The first two levels I am very familiar with in my own reading, but I’ve never consciously done the last compression level. However when I go through my own Anki cards I will often give the answer in a much more compressed way than how I originally wrote it down, so it’s likely happening at some level during my memorization or reading process.
I’d never put any conscious thought into how I read until recently. It was helpful to define the stages, even though I assume they’re familiar to most people. I want to write a separate post about something I think is the most important. Good reading is about making deliberate choices about transitioning between these three levels, with long-term strategy in mind. And that long-term strategy is something like:
Achieve the minimum competency/signaling outcome (plus safety margin) that lets you enter into a real-world learning environment, or solve a real-world problem.
Maximize comprehension on the parts that are relevant to “minimum competency.”
Beyond that, seek the minimum effort to understand the details and links to other material. For example, don’t obsess over trying to memorize fine details if they’re not going to be useful/tested, but do make sure you know where to look them up.
A huge part of effective scholarship is knowing what you can ignore, either by not studying it at all, or minimizing the depth at which you study it, so as to minimize opportunity costs of your learning.
The first two levels I am very familiar with in my own reading, but I’ve never consciously done the last compression level. However when I go through my own Anki cards I will often give the answer in a much more compressed way than how I originally wrote it down, so it’s likely happening at some level during my memorization or reading process.
I’d never put any conscious thought into how I read until recently. It was helpful to define the stages, even though I assume they’re familiar to most people. I want to write a separate post about something I think is the most important. Good reading is about making deliberate choices about transitioning between these three levels, with long-term strategy in mind. And that long-term strategy is something like:
Achieve the minimum competency/signaling outcome (plus safety margin) that lets you enter into a real-world learning environment, or solve a real-world problem.
Maximize comprehension on the parts that are relevant to “minimum competency.”
Beyond that, seek the minimum effort to understand the details and links to other material. For example, don’t obsess over trying to memorize fine details if they’re not going to be useful/tested, but do make sure you know where to look them up.
A huge part of effective scholarship is knowing what you can ignore, either by not studying it at all, or minimizing the depth at which you study it, so as to minimize opportunity costs of your learning.