Read Slowly to Benefit Your Brain and Cut Stress • Hacker News Board

Re: Read Slowly to Benefit Your Brain and Cut Stress

#41

Post by keithpeter » Fri, Sep 19, 2014, 6:52 PM UTC

Lambdanaut wrote: post #40

When I'm having trouble paying attention to a book, particularly a non-fiction that I have to drudge through, I'll slow down and start reading the book in the voice of a famous comedian. Suddenly everything is 10x more interesting. Try Robin Williams. Graph Theory taught by Robin Williams is really charming. He laughs jovially at every theorem.

That one has legs. Nice idea.

John Cleese teaching Unix/Linux Administration (funny walks).

Alexi Sayle teaching database reduction to normal form (those Mersey vowels).

One of the centres I teach in runs a book club to encourage literacy and reading. Seems popular. Mix of participants. It is a traditional book club where they all read the same text.

Re: Read Slowly to Benefit Your Brain and Cut Stress

#42

Post by keithpeter » Fri, Sep 19, 2014, 6:58 PM UTC

mattm wrote: post #24

adrianhoward wrote: post #21

Admittedly there are only two of us — but we have reading on our company calendar. Thirty minutes every day 3:30-4pm. Because learning new stuff and getting alternate perspectives is bloody important.

At my first job, there were periods where I didn't have much to do. So I thought, instead of mindlessly surfing the Internet, I'll read to improve my knowledge. It was a large company and they had hundreds of computer books. So I got one from the library and started reading it during a down time. My manager comes over and says "There's no reading during work." (I was reading The Mythical Man-Month so it wasn't like I…

"I'm not there anymore"

I'm hardly [epithet] surprised!

Why did they buy books if they did not want them to be read and turned into action!

Re: Read Slowly to Benefit Your Brain and Cut Stress

#43

Post by neoterics » Fri, Sep 19, 2014, 8:29 PM UTC

I wonder if this applies to listening to audiobooks.

I know people generally hate long commutes but honestly if it wasn't for my commute, I would never spend 2 hours a day listening to audiobooks or reading. Now I easily finish 2 to 3 books a month due to it and I wouldn't have it any other way!