Occasionally, I will ask someone who is very skilled in a certain subject how they became skilled in that subject so that I can copy their expertise. A common response is that I should read a textbook in the subject.
For years, my self-education was stupid and wasteful. I learned by consuming blog posts, Wikipedia articles, classic texts, podcast episodes, popular books, video lectures, peer-reviewed papers, Teaching Company courses, and Cliff’s Notes. How inefficient!
I’ve since discovered that textbooks are usually the quickest and best way to learn new material.
I want to briefly list the reasons why I don’t find sitting down and reading a textbook that helpful for learning. Perhaps, in doing so, someone else might appear and say, “I agree completely. I feel exactly the same way” or someone might appear to say, “I used to feel that way, but then I tried this...” This is what I have discovered:
When I sit down to read a long textbook, I find myself subconsciously constantly checking how many pages I have read. For instance, if I have been sitting down for over an hour and I find that I have barely made a dent in the first chapter, much less the book, I have a feeling of hopelessness that I’ll ever be able to “make it through” the whole thing.
When I try to read a textbook cover to cover, I find myself much more concerned with finishing rather than understanding. I want the satisfaction of being able to say I read the whole thing, every page. This means that I will sometimes cut corners in my understanding just to make it through a difficult part. This ends in disaster once the next chapter requires a solid understanding of the last.
Reading a long book feels less like I’m slowly building insights and it feels more like I’m doing homework. By contrast, when I read blog posts it feels like there’s no finish line, and I can quit at any time. When I do read a good blog post, I often end up thinking about its thesis for hours afterwards even after I’m done reading it, solidifying the content in my mind. I cannot replicate this feeling with a textbook.
Textbooks seem overly formal at points. And they often do not repeat information, instead putting the burden on the reader to re-read things rather than repeating information. This makes it difficult to read in a linear fashion, which is straining.
If I don’t understand a concept I can get “stuck” on the textbook, disincentivizing me from finishing. By contrast, if I just learned as Muehlhauser described, by “consuming blog posts, Wikipedia articles, classic texts, podcast episodes, popular books, video lectures, peer-reviewed papers, Teaching Company courses, and Cliff’s Notes” I feel much less stuck since I can always just move from one source to the next without feeling like I have an obligation to finish.
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’ve also been reading textbooks more and experiencied some frustration, but I’ve found two things that, so far, help me get less stuck and feel less guilt.
After trying to learn math from textbooks on my own for a month or so, I started paying a tutor (DM me for details) with whom I meet once a week. Like you, I struggle with getting stuck on hard exercises and/or concepts I don’t understand, but having a tutor makes it easier for me to move on knowing I can discuss my confusions with them in our next session. Unfortunately, a paying a tutor requires actually having $ to spare on an ongoing basis, but I also suspect for some people it just “feels weird”. If someone reading this is more deterred by this latter reason, consider that basically everyone who wants to seriously improve at any physical activity gets 1-on-1 instruction, but for some reason doing the same for mental activities as an adult is weirdly uncommon (and perhaps a little low status).
I’ve also started to follow MIT OCW courses for things I want to learn rather than trying to read entire textbooks. Yes, this means I may not cover as much material, but it has helped me better gauge how much time to spend on different topics and allow me to feel like I’m progressing. The major downside of this strategy is that I have to remind myself that even though I’m learning based on a course’s materials, my goal is to learn the material in a way that’s useful to me, not to memorize passwords. Also, because I know how long the courses would take in a university context, I do occasionally feel guilt if I fall behind due to spending more time on a specific topic. Still, on net, using courses as loose guides has been working better for me than just trying to 100 percent entire math textbooks.
When I try to read a textbook cover to cover, I find myself much more concerned with finishing rather than understanding. I want the satisfaction of being able to say I read the whole thing, every page. This means that I will sometimes cut corners in my understanding just to make it through a difficult part. This ends in disaster once the next chapter requires a solid understanding of the last.
When I read a textbook, I try to solve all exercises at the end of each chapter (at least those not marked “super hard”) before moving to the next. That stops me from cutting corners.
The only flaw I find with this is that if I get stuck on an exercise, I reach the following decision: should I look at the answer and move on, or should I keep at it.
If I choose the first option, this makes me feel like I’ve cheated. I’m not sure what it is about human psychology, but I think that if you’ve cheated once, you feel less guilty a second time because “I’ve already done it.” So, I start cheating more and more, until soon enough I’m just skipping things and cutting corners again.
If I choose the second option, then I might be stuck for several hours, and this causes me to just abandon the textbook develop an ugh field around it.
I was of the very same mind that you are now. I was somewhat against textbooks, but now textbooks are my only way of learning, not only for strong knowledge but also fast.
I think there are several important things in changing to textbooks only, first I have replaced my habit of completionism: not finishing a particular book in some field but change, it if I don’t feel like it’s helping me or a if things seem confusing, by another textbook in the same field. lukeprog’s post is very handy here.
The idea of changing text-books has helped me a lot, sometimes I just thought I did not understand something but apparently I was only needing another explanation.
Two other important things, is that I take quite a lot of notes as I’m reading. I believe that if someone is just reading a text-book, that person is doing it wrong and a disservice to themselves. So I fill as much as I can in my working memory, be it three, four paragraphs of content and I transcribe those myself in my notes. Coupled with this is making my own questions and answers and then putting them on Anki (space-repetition memory program).
This allows me to learn vast amounts of knowledge in low amounts of time, assuring myself that I will remember everything I’ve learned. I believe textbooks are key component for this.
Occasionally, I will ask someone who is very skilled in a certain subject how they became skilled in that subject so that I can copy their expertise. A common response is that I should read a textbook in the subject.
Eight years ago, Luke Muehlhauser wrote,
However, I have repeatedly found that this is not good advice for me.
I want to briefly list the reasons why I don’t find sitting down and reading a textbook that helpful for learning. Perhaps, in doing so, someone else might appear and say, “I agree completely. I feel exactly the same way” or someone might appear to say, “I used to feel that way, but then I tried this...” This is what I have discovered:
When I sit down to read a long textbook, I find myself subconsciously constantly checking how many pages I have read. For instance, if I have been sitting down for over an hour and I find that I have barely made a dent in the first chapter, much less the book, I have a feeling of hopelessness that I’ll ever be able to “make it through” the whole thing.
When I try to read a textbook cover to cover, I find myself much more concerned with finishing rather than understanding. I want the satisfaction of being able to say I read the whole thing, every page. This means that I will sometimes cut corners in my understanding just to make it through a difficult part. This ends in disaster once the next chapter requires a solid understanding of the last.
Reading a long book feels less like I’m slowly building insights and it feels more like I’m doing homework. By contrast, when I read blog posts it feels like there’s no finish line, and I can quit at any time. When I do read a good blog post, I often end up thinking about its thesis for hours afterwards even after I’m done reading it, solidifying the content in my mind. I cannot replicate this feeling with a textbook.
Textbooks seem overly formal at points. And they often do not repeat information, instead putting the burden on the reader to re-read things rather than repeating information. This makes it difficult to read in a linear fashion, which is straining.
If I don’t understand a concept I can get “stuck” on the textbook, disincentivizing me from finishing. By contrast, if I just learned as Muehlhauser described, by “consuming blog posts, Wikipedia articles, classic texts, podcast episodes, popular books, video lectures, peer-reviewed papers, Teaching Company courses, and Cliff’s Notes” I feel much less stuck since I can always just move from one source to the next without feeling like I have an obligation to finish.
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.
I’ve also been reading textbooks more and experiencied some frustration, but I’ve found two things that, so far, help me get less stuck and feel less guilt.
After trying to learn math from textbooks on my own for a month or so, I started paying a tutor (DM me for details) with whom I meet once a week. Like you, I struggle with getting stuck on hard exercises and/or concepts I don’t understand, but having a tutor makes it easier for me to move on knowing I can discuss my confusions with them in our next session. Unfortunately, a paying a tutor requires actually having $ to spare on an ongoing basis, but I also suspect for some people it just “feels weird”. If someone reading this is more deterred by this latter reason, consider that basically everyone who wants to seriously improve at any physical activity gets 1-on-1 instruction, but for some reason doing the same for mental activities as an adult is weirdly uncommon (and perhaps a little low status).
I’ve also started to follow MIT OCW courses for things I want to learn rather than trying to read entire textbooks. Yes, this means I may not cover as much material, but it has helped me better gauge how much time to spend on different topics and allow me to feel like I’m progressing. The major downside of this strategy is that I have to remind myself that even though I’m learning based on a course’s materials, my goal is to learn the material in a way that’s useful to me, not to memorize passwords. Also, because I know how long the courses would take in a university context, I do occasionally feel guilt if I fall behind due to spending more time on a specific topic. Still, on net, using courses as loose guides has been working better for me than just trying to 100 percent entire math textbooks.
When I read a textbook, I try to solve all exercises at the end of each chapter (at least those not marked “super hard”) before moving to the next. That stops me from cutting corners.
The only flaw I find with this is that if I get stuck on an exercise, I reach the following decision: should I look at the answer and move on, or should I keep at it.
If I choose the first option, this makes me feel like I’ve cheated. I’m not sure what it is about human psychology, but I think that if you’ve cheated once, you feel less guilty a second time because “I’ve already done it.” So, I start cheating more and more, until soon enough I’m just skipping things and cutting corners again.
If I choose the second option, then I might be stuck for several hours, and this causes me to just abandon the textbook develop an ugh field around it.
Maybe commit to spending at least N minutes on any exercise before looking up the answer?
Perhaps it says something about the human brain (or just mine) that I did not immediately think of that as a solution.
I was of the very same mind that you are now. I was somewhat against textbooks, but now textbooks are my only way of learning, not only for strong knowledge but also fast.
I think there are several important things in changing to textbooks only, first I have replaced my habit of completionism: not finishing a particular book in some field but change, it if I don’t feel like it’s helping me or a if things seem confusing, by another textbook in the same field. lukeprog’s post is very handy here.
The idea of changing text-books has helped me a lot, sometimes I just thought I did not understand something but apparently I was only needing another explanation.
Two other important things, is that I take quite a lot of notes as I’m reading. I believe that if someone is just reading a text-book, that person is doing it wrong and a disservice to themselves. So I fill as much as I can in my working memory, be it three, four paragraphs of content and I transcribe those myself in my notes. Coupled with this is making my own questions and answers and then putting them on Anki (space-repetition memory program).
This allows me to learn vast amounts of knowledge in low amounts of time, assuring myself that I will remember everything I’ve learned. I believe textbooks are key component for this.