You are very on point with passivity being bad for remembering, completely agree.
Seems like the rule is that you can only meaningfully process a limited amount of topics during a day.
I think I’m starting to disagree with this. (weird phrasing but I’ll explain).
For the longest time I used to think that I had at most only a few hours to learn/study in a day. But what happened was that I pretty much overloaded my working memory with a particular subject and then tried to keep building on that, it reached a point where I just could not keep up (maybe four hours straight on a subject); when I started changing subjects (and using much more of Anki which plays the biggest role here) I found out that I could keep going on learning and dedicate another four hours to another subject, while knowing that Anki takes care that I don’t forget anything of both subjects.
I think, more or less, the same idea applies here, as you remark:
Twitter: One tweet, a few comments and then I drop it all from my memory. Go on to the next tweet.
Reddit: One post, few comments and to the next post.
What I’m trying to say is that you can read a book, drop it and then go on to the next and the same applies for learning. You don’t have to read just one book, you don’t have to study only one subject in a day.
I agree, reading a book… and then reading a book on a different topic when you already had too much of the former… seems like a good approach.
Actually, the school seems to be designed this way, of course only if you assume that 45 minutes is the optimal time to spend with one subject. (Which is probably wrong, and also depends on age, subject, etc. But the idea of “focus on X for nontrivial time, then focus on Y” is there.)
You are very on point with passivity being bad for remembering, completely agree.
I think I’m starting to disagree with this. (weird phrasing but I’ll explain).
For the longest time I used to think that I had at most only a few hours to learn/study in a day. But what happened was that I pretty much overloaded my working memory with a particular subject and then tried to keep building on that, it reached a point where I just could not keep up (maybe four hours straight on a subject); when I started changing subjects (and using much more of Anki which plays the biggest role here) I found out that I could keep going on learning and dedicate another four hours to another subject, while knowing that Anki takes care that I don’t forget anything of both subjects.
I think, more or less, the same idea applies here, as you remark:
Twitter: One tweet, a few comments and then I drop it all from my memory. Go on to the next tweet.
Reddit: One post, few comments and to the next post.
What I’m trying to say is that you can read a book, drop it and then go on to the next and the same applies for learning. You don’t have to read just one book, you don’t have to study only one subject in a day.
I agree, reading a book… and then reading a book on a different topic when you already had too much of the former… seems like a good approach.
Actually, the school seems to be designed this way, of course only if you assume that 45 minutes is the optimal time to spend with one subject. (Which is probably wrong, and also depends on age, subject, etc. But the idea of “focus on X for nontrivial time, then focus on Y” is there.)