[TeMPOraL]

> In audio and visual medium, it is somewhat easier to trick myself into following the flow without actually understanding.

That just means exploiting the medium to full potential hasn't been normalized yet. Much like with the books, you can pause video and audio. And, much like with books, you can go through the material once to get the high-level overview, and then play it again to learn more, now that you have better feel for how things fit.

I've noticed that both pausing to think and playing the same work couple times in a short succession, are something people are reluctant to do. Writing this, I've noticed that myself I am reluctant to do it too, for no apparent reason. Might be because people my age and older, we weren't forced to learn from videos or audio during school and university years, so we didn't internalize the same consumption patterns as we did with books.

[aaronbaugher]

I find myself rewinding a lot when listening to podcasts or watching videos. It's definitely more trouble trying to hit the right spot where my mind started wandering, compared to realizing the same thing with a book and flicking my eyes back to wherever the text looks familiar and restarting there, so that may be part of it.

At least for fiction, I like audiobooks for rereading something I've read before, where I can enjoy the story and it doesn't matter whether I miss a few lines that might include an important plot point. With a new book, I'm just rewinding too much unless it's a really engaging book and reader.

[sigbottle]

This is really true. People love to say, "Just don't make the same mistake twice" or whatever, but part of the necessity of ingesting truly novel information is that you're gonna weave back and trip over yourself a ton of times before you get to that clean refined mental model.

For me, note-taking is a godsend - I don't know how I would live without it. Anywhere from hyper specific detailed notes to just unstructured rants. It's the equivalent of storing things in memory - that alone makes algorithms far more powerful.

It doesn't help with real-time tasks like talking though... but I've noticed I have gotten a bit better at talking ever since I started note taking.

I think the "learn instinctually by doing stuff a lot" approach definitely is useful but note-taking is a healthy balance between that and getting perma-stuck in research mode.

[rottc0dd]

I think, it is much more to do with the fact that audio or visual way of consuming information is so natural that you can sometimes go with the flow.

It helps me to be much more aware of the information being consumed, exactly because reading is an unnatural and learned way of consuming information. You can definitely do the same with audio medium, but books make me aware of where I am in the process much more than former.