I see a lot self-help books and posts following the general pattern: Don’t read all the advice and apply it all at once but read and master it step by step (mostly really urging not to continue reading). I think this is a sound approch which could be applied more often. It is kind of clicker-traing advice applied at a high level. I wonder about the best granularity. The examples below use between 3 and about 100 steps. And I’d guess the more is better here—if possible. But it may depend on the topic at hand.
Carnegie’s How to Make Friends and Influence People has a slightly parallel approach: reread the book on a regular schedule, as you’ll notice things the fourth time you didn’t notice the third because your skill growth puts you in a different place relative to the material. (Maybe he also recommends not to read the whole book at once, also, and I just forgot that part; I think he does encourage people to read just the parts they want to.)
It seems to me that rereading is likely to be more effective than staggering the reading, and that rereading enables staggering. One of my childhood English teachers was more forgiving of reading in class than other teachers, and had a small rack of books available- one of them was Watership Down, which I read cover to cover probably ~7 times, and afterwards would just open to a random page and then would be able to immediately place myself in the story at that point and read from there.
This also calls to mind the practice among more serious Christians of reading the Bible once a year- it takes about four pages a day, and does not take many years for much of it to be very familiar. Muslims have the term “Hafiz” for someone who has memorized the Quran, which typically takes several years of focused effort, and I don’t think Christians have a comparable term, but I’ve definitely noticed phrases along the lines of “quote chapter and verse” for when people had sizeable blocks of the Bible memorized.
Now when I think about rationality seminars—aren’t they analogical to reading the whole book at the same time? So the proper approach would be instead an hour or two, once in a week or two weeks (as long as it takes to master the lesson). But that would make travelling really expensive, so instead the lessons would have to be remote. Perhaps explaining the topic in a YouTube video, then having a Skype debate, a homework, and a mailinglist only for debating the current homework.
Three CFAR tools come to mind that reduce this somewhat:
First is the practice of “delegating to specific future selves.” You plan a specific time (“two weeks from now, Sunday, in the morning”) to do a specific task (“look through my workshop notes to figure out what things I want to focus on, and again delegate those things to specific future selves”), and they explicitly suggest using this on the seminar materials and notes.
Second is the various alumni connection mechanisms- a few people have done set up groups to go through the materials again, there’s people that chat regularly on Skype, and so on.
Third is the rationality dojo in the CFAR office (so only applicable for the local / visiting alums) that meets weekly, I believe.
I see a lot self-help books and posts following the general pattern: Don’t read all the advice and apply it all at once but read and master it step by step (mostly really urging not to continue reading). I think this is a sound approch which could be applied more often. It is kind of clicker-traing advice applied at a high level. I wonder about the best granularity. The examples below use between 3 and about 100 steps. And I’d guess the more is better here—if possible. But it may depend on the topic at hand.
Examples:
Peter Hurfords Productivity 101
7 Habits of highly effective People
Athol Kays Map
Rules of the Game
Probably you can think of lots more...
Carnegie’s How to Make Friends and Influence People has a slightly parallel approach: reread the book on a regular schedule, as you’ll notice things the fourth time you didn’t notice the third because your skill growth puts you in a different place relative to the material. (Maybe he also recommends not to read the whole book at once, also, and I just forgot that part; I think he does encourage people to read just the parts they want to.)
It seems to me that rereading is likely to be more effective than staggering the reading, and that rereading enables staggering. One of my childhood English teachers was more forgiving of reading in class than other teachers, and had a small rack of books available- one of them was Watership Down, which I read cover to cover probably ~7 times, and afterwards would just open to a random page and then would be able to immediately place myself in the story at that point and read from there.
This also calls to mind the practice among more serious Christians of reading the Bible once a year- it takes about four pages a day, and does not take many years for much of it to be very familiar. Muslims have the term “Hafiz” for someone who has memorized the Quran, which typically takes several years of focused effort, and I don’t think Christians have a comparable term, but I’ve definitely noticed phrases along the lines of “quote chapter and verse” for when people had sizeable blocks of the Bible memorized.
Now when I think about rationality seminars—aren’t they analogical to reading the whole book at the same time? So the proper approach would be instead an hour or two, once in a week or two weeks (as long as it takes to master the lesson). But that would make travelling really expensive, so instead the lessons would have to be remote. Perhaps explaining the topic in a YouTube video, then having a Skype debate, a homework, and a mailinglist only for debating the current homework.
Three CFAR tools come to mind that reduce this somewhat:
First is the practice of “delegating to specific future selves.” You plan a specific time (“two weeks from now, Sunday, in the morning”) to do a specific task (“look through my workshop notes to figure out what things I want to focus on, and again delegate those things to specific future selves”), and they explicitly suggest using this on the seminar materials and notes.
Second is the various alumni connection mechanisms- a few people have done set up groups to go through the materials again, there’s people that chat regularly on Skype, and so on.
Third is the rationality dojo in the CFAR office (so only applicable for the local / visiting alums) that meets weekly, I believe.