Discipline for my Information Diet

http://michaelgr.com/2009/06/14/discipline-for-my-information-diet/

by MikeCapone • 17 years ago

25 5 17 years ago

antiform• 17 years ago

A good way for me to maintain motivation when slogging through information-dense nonfiction books (like textbooks, programming language manuals) is to read through actively (writing notes/questions in margins or post-its) and then to quickly "generate" something from what I just learned. For instance, if I am reading a math textbook, I will play with the theorems, adding and subtracting conditions and generating counterexamples, and then do all the problems and TeX them up. If I am reading a philosophy book, I will summarize the accounts of the section and then argue my own perspective, essentially writing a brief philosophy paper. If I am reading something that I tend to mostly disagree with, like GEB, I will even try and write a "devil's advocate" paper, where I try suspend by disbelief and figure out why the particular perspective has appeal by arguing against myself.

In the short run, this may mean that you take a lot more time to finish books, but it has drastically improved my ability to recall what I have learned and my ability to not abandon the process after I hit a wall. This not only because you are immediately reinforcing what you have just learned, but I've found that if I see the fruit of my labors, even if it's just a steadily growing PDF on my desktop or a short, elegant program in my home directory, it provides just enough to motivation to finish the next chapter, and the next chapter, until you're finally done.

Hexstream• 17 years ago

I'm afraid I'm not motivated enough to use your motivational tricks. Circular dependency!

MikeCapone• 17 years ago

Maybe there's an easier trick that you can use to get started and bootstrap the process?

whatusername• 17 years ago

http://xkcd.com/597/

c00p3r• 17 years ago

Switch between tasks. 45-60 minutes is enough.

Discipline for my Information Diet

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