

Ask HN: Has anyone trained themselves deliberately in unique skills? - vijayr

Examples would be:<p>lucid dreaming<p>Visualizing&#x2F;Imagining&#x2F;Creativity (there was an article about someone training like Tesla, can&#x27;t remember his name)<p>sensory - increasing the power of senses (a few years ago, I remember going for a walk blindfolded, in a camp I had gone to)<p>etc. How did you do it?
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azeirah
Hey, sorry this is not answering your post, but I saw your question on an old
thread
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9236997](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9236997)
and I want you to read my answer.

I was wrong, smart-content is not by itself pointless entertainment. It's all
about your state of mind while reading it. I believed that reading smart-
content would make me smarter. Like you, I've read hundreds of hacker news
submissions. Yet I gained nearly no knowledge.

To answer your question; you've already figured out what you should and
shouldn't read. What -really- matters is -how- you read. Don't skim and expect
to become smarter automatically. Because when you do this, you assume the
author is right all the time. You need to be critical.

And ooooh, I've heard that one so many times "just be critical". I've never
understood what this meant, until I decided I wanted to truly understand my
texts. It can take me over five minutes to read a single page since I've
started trying to truly undertand a book.

Try some of these, see which ones you like and which ones you dislike. Find
the ones that work for you. I've tried these and found that they help me dig
really deep into any text.

\- Doodle and write in books. Honestly \- Collect and present a text's
statements and opinions as fact. I can assure you you will find logical
inconsistencies \- Summarize texts \- Force yourself to capture the essence of
a text within one sentence

