Comment by davidgrenier | Hacker News Reader

Comment by davidgrenier | Hacker News Reader

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I work several subjects in parallel (three books currently). I go through each chapter twice. Once to understand the material then moving on to another book.

When I come back to the former book I go through the chapter again creating Anki cards for anything notable. The sheer amount of material I notice I had completely forgotten on the second reading is astounding.

I go through the Anki cards daily, in the morning I cover the material created from two of my books. In the evening I go through the third book (which I deem more valuable in a deep sense/abstract).

I have yet to have solid a strategy on chunk-building (as the course pushes you to do), however I can still see some bigger units emerge with time.

Can you elaborate on why it's valuable to go through different books in parallel? My goal has always been to do one thing at a time, so the idea that the opposite if beneficial is interesting.

The course emphasizes how memory works, you would think that to remember things you have to write the information well-enough in it so it sticks. But in reality, the information has been there the first time around the issue for the brain is finding the information like locating a product in a large warehouse.

It is the process of recall that makes things stick to memory as opposed to repeated memorization. Working on several subjects at a time spaces out sessions and prevents the illusion that you have access to the knowledge you worked for when in fact you don't.

Very interesting. Thanks for the info. I honestly haven't given much thought to how much I recall; I figured that I remembered what I remembered and that was that. Perhaps that should receive more attention.

These two blog posts by K. Eric Drexler explain why this is important. It's related to learning subjects you have no familiarity with.

[1] http://metamodern.com/2009/05/27/how-to-learn-about-everythi...

[2] http://metamodern.com/2009/05/17/how-to-understand-everythin...

Thanks very much

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