I used to feel similarly, but then a few things changed for me and now I am pro-textbook. There are caveats—namely that I don’t work through them continuously.
Textbooks seem overly formal at points
This is a big one for me, and probably the biggest change I made is being much more discriminating in what I look for in a textbook. My concerns are invariably practical, so I only demand enough formality to be relevant; otherwise I am concerned with a good reputation for explaining intuitions, graphics, examples, ease of reading. I would go as far as to say that style is probably the most important feature of a textbook.
As I mentioned, I don’t work through them front to back, because that actually is homework. Instead I treat them more like a reference-with-a-hook; I look at them when I need to understand the particular thing in more depth, and then get out when I have what I need. But because it is contained in a textbook, this knowledge now has a natural link to steps before and after, so I have obvious places to go for regression and advancement.
I spend a lot of time thinking about what I need to learn, why I need to learn it, and how it relates to what I already know. This does an excellent job of helping things stick, and also of keeping me from getting too stuck because I have a battery of perspectives ready to deploy. This enables the reference approach.
I spend a lot of time what I have mentally termed triangulating, which is deliberately using different sources/currents of thought when I learn a subject. This winds up necessitating the reference approach, because I always wind up with questions that are neglected or unsatisfactorily addressed in a given source. Lately I really like founding papers and historical review papers right out of the gate, because these are prone to explaining motivations, subtle intuitions, and circumstances in a way instructional materials are not.
I used to feel similarly, but then a few things changed for me and now I am pro-textbook. There are caveats—namely that I don’t work through them continuously.
This is a big one for me, and probably the biggest change I made is being much more discriminating in what I look for in a textbook. My concerns are invariably practical, so I only demand enough formality to be relevant; otherwise I am concerned with a good reputation for explaining intuitions, graphics, examples, ease of reading. I would go as far as to say that style is probably the most important feature of a textbook.
As I mentioned, I don’t work through them front to back, because that actually is homework. Instead I treat them more like a reference-with-a-hook; I look at them when I need to understand the particular thing in more depth, and then get out when I have what I need. But because it is contained in a textbook, this knowledge now has a natural link to steps before and after, so I have obvious places to go for regression and advancement.
I spend a lot of time thinking about what I need to learn, why I need to learn it, and how it relates to what I already know. This does an excellent job of helping things stick, and also of keeping me from getting too stuck because I have a battery of perspectives ready to deploy. This enables the reference approach.
I spend a lot of time what I have mentally termed triangulating, which is deliberately using different sources/currents of thought when I learn a subject. This winds up necessitating the reference approach, because I always wind up with questions that are neglected or unsatisfactorily addressed in a given source. Lately I really like founding papers and historical review papers right out of the gate, because these are prone to explaining motivations, subtle intuitions, and circumstances in a way instructional materials are not.