When I listen to podcasts at home, I forget most of the conversation. If I listen to it while walking or driving, I still remember most of it as well as the exact spot on the street or road where I heard a significant exchange.
Pattern-detection is the key for me...in your view would that fall under the "chunking" category? Experience and time can provide insights, assuming you're willing and focused. What are effective ways to accelerate pattern-detection? NNT's Lindy Effect helped here, and is a big reason why I've gone back to "The Great Books" model. Read original sources, not just secondary/commentary sources.
A related NNT point that has stuck with me is that high frequency information is very noisy. He relates a study in which participants see an image partially unscrambled in sequences of varying length. The group that sees more of the intermediate steps actually has a much harder time identifying what the picture is than the group that sees the transformation happening at a lower frequency. This is why following the news too closely can make it harder to understand what’s going on.
I think what works best for me is obsessively focusing on a topic for a short period of time by reading deeply from the best sources, writing about it, and bringing it up in conversations I’m having. A book review, blog post, or a great conversation you take notes on makes a great chunk. Then when you move on to the next topic it’s really easy to connect back to previous chunks and discover interesting areas of overlap. Higher level patterns start to emerge that you couldn’t see before.
On reading original sources, I think I could do better at this to be honest. There’s a few I go back to again and again for deeper insight, but at times I lack the commitment to delve into something like Moby Dick if I haven’t already paid the upfront cost it takes to appreciate something like that. I do read a lot of things from several years or decades back though which I think is underrated. That’s enough time to escape the most severe recency bias of “the current thing” while still leaving you with a fair amount of direct context to interpret what you read.
When I listen to podcasts at home, I forget most of the conversation. If I listen to it while walking or driving, I still remember most of it as well as the exact spot on the street or road where I heard a significant exchange.
Pattern-detection is the key for me...in your view would that fall under the "chunking" category? Experience and time can provide insights, assuming you're willing and focused. What are effective ways to accelerate pattern-detection? NNT's Lindy Effect helped here, and is a big reason why I've gone back to "The Great Books" model. Read original sources, not just secondary/commentary sources.
A related NNT point that has stuck with me is that high frequency information is very noisy. He relates a study in which participants see an image partially unscrambled in sequences of varying length. The group that sees more of the intermediate steps actually has a much harder time identifying what the picture is than the group that sees the transformation happening at a lower frequency. This is why following the news too closely can make it harder to understand what’s going on.
I think what works best for me is obsessively focusing on a topic for a short period of time by reading deeply from the best sources, writing about it, and bringing it up in conversations I’m having. A book review, blog post, or a great conversation you take notes on makes a great chunk. Then when you move on to the next topic it’s really easy to connect back to previous chunks and discover interesting areas of overlap. Higher level patterns start to emerge that you couldn’t see before.
On reading original sources, I think I could do better at this to be honest. There’s a few I go back to again and again for deeper insight, but at times I lack the commitment to delve into something like Moby Dick if I haven’t already paid the upfront cost it takes to appreciate something like that. I do read a lot of things from several years or decades back though which I think is underrated. That’s enough time to escape the most severe recency bias of “the current thing” while still leaving you with a fair amount of direct context to interpret what you read.