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Hi there yeah, I was thinking about what you wrote below, and I have to agree about most speed reading. However I suppose I distinguish vbetween reading for pleasure and skimming reports or whatever at work when I am trying to get key information as fast as possible. I work for the City Council and a lot of my work is reading reports and producing briefing notes and other reports based on an analysis of other research and information - that is when reading quickly woudl be an advantage...or maybe to be accurate it is not about reading but about extracting information. I suppose that fits with what you wrote about the imporatnt thing being understaanding and distinguishing the imporatnat from the trivial. Anyway, I've been thinking about and trying a new system, and I thought I'd throw it out for comment and development: Problem: not getting enough sleep Cause: (well one cause!) staying up too late reading or on the internet or listening to the radio etc. System: Cinderella's Electric Curfew - the idea is that most of the distractions that keep me awake involve electricity - the PC, the stereo, the radio, even a light for reading. The system says that come midnight (Cinderella's curfew) the switches must be off...... I suppose there may be S day issues too, (but Fri/Sat...i.e., not school nights) I've tried this for a few nights and not always made it, but it has made me think, which is the point, because then I can do something about it. Chris ----- Original Message ----- From: Reinhard Engels To: Sent: Sunday, July 11, 2004 5:06 AM Subject: [everydaysystems] Audiodidact and distraction management vs. speed reading Hi Chris, My responses to a couple more issues you raise (more pending): > Audiodidact - smart name. I've tried similar things > listening to audiobooks while walking to work, but > have given up that recently because I found that I > was missing out on the "thinking time" that comes > with the walk. I was filling my head with other > stuff rather than just enjoying the walk and using > it to think things through. This is something I'm trying to balance. Nietzsche writes that the worst thing one can do in the morning, when one is at one's brightest and most alert, is read. The idea is it's better to think one's own thoughts, do one's own creating. Though he didn't extend this warning to walking, a thinking time he also valued highly, one imagines it applies (audiobooks were not much of an issue in the 1880's). It's a valid warning in both cases, I think, and I heed it. But I've found that when I'm doing some menial chore I'm not at my best and brightest, and that then listening is a great gain with very little loss. I've also found that at certain times walking time is not good thinking time, and can be profitably redeemed by listening to an audiobook. Example: when I'm walking home from work, all I can think about is work related stresses. These thoughts are neither pleasant nor particularly productive. An audiobook is a good way to snap out of the day's business. I take my job seriously, but I also take my private and family life seriously, and an audio book for the walk home frees me to attend to and enjoy the latter without materially compromising the former. I'd never listen to an audiobook on my way *to* work. That's double prime time (morning plus walking, minus the aftershocks of a working day's distresses). > Speed reading - this is a favourite with self > improvement type courses, but there must be a > balance. i like reading a novel slowly > sometimes....yet if I have to read reports or > research at work I want to get through it quickly > while spotting the key points. One thing I > sometimes do with a newspaper is read the first > paragraph of all the news stories these are usually > written (by trained journalists) as a summary of the > whole story, so in a few minutes you can read the > whole paper and get the general outline of the day's > news. Though I don't know much about it, I have to admit I'm a little prejudiced against the idea of speed reading. It doesn't seem to me that it can work, in any meaningful way, that at best it's an impressive stunt. Reading isn't purely passive. It's not like eating, passively absorbing intellectual nutrients. Reading is also reacting. I butcher my books with underlines and objections (cringe, fellow librarians). There's a famous story in the literature of psychology about a man with a photographic memory, who could perform astonishing feats of recollection, but was miserable and useless because he was unable to distinguish the important from the trivial. A "successful" speed reader would be like this man. I think there's a reason that students still pack lecture halls, despite millennia of writing (a "technology" Socrates deplored, fearing it was a crutch that would weaken the faculties of memory and reason), centuries of printing, and decades of internet. The speed of speech is the best speed for learning. It makes evolutionary sense, among other things. Go faster, "overclock" your learning mechanisms, and you get "lossy" learning. You get shallow learning. I think there is still room for greater reading/learning efficiency, but I don't think it's to be achieved by packing more words into less time. I think you'll get it by reclaiming lost and underutilized scraps of time when the mind is free (and restless, even, clamoring to be employed) but the body isn't, and by the simple expedient of "distraction management" (wasting less time). I don't have the resources to do a large scale empirical study (nor am I aware of one), but I'm amazed at the gains I've made for myself in less than two years fumbling along these lines. Reinhard ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] |
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