Recently, when thinking about some questions, I often find out what books I read a few years ago. I found that a few years ago I spent so much time reading a book, and from the current results, I basically read nothing.
But I've been reading really hard, and I've made a yearly reading plan for myself to read 100 books a year, and I've read at least 20 pages a day. Even though I'm tired and tired, I've read more than 200 books in the last two years.
I'm not saying that this reading experience was useless; it's just that now I feel pain and regret. I spent so much time and effort, but I gained a completely disproportionate amount. Then I fell into the trap of low level diligence.
If I could go back and adopt a new method of studying for the past two years, I would be able to spend half as much time and get twice as much -- as I am doing now -- so why would I fall into the trap of low diligence?
From the beginning of our schooling, it seemed that the way we were taught to read was to read a book from beginning to end, to draw lines or extract inspirational sentences. The famous quotes that were extracted gave me a deep understanding of what it is: to have heard countless great truths and still not live the whole life.
The terrible thing is that I have always been unaware that my way of studying is ineffective and backward.
I thought I couldn't remember, it was a problem with my memory. And I found out that my friends were basically the same way. People say: it's normal to forget after reading, we internalize knowledge into a capacity.
In fact, the most memorable is the knowledge of internalizing abilities. So why is the way we read the classics so ineffective?
The reason is simple: the reading + drawing/abstract approach is to break a book into isolated knowledge points. Under the guidance of this approach, the purpose of reading becomes understanding and remembering these isolated knowledge points. Understanding and remembering an isolated message are not the most efficient behaviors our brains are good at.
The University of Leicester in the United Kingdom conducted an experiment to study how people remember things: they had subjects look at photos of celebrities, such as Chang Dong, Zhang Zhenjie, and Liu Xiaobo, and then monitor which neurons in their brains were triggered during these times.
The scientists found that the same neurons were stimulated when the testers saw the same person in another photo. In other words, our brains did not open up space for it alone when they saw the new photo, but instead recalled previous memories to form new ones. In other words, the best way to remember new knowledge is to make connections with existing knowledge.
The law of the Palace of Memory applies this principle to the extreme.
The memory palace method is probably the most powerful memory method currently invented by humans. Its basic principle is to imagine a familiar scene and place the thing that needs to be remembered in the familiar scene.
Of course, reading is not the same thing as reading a book. However, this property of the brain to acquire new knowledge through known knowledge has an even more important function besides helping us to remember: we can construct new and old knowledge into a network of knowledge. By creating a network of connections between new and old knowledge, we can analyze the same knowledge from different angles and fields, thus deepening our understanding and cognition.
From this we can see that the original reading method was to spend a lot of time reading a new book, to record new famous quotes, but never to process the information and relate it to the existing knowledge.
We seem to have saved a lot of time and effort in processing and integrating so that we can read more new books. But instead of buying mushrooms and pearls, we chose sesame instead of watermelon, giving up our most valuable work.
Reading must take time, patience and thought, and the new knowledge gained will be connected to the known in a continuous web. In this process, we are able to internalize the knowledge and form suggestions for new behaviors. So, I no longer read at speed; instead, I deliberately slow down and take the time to write down my notes, not just quotes, but descriptions of what I was inspired to read, and what my past experiences were related to.
In the process of recording and finding connections, I am often surprised to discover patterns that I have not noticed in the past, and many ways that can directly improve the way I work. My reading performance has entered a state of complexity.
This simple method is rarely discovered. Perhaps it is because our brains have a habit of trying to read a book quickly. We all want to read a book to get new knowledge, so we are always moving forward to get more, but the ancients have long said:
So, when you're reading, what are the most productive connections between what you know and what you're learning?
The answer is the patterns that play a fundamental and important role in all areas of life; that is, the critical knowledge referred to in the book. Each critical knowledge is an important tool for thinking about problems and understanding the world. Therefore, these critical knowledge can be frequently applied in different fields and scenarios.
Readers of my articles will often find that I often use complexity models when discussing different problems in different articles. This is what I do when I think about problems, consciously linking to existing models to see if they are related.
Therefore, when I read, I do not pursue the number, nor do I demand to finish reading.
My approach is:
When I want to solve a problem, I take the initiative to look for articles and books that might discuss the problem, to observe what kind of thinking the author is using to solve the problem, do I have familiar knowledge behind this solution, and what other areas can I apply the principles of this solution to?
After thinking about these questions, I may not have read a book, but I have a deeper understanding and awareness of the problem than someone who has read ten books. This state is manifested by the ability to raise one against three. In the eyes of others, you are more likely to solve problems with knowledge that crosses borders.
Life is limited, don't waste your limited life in those low-level workaholic traps.
Translated from Snowball