Reading 100 Books

Learning to learn (Part 2)

Let’s pick up from where we left off. A little recap

There are two things you learn by learning. The first is the act, the second is the resource or knowledge. The first will help you create a habit or develop qualities such as consistency and speed, the second will impact the knowledge which was probably your goal.

That thing you do when you say, “I want to read 100 books this year” is not a bad thing in itself because it will teach you how to read better and maybe consistency and a couple of other qualities unless you meant to say “I want to be smarter”, then, you might not finish a hundred books, matter of fact, you might have to read one book more than once. Unless you meant to say “I want to be good at this thing” then you might have to read only one or two books for a year or more because you are learning something specific, something you can apply to a field of work or life. You might pick up qualities like consistency, speed, and the others on the way but don’t get the goal confused.

I’ve been reading three books on psychology and cognition for a year now and I’m not halfway done.

Read a hundred books if you want, in fact, you should because it is a good thing but be sure what the goal is because the act does not necessarily make you smarter and if your goal is to be smarter, you might want to pay attention to how you read. Chances are, it will be different and it won't matter when you finish the book as much as when you fully understand what you seek to know.

The act is a part of learning, it is not all there is.