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How I read books: a guide on how to learn

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Re: How I read books: a guide on how to learn

#111

Post by jholman »

unabst wrote: post #100
sean_the_geek wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. The best advice I have received is from people who never intended to share it and were almost shy about it. It's only thorough my observation that I learned about their skill.

Ergo, learning is stealing. Good students learn alone, and just need goals. Spoonfed knowledge is like processed food. It's clickbaity and likely spread because it makes you feel good.

Yeah! The best students learn alone! That's also why the best athletes don't use coaches. Wait, that's not right. Hang on.

Even though all real learning is at least 80% internal and must be owned-and-operated by the student... maybe there's a role for spoonfed knowledge. Certainly there's a role for teachers (disagreeing with "good students learn alone"), even if morale-management and goal-setting is a surprisingly large fraction of it. But even spoonfed knowledge is helpful. For example, as far as I can tell, most good mathematicians have a lot of spoonfed knowledge as part of their learning history (but they also have even more self-guided exploration, and even the spoonfed stuff you gotta chew on it and digest it).

Agreed, though, that a lot of articles like this are clickbaity and, like sugar, give you a sensation of learning rather than what you really need. This particular article, I think, contains a mish-mash of good advice and, uh, pureed pap. It's certainly not worst-of-breed.

Re: How I read books: a guide on how to learn

#112

Post by yaoxx151 »

While I like the strategy in general, I want to challenge the first point "Have a clear WHY I’m reading this book". I think reading books is like exercise, it doesn't matter which part of muscle it trains, as long as you keep doing it, it'll improve your health overall. I find that the best part of reading books for me comes mostly from the unconscious influence--often after I read a book, I can't tell you what I remember specifically and how it would improve my life. But if I'm lucky, one day the idea will come to my mind at the right time. I find myself dislike the mindset of having a purpose on reading. For me, the meaty part of reading is the process of searching, not the results. And you can guess that I dislike reading self-help books. I don't think we can change our behaviors by reading a book. knowing something is easy, practice is hard.

Interestingly, the author mentions he's reading Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow. In a talk[1], Daniel says "This is not really a self-help book. And of course it's very easy for me to say because I've been studying it. Not only I've read the book, I wrote it. Didn't improve my thinking at all."

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgQutgSwY88&feature=youtu.be...

Re: How I read books: a guide on how to learn

#113

Post by jholman »

agumonkey wrote: post #44
Veen wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment reminds me of something Andy Matuschak wrote: > But most people who write about note-taking don’t seem particularly accomplished in their own fields, whatever those may be. In fact, most such writers aren’t applying their notes to some exogenous creative problem: their primary creative work is writing about productivity. These writers offer advice on note-taking to help scientists and executives with the…

I remember asking IBMers if they used rational modeling to make their programs. The silence answered the question. I'm guilty of this myself. My interests and struggle become topic of suggestions to others even though it's half good ideas half fluff.

> My interests and struggle become topic of suggestions to others even though it's half good ideas half fluff.

This is a wonderfully honest observation.

I suspect we all have this experience; I certainly do. Of course the suggestions come from an honest place, but often the verbalized outputs do not live up to the epistemic standards we would like to hold ourselves to.

I think perhaps I should less say "do this" and instead more say "here is my experience, and my current theory about that experience, and what I'm trying to do to improve". Or perhaps even "I wonder if...".

It turns out that I had to re-write this comment to follow my own advice, and I think in this case it was in fact helpful, at least for me. That's pleasing.

As someone who has many opportunities to give advice to people 20 years younger than me, I'm doing a lot of "well, I used to think X, and now I don't, so a similar evolution may happen to you". Maybe that's also relevant. Maybe it's just a bad old-man habit.

Re: How I read books: a guide on how to learn

#114

Post by cgriswald »

brg wrote: post #13
lmilcin wrote: post #2

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…

One piece of advice I’ve found valuable is to write in books. On successive reference it has surprised me what I had thought first time through, and it doesn’t take me out of the book to make the note. It did take a while to get over the feeling of sacrilege of the book, but it has been useful.

Let me first second (heh) your point about writing in books. In addition to it being a useful reference, it also aids me in the following two ways:

First, I am far more likely to remember what I have written than what I read. So it's a great device for helping to cement the material in your mind.

Second, it helps overcome a sort of inertia I have where if I'm not reading a book, there's a hurdle to picking it back up. If there's a note in the book sort of summarizing where I'm at, it not only removes that hurdle, but I have the subjective feeling that I'm back into it with a running start, rather than having to turn back a few pages to get back up to speed.

> It did take a while to get over the feeling of sacrilege of the book, but it has been useful.

I believe there's a section in Adler about this, and reading that passage was enough for me. I won't quote or paraphrase, because I'm not sure I'll represent their statements correctly, but I think that's the source of where I'm at with this now. And the change in my perspective was very rapid.

My new perspective on this wasn't to see books as less sacred, but to understand that in order to honor that sacredness, I had to consume this book in a deeper, more meaningful way, and form a real relationship with the book in a way that's probably impossible without writing in the book.

Not to be too cheesy, but there was also a bit of an "Aha!" moment for me watching Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. With regard to spoilers, the "half-blood prince" (HBP) had a real relationship with that book. It's positively scribbled in, and it made the book better presumably for HBP, but also for Potter who ends up possessing the book.

Re: How I read books: a guide on how to learn

#115

Post by jholman »

Bhilai wrote: post #106
mtgx wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This applies to coaching in general. Don't take coaching advice from someone that is less accomplished than you. He should be as least as accomplished as where you'd like to be in 5-10 years, etc.

Thats a weird advice, most accomplished sportsmen have had coaches less accomplished then them. All top tennis pros, Federer, Nadal and Djokovic have had coaches less accomplished then them. Most football coaches are less accomplished then their star players. I am pretty sure this is true for most fields, not just sports.

As I implied in another comment of mine, I agree with you that it's interesting to look at how athletes use coaching. Things like music training are another area with, I think, similar patterns.

Almost by definition, truly top athletes are unlikely to be able to have coaches more accomplished than them, especially when you consider the overall trend-line in sports performance is upward. So clearly "more accomplished than you" is not a strict requirement. But it might still be the optimum for everyone else.

I think my personal model is this: First of all, the most-important asset for a coach is that they have a correct model of improvement in the field. That doesn't strictly require them to be any good at all. However, they're much more likely to develop a correct model if they put a bunch of time into trying to be good. And also, if they were never good, they're much more in danger of having a subtly-totally-wrong model of how improvement would work. So although it's not strictly necessary that they be any good at the activity itself, it markedly improves both upside risk and downside risk.

Re: How I read books: a guide on how to learn

#116

Post by hue3 »

playpause wrote: post #52

> Disclaimer: I’ve spend hours researching this topic and simplifying things for you.It gets a bit nerdy, but if you apply these techniques -> your life can change. Is that meant ironically? It leaves a bad taste if not.

Exactly! Also, his saying he spent “hours” researching something is a strong giveaway he’s not very familiar with, well, researching and putting an idea forward. Everyone who wrote anything worth reading has also spent hours (often in the three-digit mark) researching it. If he thinks his article is anything special because he spent a few hours doing research for it, I’m not sure I can take it seriously.

Re: How I read books: a guide on how to learn

#117

Post by hue3 »

a_c wrote: post #68

Just chill man. Read whatever the way interests you. You will enjoy the process, or even learn a thing or two as a bonus.

But if people did this, how would they brag about reading pseudoscience on books about productivity? How would they come online and tell everyone they read the latest life-hack book and that made them a millionaire? Hell, how would they write such B.S. articles trying to teach something every 15yo knows?

Re: How I read books: a guide on how to learn

#118

Post by hue3 »

tartoran wrote: post #80
AntiImperialist wrote: post #19

I took the other route and decided to read 100 books in a year. Did that for 3 years. They were mostly top rated or highly popular or highly recommended non-fiction books of all time, including the one pictured in the article. 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, w…

> It's OK to read 3 whole books cover to cover on a Sunday. It may be OK but wonder if it’s possible to do this, unless one is skimming through them heavily

Or if they were children books ;)

Re: How I read books: a guide on how to learn

#119

Post by chillwaves »

495636483 wrote: post #95
zaptheimpaler wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. All these fake people selling productivity bullshit to poor saps are a net negative in the world if you ask me. The entire idea of “optimizing” the way you read or take notes is itself a farce built on the same desperate need for easy life hacks over just doing the damn work. If you enjoy reading, it won’t feel like work either!

As someone with ADHD, I think I got an amplified impression on the issue at hand. These people are selling the fantasy of success/self-efficacy to those vulnerable people lacking executive functioning and prone to daydream their life. I can't count how many "techniques" I came up with myself over the years. Enthusiastic, convinced and most importantly, of course, not successful. Motivated, getting-things-done people…

I'm going to see a psychiatrist for the first time next week because I think I had ADHD. This has helped me think about exactly how I want to state my problem. That I lack executive function, that I can't focus on the things I need to focus on, that I have spent decades trying to create accountability systems that ultimately fail.

> help your brain to dopamine with diet, with timing sugar

Could you expand?

I have been on a strict diet the past few weeks and exercising every day, I do think it's helped but I am still stuck.

Re: How I read books: a guide on how to learn

#120

Post by hacym »

hue3 wrote: post #116
playpause wrote: post #52

> Disclaimer: I’ve spend hours researching this topic and simplifying things for you.It gets a bit nerdy, but if you apply these techniques -> your life can change. Is that meant ironically? It leaves a bad taste if not.

Exactly! Also, his saying he spent “hours” researching something is a strong giveaway he’s not very familiar with, well, researching and putting an idea forward. Everyone who wrote anything worth reading has also spent hours (often in the three-digit mark) researching it. If he thinks his article is anything special because he spent a few hours doing research for it, I’m not sure I can take it seriously.

The numerous errors in the writing don’t help things much, either.
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