11–20 of 145 posts
Maybe that explains the rise in companies that will summarize long books in 15min, or the rise of the small single rotating idea books.
My process: - If I find the book is very daunting but also very valuable, I read it multiple times from start till end. First time without stopping for reading references, then another pass for researching topics, references, etc. and then finally once more to read everything again with the newly acquired knowledge to find some things that I may have missed, things that I might have understood incorrectly and to impr…
It did take a while to get over the feeling of sacrilege of the book, but it has been useful.
Sometimes I wonder how I would turn out if I did organized people stuff like this. What bothers me is these life advices always feel like bullshit. Like, check this guy out. He has his own website with a title "Den Zhadanov\nTechnology. Productivity. Inspiration.". This is life coaching 101. He writes about how burning man didn't change his life and has pictures of books on beaches. How does one take this person seri…
Reading a bunch of popular bestseller self help books doesn't actually teach you anything, even if you read 5000 of them.
> Instead of reading 100 books, it’s better to find one that really changes your life. You can't know whether book will change your life or not until you read it. If you treat every book too seriously you just waste your time and kill the pleasure of reading. Everyone should master skimming and their ability to regulate "depth of understanding" based on perceived value.
I gave up on reading non-fiction seriously as I realized that I started to skew non-fiction books due to taking them too seriously.
I, now, learn at lot less from each book but I do take pleasure in reading so it's an overall win.
Furthermore, I can always look deeper into a book if I get really interested into
Sometimes I wonder how I would turn out if I did organized people stuff like this. What bothers me is these life advices always feel like bullshit. Like, check this guy out. He has his own website with a title "Den Zhadanov\nTechnology. Productivity. Inspiration.". This is life coaching 101. He writes about how burning man didn't change his life and has pictures of books on beaches. How does one take this person seri…
The best way to read this, or most of the internet really, in my opinion, is as if he were a friend, a colleague, family or an acquaintance, not as an authority; you listen politely, nod and smile, and reflect/research on your own on what it seems useful.
At the end of the day, the web enabled anyone to write, and this guy should not self censor just because that advice could be given elsewhere by a more authoritative role. It is his personal blog that we are visiting! If you were talking to a friend over coffee/beer about an idea that seems important to you that he hears, wouldn’t you be energetic, perhaps taking an “authoritative” tone? Not far-fetched!
Sometimes I wonder how I would turn out if I did organized people stuff like this. What bothers me is these life advices always feel like bullshit. Like, check this guy out. He has his own website with a title "Den Zhadanov\nTechnology. Productivity. Inspiration.". This is life coaching 101. He writes about how burning man didn't change his life and has pictures of books on beaches. How does one take this person seri…
I cannot take such people very seriously either and feel all these "life coaching 101" courses/events are no different to new programmers getting stuck in a never ending spiral of tutorials. You're constantly reminded how everything is _just_ out of reach although another course will help get there...
Most books are highly overrated. They usually take some useful ideas, usually what author perceived was useful to them, and add things to them to make it sound useful to their target readers, which may or may not make sense... enough to fill the length of a book.
Are some books life changing? Sure! But some can change how you think to your detriment because the information in books is not optimized to your life situation.
So, overall, if you're not reading any, you're not missing out.
The problem is you won't believe it until you actually do go ahead and read them. How the books are marketed and sold, it makes you feel that you are missing some vital information that will change your life... you purchase it and think one day you'll read it and conquer all obstacles (or realize that "the obstacle is the way" by reading Ryan Holiday). Well, nothing like that will happen. But again, to actually know that for yourself, you'll have to read them.
So, I can explain how I did it. If you are obsessive-compulsive like me and are single without kids and without much of a social life like I was, you may be able to do it too. This is what I did:
- Create a goal in Goodreads and obsessively track progress (which page are you in) every time you read a part of the book
- If some book is easily distracting, find the audiobook... and listen to the audiobook at high speed while reading the physical or digital copy. If audiobook version doesn't exist, find a drm-free digital copy (Library Genesis is your friend) and let Google Books or PocketBook read it at high speed for you
- Buy good quality noise-cancelling headphones and listen to books all the time... commuting, driving, working out, cleaning, cooking, whenever you can do it.
- If you get stuck with a book, start another one. Keep doing that. Don't set goals to read specific books. That will halt you. Just move on to the next one. You can always come back and continue.
- It's OK to read 3 whole books cover to cover on a Sunday.
- It's OK to read at night when you can't sleep. It might help you sleep. I managed to fall sleep in a micro bus in Thailand when I was reading 48 Laws of Power (yes, it is that boring).
Again, it's not worth it... but if you feel like you're missing something, do it and find out for yourself.
Sometimes I wonder how I would turn out if I did organized people stuff like this. What bothers me is these life advices always feel like bullshit. Like, check this guy out. He has his own website with a title "Den Zhadanov\nTechnology. Productivity. Inspiration.". This is life coaching 101. He writes about how burning man didn't change his life and has pictures of books on beaches. How does one take this person seri…
Yeah I had a skim of the submitted page only and this stuff is common sense to anyone who has studied to get good grades from age 14 onwards. However this sort of article might be useful to someone who struggled at high school and wants to give learning another shot.