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by josephjrobison 2852 days ago
Repetition of the core concepts from multiple different angles is a great way to reiterate the lessons over and over.

I also don’t like when they beat around the bush, but repetition increases retention.

1 comments

The classic form is 1) summarize what you're going to say; 2) say it; and 3) summarize and discuss what you've said. But this piece repeats the same arguments, in different words, just a few paragraphs apart. And that annoys me. But maybe it's written for people who just skim.

Also, when reading nonfiction, I typically read the beginning and the end, and then skim the rest. If it seems worth the time, then I read the whole thing.

>I typically read the beginning and the end, and then skim the rest. If it seems worth the time, then I read the whole thing.

I saw this advice for reading papers, and it has been extremely useful to me for deciding if something is worth reading. For whatever reason though, I have some kind of aversion to doing it with books. Some form of childhood engrained "eat your vegetables" kind of conditioning about finishing books cover to cover.

I should really try it though. I've slogged through many non-fiction books with little beside annoyance to show for it.