I have subscribed this day to a really neat site called Farnam Street, the author of which was recently featured in an Evernote Blog article that you can find here. My interest was piqued when they began speaking of how reading for learning was truly a lost art. I read for research purposes, of course, and that is nearly all-consuming. By last count, I had read something like 1,500 research studies and related articles for background on my dissertation topic. But then I also read for pleasure, especially as I go to bed at night.
This quote caught my attention, and it is certainly something I’ve learned recently in the quest for a doctorate:
Learning something deeply and fundamentally affects how you understand the world, and most of your reading can’t and won’t deliver that.
Why then is it that most of our reading cannot and will not deliver on the promise of a refreshed understanding of the world? Shane has this to say:
The problem I see too frequently is, especially as people age, they begin to read exclusively for information and entertainment, and stop trying to learn. They stop dropping important new roots, and don’t even tend to the older ones anymore.
The answer, I guess, is that reading for entertainment is by definition not at all deep, not deep enough for the roots he speaks of anyway. And indeed, most of the novels that I read I will have forgotten in about two weeks! It is a great way to save money – re-reading the same books simply because you forgot how they ended!
But the real import of the article came at this point, when Shane said:
In the text I am reading, I focus on what’s important; what I think is critical to the arguments in the piece I’m reading. I underline anything that strikes me as interesting. I circle words I need to look up for a better understanding. I mark comments and questions in the margins to try and tease out assumptions. Essentially, I’m trying to engage in a conversation with the author. After I’ve read the book and have absorbed what the author is trying to tell me, I’ll look at the notes again and see what’s changed since I started reading the book. If something still strikes my interest, I take notes in the first few pages of the book on that topic. [Emphasis is mine]
And that conversation is, in effect, the execution of critical thinking, a kind of Socratic colloquy with the author that is intended to deepen our understanding and to either improve upon existing mental models, or to add to them.
What is a mental model, you ask? Stay tuned. My next blog post will talk about the so-called latticework of mental models that all truly deep thinkers must have.
Comments? Thoughts? I would love to hear from you!
