I’ve read 256 bloghacks, steal like an artist, deep work, no more mr. good boy, selling is human and life 3.0 for the last 2 years and a couple more that I haven’t written about yet.
especially I love books.
You are reading: I dont read books
I just don’t think that it’s the best written format for learning and that such a format can harm learning. It’s not the author, the subject, but really the historical format to blame.
one person monologue
When you read a book, you absorb the information without much critical thinking. there is no room to disagree, ask a question, clarify, add your own advice. so we get used to just reading, shutting up and absorbing. Can you remember any other situation in your life, where you absorb information without a doubt? I can’t.
And be sure to let me know in the comments if you don’t agree.
best sellers vs best read
I’m known for being a minimalist, so my bookshelf only has 5 books, while all my other friends have 20-30 books. I always wondered “they read so fast, are they smart”? so i was curious :
- “what are your favorite books?”
- “what are you reading now?”
- “well, how many have you actually read?”
Answers vary a bit, but the last question usually hits the spot. it’s barely 1/4 on average.
buy a book to have friends
Then I realized that “best seller” has nothing to do with content. it’s like having a cool free app on your phone that you never use or a famous “friend” on facebook that you never write but anyone can see that you’re “friends”.
hype trumps knowledge, at least for now. It’s less important how valuable the book is to the reader than how great it is, what a nice cover it has, how many of my friends and celebrities recommend it.
See Also: Project Gutenberg’s Fairy Books Edited by Andrew Lang, by Various
I personally know many technical books by Czech authors that people buy, but never read. which makes me sad on both sides, the reader and the author, and also for the trees that will now lie dead on a shelf made from another tree.
the longer, the vaguer
Imagine this publication would have 20 pages. I would continue with the details, I would start talking about my day and how everyday life is connected to reading books and what I read in my childhood and shaped me to be who I am… blah blah blah.
It’s called a flow state and you can see it very clearly when someone gives a talk that lasts more than 30 minutes. it’s not a rule, but the easiest way to spot it in public.
why? because flow makes people happy and focuses deeply on the present, the hours seem to pass minute by minute.
an example for everyone: have you ever read my undergraduate thesis on polyphasic sleep which is over 50 pages long? Me neither, so I made a short post.
book chapter format versus skill level
The book format is ideal for stories. there is a beginning, plot… well, the classic hero’s journey.
It works for stories, but what about skills and know-how? Let’s say you have a new job and you want to learn a new framework – Symfony. Do you buy “a Symfony book” and read it? And then you know Symfony? You might and you’ll be feeling great about it.
but what’s the use of all this random education (has its meaning, but not here) if your first task is to create a contact form? maybe there are posts on how to write forms that go beyond the documentation that will take you 20 minutes to read.
having a whole book would probably confuse you and make you feel good at the same time.
eternal contempt
See Also: Amy Harmon – Book Series In Order
Like menstruation, the cycle of life is very similar to the cycle of knowledge, or a paradigm, if you prefer.
Think of PHP application you work on right now. You start fresh and with PHP 7.2, with the newest version of Symfony 4.1 and all goes great. Do you think that in 3 years you’ll be using PHP 8.0 and Symfony 5.0 or rather stick to the old ones? And what about in next 3 years?
I would choose first because the trend is that they are faster, easier to learn and more intuitive to use.
using an old one (for whatever business reason) is called vendor lock-in or legacy code.
Same vendor lock happens to knowledge. You can see it the most in school systems, where 40-year-old people teach 15-year-olds their “up-to-date” know-how. People write PHP 7 as PHP 5.3 because there are so many old books out there about PHP 5.3.
wikipedia 2010 in 2018?
Imagine that Wikipedia would be published only once every 10 years as a book. so today, in 2018, someone would cite information from an 8-year-old in his school essay. it’s crazy, right? but that’s how books work naturally.
However, is there a better way to share deep interconnected knowledge than in books that would be longer than a single publication?
we’ll explore some ideas in the next post.
happy reading and let me know in the comments what you think about all this.