Learning beyond reading
Throughout time reading has been the main source of transmitting ideas and knowledge. It is often identified as the main source of learning after tradition sources, e.g., school, college etc. However, I would argue this is a very narrow view of the available learning opportunities.
This is not an argument that reading is also supplemented by the internet bringing videos and seminars into our homes as an extension to reading. In some regards these new methods may be even less helpful, and just simply more of the same — a source of information provided to you to passively absorb. But what does it do for you? More importantly, what do you do with the information? Also, why are you reading and what are you hoping to gain from the exercise?
Missing the point
At the moment society appears to have many “grind” messages with reading, like reading 50 or a hundred books a year. This encourages reading, and likely encourages book purchases, but the question that is usually missing from this narrative is:
What have you learned from them?
How have the helped you achieve your goals?
Reading is a passive act, but it does not have to be. Simply reading a number of books to say that you have read a number of books is likely to be a waste of time. What is important is the engagement with them. It is important to understand and evaluate the messages in them. This means taking time and critically evaluating them. A few points below provide some illustration.
Firstly, books represent a place, a time, an author and an opinion. The fact that someone wrote a book does not mean it represents “fact” or the “truth”. The “truth” is a difficult concept and one in many circumstances we may never see. Books are written from the authors perspective, they include their opinions and biases, which can conflict with our experiences and knowledge. In many ways the books are a curation and an opinion of the author, and there is no guarantee that the know what they are talking about, and may be just trying to sell something. So, books that you might read may in fact not be right or relevant to you, and could lead you in the wrong direction.
Secondly, some books are fairly simple, and fairly credible. Reading an automotive repair guide or a cookbook is likely to be more useful and believable than a self-help book. This is interesting as book are written to sell, but the knowledge of cookery and automotive repair is less abstract and well-known. More importantly it is testable and repeatable. Even if your oven is slightly different, a recipe can be optimised for your situation and give repeatable results. In my opinion, pseudo-science often appears in self-help and, is less likely to be relevant, credible or reliable.
However, as we move away from more simplistic how to guides, there are others who have read and understood the material. They provide curation through book reviews and scoring. Hence, the obsession with Amazon scores for books. However, these are not always reliable, and this is often where the “influencer” and “expert” have their greatest impact — by providing recommendations. But these are their opinions, and it is important to always think for oneself.
Thirdly, many books are nonsense and just poor. You can see that from many of the self-publish and self-help books. Many books are written to capitalise on trends. Books are goods, they are for sale. Profit is made from them, and therefore, it is naïve to assume these are written purely in an altruistic manner. Certainly, they are not marketed in that manner. From wider reading there are many books where the author knows very little and is trying to raise their profile to make a sale; this is my interpretation of many self-help books.
Fourthly, books are situated in a field. Only reading one book, only gives the perspective of that particular author. To understand an area, it is important to look around and read different viewpoints. This is wider reading and trying to situate the book in reference to the others, and evaluate its value. Some books are clearly better and more relevant and valuable than others.
It is applying the effort in collecting evidence, ideas and opinions, weighing them and drawing conclusions which gives significant power. The key is to come to your own opinion and not just rely on someone else’s. A significant amount of thinking needs to be done, which includes putting evidence and ideas into context, classifying them, testing the boundaries and drawing conclusions from them.
Often it is the accumulation over time which is important. Drawing ideas and evidence from one place and applying it to another. Seeing deeper trends connections, ideas and opportunities. This takes dedication and hard work. This is one of the challenges with reading. Hard thinking, analysis and drawing novel conclusions is not easy and can be incredibly uncomfortable.
Passive reading makes it feel like we are making progress, although we may not. It may provide comfort and feelings of work, when in fact little work was done. Most of the effort is wasted in reading a book that will be forgotten in a few months’ time. Therefore, it may just resemble a comforting waste of time, which is not the point.
The vision
So, just doing some reading may not provide much of a benefit. This goes back to an earlier question. Why are you reading? If the point is to learn something, what do you want to learn and why do you want to learn it?
These questions are important to start the journey. There are many ways in which learning can be achieved, and books are just one. They can be included in many of the different approaches, but the point is not to only read books. It is to take the information, evaluate it and apply it; to make progress towards your goal. But it is the goals which are important.
This is where the vision comes in. Having a few of the future and a view on what you want your goals to be. Clarity is important, as without clarity it is easy to get lost and confused. Time will necessarily be wasted as part of any learning journey, but getting lost can be a substantially wasteful, and potentially difficult to recover from.
Thus, clear goals and hence, a clear vision allows decisions to be made. What am I trying to achieve, how do I intended on achieving it, what do I need? The vision guides and helps to unpack these questions, where answers are usually easier when considered within the context of the overall vision.
Therefore, before starting anything, it is worth revisiting these questions and think about them. By starting to ask these questions, movement has been made from passive to active. It becomes more about taking ownership of your learning rather than just do something because others are. These are the first steps towards successful learning — being in charge of your learning and having some control over your learning destiny.
So, with a vision, you can start to think about how to best learn. Some ways are discussed below.
Teaching
Although, it is said those who cannot do teach, being able to teach means that you have understanding of the subject matter. It means that you can answer questions. You can form a coherent narrative in the subject matter and you can impart this. There are many ways in which you could teach
Writing
Writing about a subject is easiest. You an get feedback sometimes from readers and potentially received questions.it is worth trying to write in an engaging way — asking people for feedback. By taking the time to structure the writing, you ask yourself questions. Here, where you may feel uncomfortable, you can do further research in which to better understand the subject matter and to answer your own questions. It is likely that others will have the same questions as you, so this helps both parties.
Here the act of teaching is an active learning method. It is not passive. Reading helps to fill in gaps. But it is the writing that demonstrates you understand. The writing forms the connections and challenges yourself — do I actually understand this. It is easy to trick myself into thinking I understand something when I don’t. Writing it down makes it clear where my knowledge is strong and where it is weak. It jumps off the page, and is a clear message for further work. Engagement in the writing spills over to further questioning, which over time can lead to expertise. So, it can be an excellent way to develop an expert level ability in a particular area.
Talks
Talks are similar to writing, expect that it is visual and verbal, giving added challenges of time and of visuals. Public speaking can be very uncomfortable, and thus requires practice and a willingness to go outside of your comfort zone, which is excellent for personal growth. Presenting is very visual; the visuals tend to be more important than the spoken word. Therefore, it usually takes more time and care in their presentation.
For both talks and writing not only do you learn a subject, but you develop skills in public speaking or writing. Due to time and space constraints what to include and omit need careful consideration. This is a question of salience, and requires an understanding of the field to make these decisions. Thus, these combine together to improve and enhance your learning.
Group discussion
Like book clubs and seminars, these can be very helpful tools, because you re engaging with others on a topic and taking in their insights. It is important to get out and see different perspectives, because being siloed can lead to an echo chamber and being blind to your own opinions and biases. It requires the ability to accept and listen to other opinions.
Again, like reading these should not be taking uncritically. Hence the point of discussions is that they can lead to healthy debate. This allows for the exploration of the ideas and opinions which in turn can lead to sharpening your view and opinions. Especially true where there are highly experienced experts in the field involved, as they can help to put the knowledge into context and fill in gaps between theory and practice.
However, these can be more difficult to find and join. It is worth exploring the field where you want to learn, and start exploring the most relevant people. See what they write about, and start to ask some questions. For instance, you can leave a comment on a blog post etc. It is likely that there are some conferences on the subjects, and likely there are informal discussion groups as well. It might be worthwhile attending the conference, meeting a few people. From here, showing enthusiasm and interest you are likely to be invited to more informal events if you mention that you have an interest in them.
Projects
Often books can only tell so much, and the more practical and relevant aspects of the field are in people’s heads. It can often be tacit and require some level of immersion on the field before you can start to grasp it. Projects offer an excellent way of doing the learning. They will eventually develop some output and you will learn the appropriate skills on the way, whether picking them up yourself of asking others. Ultimately it is an active learning process, having yourself direct and take ownership for your learning. It is one of the best ways to learn and grasp a field.
But projects require a clear vision, clear goals and clear outputs. These need to be defined at the start, but allowed to be updated and changed as the project progresses. Because learning projects can lead to ambiguous results and new information as they progress this can require a change in direction due to the learning gained. This is okay, however, much like the OODA loop, Kolb learning cycle etc., there will need to be an overarching view of what you want to accomplish, and a clear set of goals and tasks for the individual loop cycles. The aim would be to have a clear cycle goal at the start, and based on the output of the cycle, to define the next cycle as clearly as possible. Ultimately, change will occur and the vision, goals and outputs will need to be reviewed every cycle. It is an iterative process, and the new learning is what can make it fun.
For projects, ideally you need some introduction to and understanding of the subject matter before getting started. This will help avoid confusion and dead-ends that are easy to occur if you clearly are unknowledgeable in the subject matter. You will need to have and understood the appropriate tools, and this will require some research. There will be a need to measure progress, either from self-feedback and evaluation or from others.
However, having a project, some output and generating clear questions is something that you can leverage in talking with experts with. After learning something from books, having the deeper knowledge and specific questions are likely to get you, eventually, some responses from knowledgeable people. It may take some time however, and the need to ask a few people. But, having some clear discussion point and some output makes it more likely someone would want to talk to you.
Conclusion
Reading is one way to learn, but passively alone, it is not particularly effective. Jut reading 100 books a year would not help. But coupling it with critical thinking, goals and wider reading is a good step towards improving to benefits that can be gained. Teaching and projects however, provide a better level of active engagement. Reading can be a part of these. But having these additional actives will give a much greater active engagement and ensures that you comprehend, and can use the learned information. It is worth thinking about these, and having some projects to start.
