And, at a certain point, be on guard against too much reading, as Einstein warned[1]:
> Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking, just as the man who spends too much time in the theater is tempted to be content with living vicariously instead of living his own life.
"Studying* without thinking leads to incomprehension; thinking without studying leads to peril."
However, I'd like to offer a counter-argument here.
There different ways of reading. Some are passive. Some are active. Reading with a critical mind is anything but detrimental to creativity.
Notably, great authors are often voracious readers, and reading is what they all agreed to be the foundations of their craft. It didn't hinder their creativity. The reason is two-folds: 1) they read critically; 2) they wrote.
The true way to foster creativity, is to create. Unless one read so much that no time is left to do anything else, reading isn't the enemy of creating.
And a further note on vicariously living one's life. I don't really see what's wrong with that. A person gets one life only, and it may be a fortunate one, a challenging one, a boring one, or one that's an absolute dismay. Drudging through the day and fantasizing through the night is hardly the worst form of life, in my opinion.
* "Studying" here refers to the intake of information.
There's a very interesting TED talk in which someone talks about how to learn a skill to a decent level in 40 hours. He makes a similar point - that one should read a few books to learn what the key skills are, but not use reading as a procrastination-aide.
That's enough questions for Jerry. Anything which fits the "X your ass off" is probably bad advice unless you're running from something which is going to eat you.
Thanks for sharing this. I love this quote, but I had not seen/heard it before.
I think about this a lot. The next edition actually addresses exactly this (in draft right now).
As I begin my career as a coach, one woman gave me some great advice: for every hour you read, spend at least an hour coaching. The experience matters—get your nose out of a book.
That's an incredible quote that should be plastered over every single news posting on reddit and Facebook. Maybe people would realize reading about politics is completely a waste of time.
There’s been too much news lately covered w/ Hindendenburg-esque severity, at some point being a spectator to this many burning airships is just exhausting :P
That's how I felt about every "big" thing that was going to remove trump from office. Then nothing happened and reddit would backpedal. Soon enough it just became the little boy who cried wolf.
Well, his efforts to secure preemptive pardons for himself, his family, and his legal team do indicate that he is aware he has done some stuff that might be frowned upon in court once he's out of office.
This is not even a properly disguised advertisement. Content free and full of fluff. Keep pieces like this in mind when HN as a group want to boast it is somewhat better than the other forums on the Internet. God I miss old Slashdot.
My own personal take is "only read something if you intend to teach it to someone else." Otherwise the stakes are too low.
There has to be a pretty even balance between consume and produce. I think the ratio is probably 30/70, but whatever your personal ratio is, make sure both sides are serving the other - consume to produce, take feedback from what you produce to consume more.
I think you are failing to account for the most obvious reason why you should be reading things: So you can use the information YOURSELF, for your OWN purposes.
Reading a book can be like buying a new tool. The information you learn can sometimes transform your entire life. This is often true, regardless of whether or not you intend to teach the contents of the book to someone else.
This is why I read. I just enjoy learning new things, so I try to read widely across a variety of interests, and read between pop books on a topic and academic works (sadly, I've found I can't read much fiction anymore). It's not so I can teach someone else, or even synthesize it all together for some grand research project (though maybe if I started taking notes...), but simply because I enjoy learning and broadening my interests, and it gives me more stuff to talk about with different people.
But, if I was independently wealthy, I'd just stay at university the rest of my life too, pursuing various majors/classes/masters as my fancy takes me. To me, that's the dream life, and reading is a way to sort of mimic that without having to pay.
While the main advise seems useful, "if you get interest in a thing, read a ton about it", this article is quite misleading. Not all sources are relevant, I don't know about Buddhism, but psychology is mentioned with psychoanalysis and it's not a science, while psychology is.
Seems more about a new-age thing than really seeking correct information.
I think the article is saying that, should you read something interesting, pursuing that interest will provide meaningful insights. The author is saying that "sources" aren't as relevant as the history of interesting ideas. They are not saying read all sources. Just read a lot about the things that interest you.
I find this strategy works very well for so many topics, specifically politics, economics, history, and more. Read 5 books on contemporary economics and you will be infinitely more informed than if you watch economics or market segments on news stations for 5 years. What you'll learn by reading those books is more than just some dry economic tautologies, you'll see the history of economic theory. So and so theorized economics like this, then they were disproven, then someone started talking about behavioral economics, etc etc. That seems to be much more useful than any alternative I know of.
Be Curious is maybe the first step. I’m not a big reader but I’m frequently curious and end up reading a lot because of it. I also look for the shortest path to info gathering. If I can read an article instead of a book. Or a list instead of an article. I’m all for it. If something piques a further curiosity, I can always find more content.
> Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking, just as the man who spends too much time in the theater is tempted to be content with living vicariously instead of living his own life.
[1] http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/sateve...