For a long time, I believed that just reading books was enough to help me learn the things I needed and wanted to learn. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, I thought that by reading a book I would remember the book. I would diligently read a book from beginning to end, then give myself a pat on the back, put the book on the shelf, and move onto the next one.
Over time, I realised that there was an advantage to reading books sequentially in order to try and give my (very fallible) memory a chance to turn the words flashing in front of my eyes a chance to settle in my brain as knowledge. So I’d read a group of books on similar or sequential topics one after the other.
This was a better method, but still didn’t respond to the bigger problem: that reading is not learning.
In a sense, this should be obvious. I knew at the time that I wasn’t remembering key details of books. And it’s not as though there is a school in the world that lets pupils just read. Learning is always about repetition and socialisation, as much as it is about information ‘input’.
But yet I assumed over time that simply reading, without a conscious attempt to retain the facts, would slowly aggregate into real learning. In this way I spent most of my twenties reading lots and learning far less than I could have with a bit more effort.
It wasn’t just reading where I made this mistake. I assumed that going to art exhibitions would teach me something about art. The experience was enjoyable, but I would have struggled to tell you anything substantial about the history of art, or the biographies of key artists. At work I failed to follow up on the names and terms being thrown around. I got used to the terminology, but it was pure luck most of the time that I didn’t get put on the spot about this detail or that fact.
In both reading and the rest of my life I assumed that merely by being around things that I would absorb information by some kind of osmosis.
Of course, that’s not how knowledge works. We know that we know something when we are able to explain it to others (and ourselves) without serious gaps. Knowledge is resistant to ‘what about…’ questions. If you can’t answer simple questions about a concept then you don’t understand it properly.
So reading is not learning because it only really helps information input, not information retention. Of course, if you are continually exposed to something then more of the concept will stick. But, equally, any concept will stick much faster and stronger if you make more proactive attempts to retain and recall the facts.
Why does this matter? I’ve noticed a lot of articles recently that make unreasonable claims for the learning power of reading, and put too much emphasis on the volume of reading. Warren Buffett’s ‘500 pages a day’ quote (he actually said 500 pages a week) is a prime example of this kind of thinking.
Don’t get me wrong, reading is an important part of a well-rounded life and is vital for learning. But it is necessary rather than sufficient. It is just as important to have a robust set of habits around note-taking, revising information, and thinking / questioning. And reading is not the only way to learn: lectures, documentaries, podcasts, etc. are just as important.
It’s also important to remember that reading can be dangerous in the sense that it can give you a false sense of knowledge based on a superficial awareness rather than a deep and considered understanding. I’ve written about the illusion of knowledge previously on this blog.
All of which is not to say that you shouldn’t read, just that you shouldn’t fool yourself into believing that you are retaining everything you read without extra effort.
