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The Need to Read

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Need to Read

#171

Post by akkartik »

kragen wrote: post #166
akkartik wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are already so prolific outside HN, have you considered collecting your HN comments in your own space? Once I started doing this I found HN comments would grow off HN. Now there are a few subjects where I can just point people at a link the next time a subject comes up. And the link has often grown out of repeated iterations of debate on HN and elsewhere. It doesn't bother me that people forget HN comments. I don…

oh thanks i did edit some hn comments into dercuano, derctuo, and dernocua which comments of mine here do you think would be worth saving

After many years I recently have a way to follow people on HN once again (https://www.hnfollow.com). Since I started following you, I've favorited a couple in particular:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33641298#33644090

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33679360#33684545

But I think there are others. Your view of your own darlings will be different from others. It might be worth downloading the archive in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33389843, just because it's recent and so going to be up to date.

Re: The Need to Read

#172

Post by DenisM »

mck- wrote: post #148
personjerry wrote: post #26

It's interesting that the article's thesis is about reading, but most of the article is actually about writing . And I think that's an understated point. I myself wrote a blog piece about "Blogging as Structured Thinking" earlier this year. I think that actually plenty of people do reading in various forms of content. The real challenge is getting people to do more writing. If you want to be a thinker, you have to wr…

If blogging is like a webpage, then a Zettelkasten is like a Wikipedia for your brains. Inspired by a thread on HN ~2 years ago, I’ve now written 1,075 interconnected notes, and no longer feel that I forget 80% of any non-fiction book I read. Linking is key; it allows you to connect any new insight to your existing externalized knowledge base, resulting in deeper understanding and retention. It also creates the space…

So do you take notes as you read? How do you handle charts?

Re: The Need to Read

#173

Post by selimthegrim »

eternalban wrote: post #18
jholman wrote: post #7

I think there is clear historical evidence that this thesis is, at a minimum, greatly exaggerated. Socrates never wrote, and I think he had more good ideas than Paul Graham ever will. Muhammad was not even literate, and unless he was inspired by divinity, his ideas were extremely powerful. I mean, I do personally find that writing is a powerful tool for thinking. Maybe that means that Paul Graham and I are normal, an…

> Muhammad was not even literate, and unless he was inspired by divinity, his ideas were extremely powerful. He used to take retreats in the caves near Mecca to meditate and reflect . It was during one of these sessions that he later claimed that he was overwhelmed with the inescapable presence of archangel Gabriel who commanded him to "Read!" . This directive of Gabriel to Mohammad is held to be the first verse of t…

There is some debate about whether that’s better translated as ‘recite’ as opposed to ‘read’

Re: The Need to Read

#174

Post by abdullahkhalids »

byteflip wrote: post #142

I’ve always been quite mediocre at reading and writing. This has been confirmed by my grades over the years. Just this week, I’ve been writing a script for a YouTube video and it is difficult for me. Organizing my thoughts and making it “seamless” is a lot of work. In my software job I usually default to bullet points for technical writing — which I feel is a cop out. I had decided before reading this article that I…

Let go of the fear. Everyone has tens of thousands of bad words in them that need to be written down before the good words start coming out.

Practice wise, write about the same thing several times. Write. Then reflect for a week or a month. Then write again. Then do it 3 months later. You will see a clear improvement.

And of course, teachers are invaluable. See if you can take an evening class somewhere, or if you have money hire a tutor - you can pay a grad student at your local university.

Re: The Need to Read

#175

Post by mck- »

DenisM wrote: post #172
mck- wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If blogging is like a webpage, then a Zettelkasten is like a Wikipedia for your brains. Inspired by a thread on HN ~2 years ago, I’ve now written 1,075 interconnected notes, and no longer feel that I forget 80% of any non-fiction book I read. Linking is key; it allows you to connect any new insight to your existing externalized knowledge base, resulting in deeper understanding and retention. It also creates the space…

So do you take notes as you read? How do you handle charts?

Yes indeed, anytime anything is worth remembering (or connecting with other notes) I write it down. It interrupts reading, so I don’t churn through as many books.

I used to set goals like x books per year, but now I realize it’s a vanity metric and instead read for insights.

I use Obsidian for note taking, which supports images too.

Re: The Need to Read

#177

Post by wyre »

thenerdhead wrote: post #94

If you haven’t yet, try doing 3 handwritten morning pages each day. This technique is pretty well known in helping with unblocking creativity by the author Julia Cameron in “The Artist’s Way”. Journaling is by far the most effective technique I’ve come across in my life so far. It gets the rumination out. Helps you brainstorm. Gets you reflecting on unresolved things in your life. I wish I started sooner.

I got so burnt out from doing morning pages I haven’t been able to journal significantly in months. I agree it is incredibly effective, but it took me at least an hour to fill up my three A5 pages, it became hard to make the time in the mornings. Ideally, it wouldn’t take this long. Cameron’s suggestion is when there is a pause in the writing to start writing a mantra, over and over, until more words come, but that’s easier said than done in my experience.

3 pages is not a good control. How big are the pages? How small is your handwriting? I read the Artist’s Way and nowhere did she specify how large the paper should be.

In my experience the deeper insights came on the second page about 30 minutes in, after depleting my brain of its ruminations and searching for more thoughts to fill up the page.

Re: The Need to Read

#178

Post by kragen »

akkartik wrote: post #171
kragen wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

oh thanks i did edit some hn comments into dercuano, derctuo, and dernocua which comments of mine here do you think would be worth saving

After many years I recently have a way to follow people on HN once again ( https://www.hnfollow.com ). Since I started following you, I've favorited a couple in particular: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33641298#33644090 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33679360#33684545 But I think there are others. Your view of your own darlings will be different from others. It might be worth downloading the archive in…

thank you!

Re: The Need to Read

#179

Post by User23 »

personjerry wrote: post #26

It's interesting that the article's thesis is about reading, but most of the article is actually about writing . And I think that's an understated point. I myself wrote a blog piece about "Blogging as Structured Thinking" earlier this year. I think that actually plenty of people do reading in various forms of content. The real challenge is getting people to do more writing. If you want to be a thinker, you have to wr…

> It's interesting that the article's thesis is about reading, but most of the article is actually about writing. And I think that's an understated point.

I got some excellent feedback from my manager’s manager early in my career and it was, paraphrasing, “keep reading, but write more about what you read.”

Publishing doesn’t have to be public either. At a large organization internal communications are plenty sufficient.

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