Writing summaries is more important than reading more books • Hacker News Board

Re: Writing summaries is more important than reading more books

#11

Post by TheCaptain4815 » Sat, May 20, 2023, 2:48 PM UTC

mathgeek wrote: post #6

For context, this article is specifically referring to reading for comprehension (not for pleasure).

I don’t see why it wouldn’t apply to both? I just finished crime & punishment and could see how this summary strategy would help better understand the book.

Re: Writing summaries is more important than reading more books

#12

Post by tourmalinetaco » Sat, May 20, 2023, 2:48 PM UTC

Alongside this, I enjoy condensing the summaries down into their base ideas, which I put into a Zettelkästen.

Re: Writing summaries is more important than reading more books

#13

Post by counternotions » Sat, May 20, 2023, 2:48 PM UTC

Inspectional reading is one of the key limitations for me when reading books on the Kindle. I need to be able to quickly flip around from toc to glossary and between chapters. There’s still too much friction for that with the ebook format.

Re: Writing summaries is more important than reading more books

#14

Post by jameshart » Sat, May 20, 2023, 2:50 PM UTC

Well it really depends what your goals are, right? What kind of books are you reading, to what end? I personally struggle to think of any book I have engaged with which I got value out of, that could be meaningfully summarized in a couple of hours. The author was an expert on the subject and they only managed to summarize it down to a few hundred pages - if there was only a couple of pages worth of ideas in there presumably they would have just written a blogpost.

Re: Writing summaries is more important than reading more books

#15

Post by jasperry » Sat, May 20, 2023, 2:51 PM UTC

Strong agree from me, though what I do is less involved than the article. I normally just take a few per-chapter summary notes in an org-mode outline, in a filename that starts with the year I read the book.

Recently I started creating my own topic index with pointers to which books I found certain insights in. I know I could generate such a thing automatically with tagging, but I enjoy manually curating my index.

Re: Writing summaries is more important than reading more books

#16

Post by paulcole » Sat, May 20, 2023, 2:51 PM UTC

I’m at 47 books read this year so far and mostly disagree with the author of the article. When you find a book that’s worth summarizing, do it. But I get exposed to many more ideas (and find the ones worth thinking about more) simply by reading more.

Also, I just like reading. My goal isn’t to have some kind of personal knowledge base to prove how much I’ve comprehended to myself.

Re: Writing summaries is more important than reading more books

#17

Post by pmarreck » Sat, May 20, 2023, 2:52 PM UTC

ChatGPT will do this.

But also, try quizzing yourself about what you’ve read the day before. I bet the retention is slim.

Re: Writing summaries is more important than reading more books

#18

Post by mrits » Sat, May 20, 2023, 2:54 PM UTC

paulcole wrote: post #16

I’m at 47 books read this year so far and mostly disagree with the author of the article. When you find a book that’s worth summarizing, do it. But I get exposed to many more ideas (and find the ones worth thinking about more) simply by reading more. Also, I just like reading. My goal isn’t to have some kind of personal knowledge base to prove how much I’ve comprehended to myself.

If getting exposed to a lot of ideas is the goal then spending your life on this site and reddit would be the way to go.

Re: Writing summaries is more important than reading more books

#19

Post by aprinsen » Sat, May 20, 2023, 2:55 PM UTC

When I've done them, I always feel like I benefit from reflective practices like these.

Does anyone have tips for successfully building reflection into one's life? In the mean time I'll reflect on it.

Re: Writing summaries is more important than reading more books

#20

Post by janalsncm » Sat, May 20, 2023, 2:56 PM UTC

pmarreck wrote: post #17

ChatGPT will do this. But also, try quizzing yourself about what you’ve read the day before. I bet the retention is slim.

Sure, ChatGPT can do this. Just like you could drive a car over a marathon route. That’s not the point though, the point of summarizing is to force yourself to understand. It’s the journey not the destination that’s important.