21–30 of 45 posts
Read more, from different sources. Compare and contrast.
Read all again. Compare and contrast.
Write down your own synthesis.
Congrats, you are a thinker now.
For depth, rinse & repeat by reading about different-but-similar subjects.
Congratulations, if you do that, because you've solved your active reading and deep thinking problem. Habitually, you will read actively and think deeply. Keep in mind, you'll still have your other bad habits. You'll still read mindlessly and procrastinate during other times. However, you won't always be doing that. You're going to have a better base to work from.
Later you can read books like Miracle Morning to improve your morning habits, Bullet Journal to create short notes for yourself to work from later, and How To Take Smarter Notes to get a deeper dive on the topic of active reading than anyone in the other comments has had time to go into.
When I have too too many tabs open I'll save the entire set using a bookmark manager, then start afresh, go through the previous tabs one-by-one, and reopen the really interesting ones, and do a bit more research around them.
I'm not sure this really counts as a rational or sane process though!
Books (IMO) tend to be better for than webpages for retaining information because they take much longer to read. Prefer books over webpages.
Copy and paste them to a text file. (Think of not doing that as throwing your life away.)
Arrange them by topic later, as the file size gets unwieldy. Read and reread them, which hopefully will be hard not to do, as they are your favourite quotes. Write little comments and commentaries on them as you wish – illustrative examples from your life, things it reminds you of, parts you don't quite agree with and why, etc.
I've also started writing my thoughts to the notes file, e.g. all ideas I have for something to do. Without doing this they'd just be idle thoughts soon lost. I've started making LaTeX PDF books out of stuff from the text file, one for the current year and others for particular topics as they become big enough and branch off. I just wish I'd started 30 years earlier! To the notes file goes anything of any significance that passed through my head and might be of value later. Sorting that into topics, and whether it's my or someone else's words, comes later.
I've come across many mentions of writers (from the last few hundred years) always carrying a notebook, and writing thoughts, ideas, images down in a notebook. Other people then read their books and think they're deep thinkers. Maybe, or they just realized the value of their thoughts — priceless — and never let one go to waste. e.g. Emerson's notebooks, Lichtenberg's "waste books" (more concentrated nuggets of thought, from a scientist/thinker). Emerson couldn't write the way he wrote – his essays are stuff from his notebooks of many years stuck together.
This Book is my Savings Bank. I grow richer because I have somewhere to deposit my earnings; and fractions are worth more to me because corresponding fractions are waiting here that shall be made integers by their addition. – Emerson, journals, Nov-Dec 1833
When a book and a head collide and a hollow sound is heard, must it always have come from the book? – Lichtenberg
There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking. – Lichtenberg
The three practical rules, then, which I have to offer, are, – 1. Never read any book that is not a year old. 2. Never read any but famed books. 3. Never read any but what you like… – Emerson, (VII 196)
You must keep two objectives constantly in mind when you are reading if you are to read wisely and judiciously: firstly to retain the matter you are reading and to unite it with your own system of thought, then above all to appropriate for your own the way in which other people have viewed the matter. That is why everyone should be warned against reading books written by bunglers, especially when they include their reasonings and arguments: you can learn of various matters from their compilations but – what is to a philosopher just as important, if not more important – you cannot learn from them how to bestow upon your mode of thinking an appropriate form. – Lichtenberg
Then I went to law school and ever since I have said tongue-in-cheek I didn't know how to read until law school. I terms of recall, many classmates would highlight and write notes in the margins, but I would typically draw pictures of the case.
Coincidentally law school (at least my 1st year when I went) employed the Socratic method, it is certainly not everything regarding deep thinking or wisdom (probably nothing is a better teacher than experience itself) but it forces you to confront your own ideas, beliefs, and biases (good and bad). Lawyers are often the butt of jokes, and in most cases they deserve to be, but having insight into a wide breath of legal opinions spanning a few hundred years and the legal minds that wrote them does tend to reveal how shallow and poorly thought out most people's ideas are with respect to issues they feel so strongly about in the law (1st amendment rights, 2nd amendment), and its not even that I always disagree with someone's ultimate positions or conclusion, just how there is no meat on the bone.
I am not really sure how you might go about understanding my experience, but maybe you could find some law classes that have been recorded and put on youtube, find an are of the law you are interested and watch a few classes (1st Amendment, criminal law, torts, contracts might be good if they interest you)
It may sound ridiculous but I always thought I was a good reader, a tad slow but really good with comprehensions/recollection. Then I went to law school and ever since I have said tongue-in-cheek I didn't know how to read until law school. I terms of recall, many classmates would highlight and write notes in the margins, but I would typically draw pictures of the case. Coincidentally law school (at least my 1st year…
Heavy reader here. Some ideas that work for me: * Focus on active data consumption, eliminate passive consumption. For instance, when I read books I use a highlighter and I'm excited to find a section worth highlighting. I've gamified the consumption process. * Separate data collection from data processing. When highlighting I'm just collecting data, not really thinking deeply. I process the data later by reviewing m…
What I love is spaced repetition of the highlights. I don't do it time based though. I do it based on subject, and this gets a lot more powerful when it's more than one book on a subject.
For example - go through my highlights on Influence (Chialdini), Thinking Fast and Slow, Poor Charlie's Almanac, and think about how they complement each other.
Seeing the same subject from multiple points of view, sometimes conflicting, other times corroborating each other is very helpful to build a more wholesome base of knowledge.