I think the so-called effect of the digital age is totally overblown. It's easy to write headlines about it and make everybody panic, but I don't think people i

I think the so-called effect of the digital age is totally overblown. It's easy to write headlines about it and make everybody panic, but I don't think people in ancient times were that much of avid readers either. In fact the general literacy and the average time spent on reading by the population definitely increased massively, if anything. The ancient populace didn't have computers or TV to occupy themselves with, but they had plenty of other games and entertainment activities all the same. Bear in mind that reading and writing was never natural to human beings until very, very recently. Also, it's true that reading whole books is one way to get information. But plenty of great writers/readers have used reading methods where they distill the essence of the work or actively search out portions to put their emphasis on, and it worked out great for them. I was guilty of reading plenty of newsletters too seriously or reading through whole articles from the beginning to the end, even though reading on might produce very little additional information whatsoever. Now I have learned to better focus my energy: sometimes I skim the headlines, sometimes I skim the first and last paragraphs of an article, and I've already got 70% of what they have to say. Of course one might say that reading books can be something different to reading lower-quality news articles, but in the end time is really limited and "actual work" is something that gets done with your own hands, your own exploration and experience, not by reading and talking. This holds especially true for engineering work. One can't conceivably read whole reference manuals end to end without having actually built something serious with the tools being discussed. That's just pure procrastination, not real learning. Of course there are really well written or foundational books that deserve to be read cover to cover, accompanied with practices, and if one is reading for leisure on their spare time it's also totally fine to enjoy every line of a fiction. But I guess in terms of "getting things done", emphasizing "complete reading" instead of "getting the essence and doing" can be a bit misleading. tl;dr: I think if there's anything worth emphasizing in this age of information explosion, that is "just get real shit done already" instead of "just read the book and lose yourself/procrastinate potentially endlessly". This is something that has cost me very dearly and I'll ensure in the future to avoid this trap as best as I can.