Optimal Book Dosage

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Scott 2
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Optimal Book Dosage

Post by Scott 2 »

What's the optimal book dosage for personal growth?

In my experience a great book can distill a lifetime of experience into a few hundred pages. The real time investment is not ingesting the words, but synthesizing them into practical experience.

So what can be synthesized, reasonably?

I say one book a quarter - a new text every three months. Anything beyond that a luxury, discarding the real potential the texts, using them simply as entertainment.

fips
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Re: Optimal Book Dosage

Post by fips »

According to Blinkist, reading 4 books (as distilled in their summaries) a day is the only new way to become the next successful entrepreneur tomorrow. At least if you believe in their latest ads ;-)

I think the dosage much depends on the purpose you have for reading the book and its type:
- relaxing
- learning a new technical skill
- learning from a biography / from history
- practicing a new language
- etc.

The reading process can be adjusted accordingly:
- skim chapters
- read and flag relevant passages
- reflect on it by writing/talking about it
- read them as manuals and test your learnings as you proceed on reading
- re-read them in certain intervals
- etc.

In general, I would agree that there is much to learn from books - but only if studied/applied/enjoyed with sincere interest (opposed to merely reading them). Your interest, your purpose and your way of reading then influence your dosage.

Also, anecdotally (and insofar taking a similar line to Blinkist), Elon Musk and Warren Buffett are said to have been avid readers (and probably still are) - sponges of knowledge.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Optimal Book Dosage

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

It depends on what stock(s) you are attempting to maximize within your system.

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jennypenny
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Re: Optimal Book Dosage

Post by jennypenny »

One book a quarter? If you don't start reading 'real' books until you're 25 and you read regularly until you're 75, that means you'll only read 200 great books in your life. I know I'm a hyper-reader and should take more time to digest what I read, but I can't imagine not trying to read as much as possible. I reread texts if I feel I'd get more out of another pass.

Don't go by me though. I'm a total nerd when it comes to reading. I remember getting choked up once in a large library when it occurred to me that I'd never be able to read even a tiny fraction of the great books out there that are worth reading. #bookdork

7Wannabe5
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Re: Optimal Book Dosage

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@jennypenny:

+1000

As far as I am concerned, the primary reason to achieve financial independence is to better free up time for reading. Obviously, I was recently temporarily somewhat distracted from my prime objective due to severe peri-menopausal hormonal fluctuations leading to attempt to maximize other stocks, but I believe that storm has now passed. #donotbothermeiamreading

Dream of Freedom
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Re: Optimal Book Dosage

Post by Dream of Freedom »

I see your point. This seams like a cookie cutter one size fits all solution though.

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jennypenny
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Re: Optimal Book Dosage

Post by jennypenny »

Thinking about the fact that this is Scott 2's idea ... he is probably much more selective and deliberate in his reading choices and that would obviously make a difference. High quality reading material deserves some time to digest.

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Re: Optimal Book Dosage

Post by jacob »

The OP question is like asking for optimal exercise dosage. If you're illiterate, then reading even your first book might open your eyes significantly cf. never having read anything at all. If you already read 2000 books, then reading 2001 is unlikely to add that much more. Because the domain of human ideas seems finite, the benefit of reading seems to follow a logistic curve!?

=> The more you already know about the sphere of human ideas, the less there is to learn for all practical purposes.

I suggest changing the focus from rate of reading to absolute count of non-fluff books read and effectively retained. From eye-balling it, the average adult manage to incorporate and retain the wisdom/insight/understanding of the world corresponding roughly to a smart 8th grader or thereabouts. That corresponds to an effective lifetime reading resume of about 50 books or so.

IlliniDave
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Re: Optimal Book Dosage

Post by IlliniDave »

I've sort of tailed off my reading in recent years, and a significant but not overwhelming majority of my reading has always been for entertainment. For now I'm in a phase where I'm more about doing than reading--maybe because I know my time for that will probably be less than my time for reading.

My advice is always have something you are reading somewhere easily at hand. The optimum is probably at that thin line between where setting aside time for reading is still something to look forward to, and where it becomes a chore. Where that line lies is a very personal/individual thing.

Jason

Re: Optimal Book Dosage

Post by Jason »

I read a book by an ex-academic who underwent a conversion and now raises foster children. However, she says still forces herself to read 100 pages a day. I take that tact but probably average around 50 a day but I try for at least two hours of heavy lifting.

On a related note, I find this to be a good way to start on new topics that grab my interest.

https://fivebooks.com

Scott 2
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Re: Optimal Book Dosage

Post by Scott 2 »

I'm a reformed reader. I used to get into a topic, then read all the books as fast as I could. My retention is pretty good, so I'd be a fake expert, with weird depth levels and no practical experience.

Reading feels productive. Knowing facts is fun. I'll happily use it to hide from the "hard work"

Over the years, I've gotten to intermediate level in a few topics. It's been my observation that there's usually enough information in one good overview text, to reach that level. The fine nuances of expertise, when read, were wasted on my ignorance. I only really learned them through experience, often learning directly from an expert.

Jenny Penny's count of 200 books over 50 years does make one book a quarter sound low. Having read much more in the past, my existing knowledge base could skew my perspective, per Jacob's point on a finite number of ideas.

Another problem I've observed, is there seems to be a cap on ideas I can actively retain. I spent years building up to moderately high level university math. Yet I couldn't solve a quadratic equation today without looking up the formula. It'd come back pretty easy, but I'm many levels below where I was even upon high school graduation.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Optimal Book Dosage

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@jacob:

I think the only way any human could fall off the curve of worthwhile reading would involve some level of rough dispensation of many topics and genres to the fluff of no interest bucket. Off the top of my head, I might suggest:

The Decoration of Houses- Edith Wharton
Collected Fiction- Louis Zukofsky
Babyhood- Penelope Leach
Regency Buck- Georgette Heyer
In the American Grain- William Carlos Williams

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jennypenny
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Re: Optimal Book Dosage

Post by jennypenny »

@7W5 -- I think as women we have an advantage. While we might enjoy reading books like Shop Class as Soulcraft, it's probably less likely that they would enjoy The Hidden Art of Homemaking as much. I'm not sure if that's innate or social conditioning (and I'm happy to be proven wrong) but in my experience even the most intelligent, independent-minded men seem to have a more narrow range of subjects they find engaging.

Maybe it has something to do with S2's comment about reading feeling productive? Dunno.

Kriegsspiel
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Re: Optimal Book Dosage

Post by Kriegsspiel »

A book a week sounds a lot better than one every 13 weeks. Jacob's scale from the other thread applies: most books you read only impart a new fact, some change your perspective on everything. You don't need 13 weeks to learn something new about Roman history or whatever, you may take 13 weeks to synthesize a textbook, or Meditations.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Optimal Book Dosage

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@jennypenny:

Bear in mind that I actually made my living as a self-employed rare book/scout dealer, and I was for number of years the individual who managed the flow of inventory through the alpha book store in the most educated city in the United States. So, I will obviously be motivated to argue against limitations to utility of books or reading.

That said, I agree that it might be an interesting exercise to try to find the next 4 books that might serve as the slow-digest protein portion of my more varied book diet. I just started reading "Complexity: A Guided Tour"-Mitchell and "The Art of Computer Programming"- Knuth, and I am certain that it will take some time for me to engage in full cognition with them, but they are too much alike to be the only books I am reading. That would be like having broiled sirloin and grilled salmon for dinner and nothing else.

Also, there was a bit of seriousness behind the seemingly somewhat silly suggestions for further reading I offered above. For instance, Jacob is interested in how people learn and why people sometimes reject science. "Babyhood" by Leach offers an interesting perspective on both these topics due to Leach's very intelligent midway take (likely she is another rare female INTJ) on the downside/upside of scientific management of infant-care and early development. IOW, although this book might be superficially categorized or dismissed as "just an out-dated baby care manual", I would suggest that given careful reading, it might offer some valuable insight into the current cultural trends towards rejection of vaccinations by some and rejection of breast-feeding by others, which might serve as model for how odd dichotomies form along cultural lines in other realms of science-towards-practice "debate."

I suggested Zukofsky because he likely has approximately the same IQ as Jacob, and he writes extremely dense, complex fiction which can't possibly just be skimmed for plot. I suggested "In the American Grain" because Williams chose to write history as mythos, or mythos as history, so this is a very unique book which might prove interesting to some readers of Woodard's "American Nations." I believe "Decoration of Houses", written by the brilliant novelist Wharton, was one of the first books to recommend function over frou-frou in the realm of interior design for the affluent. And, it is my firm conviction that any man who hasn't bothered to read at least 3 works in the romance genre should never be allowed to complain about his dealings with females .I chose Georgette Heyer novel in this genre, because she obviously studied psychology and created some rather unusual characters based on certain types, so although her novels certainly could just be skimmed for standard romance plot, they can also be read as interesting explications of ponderings such as "how might it happen that an ISTP would fall in love with an ESFJ?"

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jennypenny
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Re: Optimal Book Dosage

Post by jennypenny »

@7W5 -- I wasn't saying that some books aren't as useful to men as women. I was only pointing out that in my experience that men seem more limited in the types of books they consider reading. I wonder if it has to do with them having to know ahead of time how a book might be useful to them. (I feel like this relates to the Fish thread about time management, but i'm not going to derail Scott's thread with my musings. I also realize I making a huge generalization.)

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Re: Optimal Book Dosage

Post by jacob »

@7wb5, jp

Ahh, the peak of algorithmic writing complete with optimized execution/operation load (when humans were cheaper than CPU power) ... from the good old days when real men/programmers didn't eat quiche/use pascal yet. Maybe the TeX book is next? Now, there's some confused pain for the DIY type-setter's brain :)

I dunno if men or women rate books differently. I have way too few datapoints to evaluate that. One of my great disappointments with academia is how few actually seem to read and think about things other than pin-sized specializations.

Maybe this question needs to be considered along 4+ dimensions?
  1. Number of books already read (and thus experience with reading books)
  2. Level of education and interests (e.g. maybe one is highly self-educated in Star Trek fan-fiction..)
  3. Personality temperament
  4. Gender?
The first seems to be S-curved. (I said logistic above, but I think I neglected the lower end). People who read few books (say 1 book every other year ... statistics say there are a lot of those guys) read/process written words very slowly. Out of practice. Those who read a lot of books (say 50+/year) know that: 1) there are more books out there than they can read in a lifetime but also that the number of good books out there is few and far in between, so there has to be some evaluation going on ... insofar there's a desire to avoid fluff. (I dunno if that desire is gender conditioned?!? .. don't really see why it should be.)

The second is very individual. Again, S-curve. You need to know enough to appreciate something because reading seems to be mostly about trawling information streams while being in a state to appreciate a particular sentence or paragraph(?)(*). But if you know too much, there's nothing new. Somewhere in he middle of the S-curve maybe one gets concerned about "what's best to read"? Towards the end, one realizes, there's little left [in the field].

(*) Or maybe that's just the perspective of a trawler ... rather than someone who spends 3 months pondering a given book.

The third which I may confound with second or fourth. Anecdotal example: my secondary education considered analyzing literature to be the most important activity of all school subjects in terms of school classes and homework assigned :( . Yes, moreso than teaching critical thinking, rhetoric, statistics or applied thermodynamics. I know this is hard to believe. But that was the early 1990s.

Senior HS is when I finally had enough and openly questioned my teachers in Literature (and generic Religion---not parochial school, more a general overview class) what the point of spending so much time---and I paraphrase my original words, because I remember the two exchanges only semi-accurately---"the questionable point of trying to use fiction to understand past/current society when most of those authors were demonstrably not representative given how they committed suicide left and right (unlike the average person) and how our preferred method of Freudian analysis was demonstrably oversimplified and thus shouldn't be applied, at least not to pre-Freud writings"(*).

(Or why text-analysis (rather than e.g. historical theories, reductionism, historisism, or whatever) which in a class room of 15-18 year olds turned into a "just make shit up and argue/project yourself" didn't fly well with my internal BS detector and how I wished that maybe there were better ways... Possibly they were playing a meta-game on seeing if anyone would ever notice that; but if so, my grades in those classes didn't reflect it :-P My final examination in HS went down in flames as they wanted me to explain what I thought Socrates was feeeling when he drank the koolaid.)

(*) While I was oblivious to the effect/external consequences at the time ... I'm pretty sure that didn't go over well. My geography teacher really [*wink wink*] appreciated the sentiment though. Another clue, I missed. One day during our senior year, everybody got assigned into groups or around 5 with a random teacher to discuss education and pedagogical methods in general. That's when that happened.

Anyhoo ... as a result of all that I have a fairly strained relationship with the strategy of expressing ideas via fiction or using fiction as a means for commentary on life. Poems and poets go right out the window as far as I'm concerned. Any poem in any book, I skip straight over. If I'm familiar with anything poetry, it's always because there's some irresistible phrase somewhere in there. Obviously, the center didn't hold...

Pain, desolation, plastic forks
Oh woe, is me, blabla.
What did the tree say, again?

I'm thinking most of this is simply because I (INTJ who's "like a smart^H^H^H^Hconceited^H^H^Harrogant person" :-P ) don't relate very much at all to fictional characters; or find the way they're described isn't relevant nor provide useful insight. If I read fiction, it's mostly for complex ideas or complex worlds (Frank Herbert, Chixin Liu, Stephen Donaldson). Like regular humans (pffft :| ), fictional characters seem mostly flat or unrelatable, similar to biographies. I like Darwin's though.

Jason

Re: Optimal Book Dosage

Post by Jason »

jacob wrote:
Wed Nov 08, 2017 4:16 pm

Pain, desolation, plastic forks
Oh woe, is me, blabla.
What did the tree say, again?
Man, that shit is good.

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jennypenny
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Re: Optimal Book Dosage

Post by jennypenny »

jacob wrote:
Wed Nov 08, 2017 4:16 pm
I dunno if men or women rate books differently.
That's not exactly what I meant. I meant more in getting people interested in reading the material in the first place. I'm withdrawing my comment because I don't think I'm expressing it well and I don't want to come across the wrong way.


I think you're right that so few people read regularly, and in a variety of disciplines, that it's hard to generalize.

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Re: Optimal Book Dosage

Post by jacob »

@Jason - Well, insofar the Nobel prize committee wants to, they can paypal me whatever six+-figs they offer these days :-P I still like money for score-keeping. I'll even make a super-rare stratospheric-polluting flying exception for the acceptance speech. The anti-litt. rant will certainly be somewhere between to #truthtopower and #crudenerdincorporated. FWIW, I'll be more opinionated than Bob Dylan as far as Nobels are concerned :roll: And insofar the litterati is concerned, I think I can come up with an algo that pumps out similar prose on demand for the eternal torture of younglings w/o any way out but to play along until they get their sheepskin in the form of laserprint.

@jp - I'm definitely damaged goods as far as reading preferences go. Also an outlier. Ergodicity is yet to kick in for certain topics.

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