3 ms·

I used to approach topics by picking the top five-ten books on the subject and reading them. This works, but not as well as I think most people assume. The real

I used to approach topics by picking the top five-ten books on the subject and reading them. This works, but not as well as I think most people assume. The reality is that you end up not really remembering most of the information you learn. Reading can shape your mind in a way similar to how a river shapes a canyon, but it doesn’t necessarily convert directly to actionable insights. Instead, I have begun to rely on encyclopedias and spaced repetition, with the idea being that I will actually remember all of the data I’m inputting. To use an example: I read a popular biography about Rockefeller last year. I can remember the vague outlines of it, but realistically if you asked me to summarize the book, I couldn’t write more than a page. I think most people have a similar experience with reading. Can you name the last ten books you read and write a brief essay about each? Almost certainly not, even if you read a ton. To combat this, I’ve been adding specific details about Rockefeller to an Anki deck. Things like, “Where was Rockefeller born?” Or “How many companies was Standard Oil split into?” My thesis is that knowing a few hundred facts like this is an order of magnitude more productive than reading a book about the subject. Encyclopedias are thus useful for this purpose, as they present a huge amount of information about a subject in a format amendable for memorizing.

hahamaster 3y ago
Honestly, what exactly is the purpose of knowing when was Rockefeller born or how many companies was his company split into? I think what you get out of a book like this is gist of his character and what made him successful so that you can pick up some of his traits. All this information is stored somewhere in your brain in some way.. it can possibly be used at some point without you even realizing.
- keiferski 3y ago
  It was just an example. More realistically the facts are about his specific decisions he made, business events, etc. – the kind of thing you'd want to know if you're interested in business history and/or reading the book to glean some kind of entrepreneurial knowledge. A better example might be related to the Roman emperor Augustus. Memorizing the various events of his life, his personal quirks, and so forth is absolutely going to give you a sense of the man moreso than just reading a random biography about him. I do agree that a book provides the "gist" of the subject's character, but I think you can get that from watching a 30-minute documentary, not reading a 500-page book. > All this information is stored somewhere in your brain in some way.. it can possibly be used at some point without you even realizing. It's a pretty big assumption, if you're implying that we somehow remember everything we read. In any case, I think the best approach is probably to combine reading a book with specific facts that easily fit into a SRS system. This is something I've been thinking about quite a bit, in fact: how would one design a narrative-based book such that it is more easily remembered? My initial thought is something like this: at the end of every chapter, a list of 100+ specific points made is presented. You could also include a premade Anki deck with the ebook edition.

hahamaster 3y ago

Honestly, what exactly is the purpose of knowing when was Rockefeller born or how many companies was his company split into? I think what you get out of a book like this is gist of his character and what made him successful so that you can pick up some of his traits. All this information is stored somewhere in your brain in some way.. it can possibly be used at some point without you even realizing.

keiferski 3y ago
It was just an example. More realistically the facts are about his specific decisions he made, business events, etc. – the kind of thing you'd want to know if you're interested in business history and/or reading the book to glean some kind of entrepreneurial knowledge. A better example might be related to the Roman emperor Augustus. Memorizing the various events of his life, his personal quirks, and so forth is absolutely going to give you a sense of the man moreso than just reading a random biography about him. I do agree that a book provides the "gist" of the subject's character, but I think you can get that from watching a 30-minute documentary, not reading a 500-page book. > All this information is stored somewhere in your brain in some way.. it can possibly be used at some point without you even realizing. It's a pretty big assumption, if you're implying that we somehow remember everything we read. In any case, I think the best approach is probably to combine reading a book with specific facts that easily fit into a SRS system. This is something I've been thinking about quite a bit, in fact: how would one design a narrative-based book such that it is more easily remembered? My initial thought is something like this: at the end of every chapter, a list of 100+ specific points made is presented. You could also include a premade Anki deck with the ebook edition.