don't read

Citation needed, as well as a definition of "don't read".

For example, for several years now I have been reading a lot less books than ever before in my life, almost zero. However, I took several dozens of courses on edX and Coursera and read a lot of documents on the Internet. Just no books, and a lot less newspaper and magazine articles.

Re: Ways to Read More Books

#98

Post by tvanantwerp »

mamon wrote: post #65
vog wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when I spend £30 on a single book, damn right am I going to finish it. That's an interesting exploitation of the sunk cost fallacy. [1][2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost#Loss_aversion_and_th... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escalation_of_commitment

That's only works if a) cost is high enough compared to your income b) you are a reasonable person, and value your money enough to care I tried to use this tactic many times, mostly to hone my programming skills - didn't work. Damn, I recently entered a postgraduate program at the university, for 2500$ cost - didn't help much, still can't force myself to spend more time learning things.

I've had a similar problem. My studies included a lot of econ and I'm very familiar with sunk costs. I was trained to not care about them, and now I don't.

Buy a month's worth of gym visits as a commitment mechanism, quit after the first one without regrets. Sunk costs are sunk.

Re: Ways to Read More Books

#99

Post by bachmeier »

alexpetralia wrote: post #52
TTPrograms wrote: post #46

This may be an unusual opinion, but I read a lot, and I've found non-fiction books to just not be efficient means of educating myself anymore. Most topics can be illustrated and described in far fewer words than a book takes. I get about a third of the way through a lot of books and say "ok I get it", as the author basically just continues to say the same thing in different ways. I'm sure this is incentivized by curr…

Reminds me of Naval Ravikant who suggested reading books more like blogs - you shouldn't feel some social pressure to "finish a book" but rather skip the parts you don't enjoy and drop it whenever you feel like you've gotten the main point. I've been doing this more recently and found that I don't get stuck on books anymore, no longer bottlenecked by certain parts which are boring and redundant.

This works for me too. I will regularly check a book out of the library, read three chapters, and then return it to get another. I realized that I wasn't finishing books because doing so was not a good use of my time.

Somewhat related is that I'll read chapters out of order. Many books follow an approach of "laying the foundation" before making the point. 40 pages of laying the foundation is a logical step but unfortunately is not done well in most cases.

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