Re:Why Books Don't Work: Constructivism over Transmissionism
by anigbrowl on Thursday July 21, 2022 @11:20PM
(#32188106)
Not to be dismissive of the proposed solution (spaced repetition, a useful technique), there's two ways to massively improve your comprehension and retention with book material.
One is note-taking - if you know your topic well, you'll be able to speed read many books in your field because you're familiar with the underlying patterns, and making handwritten notes about what's different (or little code snippets embodying edge cases, or similar) will help enormously. The great thing about notes is that they're just for you so you can be as opinionated as you like about what's important and omit context. Even if your notes turn out to be wrong or superficial, they'll still function well for information retrieval when you go back to them (possibly with updates).
The other, which I've found very helpful with topics I don't know well where I'm trying to get a grip on the fundamentals, is to visualize future me teaching the material to someone else. As I think I've grasped a concept, I think about delivering a lecture with the confidence of my new understanding. This opens up space for other parts of my brain to ask questions or challenge assumptions, which I then try to address with the knowledge I've accrued thus far. If I can't, then I didn't really get it and I need to go through the material again.
A small but delicious bonus of this technique is when you do grasp the concept well and then encounter your imaginary question and best-effort answer on a subsequent page, or even in a subsequent book.
One is note-taking - if you know your topic well, you'll be able to speed read many books in your field because you're familiar with the underlying patterns, and making handwritten notes about what's different (or little code snippets embodying edge cases, or similar) will help enormously. The great thing about notes is that they're just for you so you can be as opinionated as you like about what's important and omit context. Even if your notes turn out to be wrong or superficial, they'll still function well for information retrieval when you go back to them (possibly with updates).
The other, which I've found very helpful with topics I don't know well where I'm trying to get a grip on the fundamentals, is to visualize future me teaching the material to someone else. As I think I've grasped a concept, I think about delivering a lecture with the confidence of my new understanding. This opens up space for other parts of my brain to ask questions or challenge assumptions, which I then try to address with the knowledge I've accrued thus far. If I can't, then I didn't really get it and I need to go through the material again.
A small but delicious bonus of this technique is when you do grasp the concept well and then encounter your imaginary question and best-effort answer on a subsequent page, or even in a subsequent book.