
You've Probably Read Enough - bennesvig
http://bennesvig.com/2011/12/05/youve-probably-read-enough/
======
jcr
Though the time I spend here on HN is both enjoyable and educational, a few
months ago I ran an interesting test. For each article I read, I wrote down a
one line entry on a piece of paper noting the site and basic gist of the
article. The next day, before I was "allowed" to read any more articles on HN,
I sat down with the blank side of said piece of paper from yesterday, and
wrote down the articles I remembered.

I hate to admit it, but my retention rate was just miserable, probably less
than 50%. Sure, remembering stuff "cold" on the next day is different than
remembering an association during a conversation (e.g. "Ya, I read something
about 'X' the other day."), but it was enough to make me wonder if my
educational entertainment reading was time well spent, or time wasted?

Everyone needs breaks, and it's fun to keep up with what's going on in the
world, but I might be better off doing something else...

~~~
_delirium
It's hard to say for sure, but I find the difference between "cold" recall and
latent recall of facts to be pretty large. Happens most frequently with stuff
I learned on Wikipedia: I'll end up in a conversation, find myself knowing a
fact that I shouldn't really have known given my background, and then realized
that I must've gotten it from Wikipedia. Sometimes _after_ that I can mentally
recreate the browsing path I must've used to get to the fact, even though I
wouldn't have been able to explicitly list the article in question as one I
remembered reading.

~~~
borism
it's called <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Associative_memory> (yeah, there's
plenty of links spanning from that article, I know)

I think there's a whole cult that promotes learning all kinds of things by
remembering by association, can't remember what it was called. My father was
introduced to it when he tried to learn a new language, but it failed
miserably at that (not all tools are suitable for everything).

Anyway, another good technique to recall something is to think about something
else for a moment and not concentrate on a particular thing you can't recall
at that moment too much.

~~~
lusr
I managed to memorize the forwards and backwards order of half a deck of cards
the first time I tried using this book: [http://www.amazon.com/How-Develop-
Super-Power-Memory/dp/0811...](http://www.amazon.com/How-Develop-Super-Power-
Memory/dp/0811901815)

And then I promptly picked up a new book to half read after life distracted me
for a week and I forgot about that one.

------
_delirium
It depends strongly on the subject, I find. Sometimes this advice is right;
sometimes it's very far off. I've made both mistakes, and it's hard to predict
which is which. Sometimes you read forever when you should've just done
something months ago. But other times you waste a lot of time badly
reinventing a wheel and getting saddled with bad design decisions that
should've been avoidable, because you didn't realize that what you were trying
to do already had a name and a lot of smart things written about it (or
realized but didn't want to read them). You might call that the "just get down
to business and parse HTML with a regex" school of getting-things-done, to
take an extreme but common example that might've benefitted from more reading.
;-) A lot of bad statistics are also in that category...

I think the 2nd mistake might actually be more common, given the amount of
wheel-reinventing (and not always reinventing _well_ ) that goes on, but it's
hard to say.

~~~
eric-hu
To add onto this: when you _do_ benefit from pre-researching sufficiently, you
may think it was necessary only for that situation.

We only need to wear seatbelts on the days we'll get into an accident, right?

~~~
hn_reader
I have this fear literally every time I start on a new problem: am I re-
inventing the wheel? Has this problem been solved already - maybe written
about and discussed at length about in some paper/textbook/blog I haven't
read? The more I learn the more I realize I don't know, which seems only
increases my anxiety level. So that's one reason I can't stop reading this
stuff.

------
physcab
No you probably haven't. The lessons I've learned as being a part of this
community over the past three years have been immeasurable, and that comes
from browsing this site daily. Here's a sample from the top of my head, and
this doesn't even come close to the edge cases where I've encountered a
specific problem in my day job and thought to myself "oh shit, I remember
reading an article about this on HN, let me go search for it". This also
applies to all the reading I've done for fun and in school.

\- Drawing U.S choropleth thematic maps (flowing data)

\- A/B testing, Adwords, SEO (patio11's blog)

\- D3 framework

\- VIM advice

\- Product development and importance of design

\- Being data driven

\- Conversion optimization

\- Importance of machine learning on web scale problems

\- Stupid business models vs business models that actually seem to work

\- Mistakes to avoid

Yes you learn by doing. But you learn just as much through discovery, and
discovery only happens when you read a shit ton more than you have to.
Discovery leads to idea generation. Idea generation leads to products.
Creating products leads to learning.

------
davesims
Unless you haven't. Hands-on is very important, especially early on when
learning something new. But after the early stages, hands-on only takes you so
far. You need to hit the books again.

You'll learn more starting out in Rails, for instance, by getting the basics
of controller actions and their relationships to views and then immediately
code some stuff. After that you can code till you're blue in the face but you
still won't know nothin' bout polymorphic relationships or has_many :through.
For that, you need to read some more.

I found over the years I need to have a steady cycle of practical coding,
reading, coding, reading. It just depends. If I'm in the heat of getting
features out the door, I don't read at all usually, I'm just doing what I do.
When things settle down for a bit, I pull out something to read that pushes my
weak areas. Maybe algorithms, or TCP/IP stuff I've neglected, or going over
stuff I knew at one point but lost out of my wee lil noggin.

That said, when I'm reading that stuff I'll usually have a terminal open where
I can practice, either in the shell, repl, mysql terminal, etc. So the cycles
of reading/coding can be get real short. That's when I get the most into my
brain, actually -- long sessions of doing both together.

------
mhartl
I advocate a spiral method: _learn_ until you have a basic grasp, then _do_
until you hit a wall, then _learn_ some more. Don't shirk the learning,
though, or anyone who _has_ done it will see right through you. For example,
when I started typesetting with LaTeX, I started by reading (and finishing) a
full LaTeX tutorial. Most people just grab a sample document and dive in, and
I can tell you that their markup _sucks_. It's painful to read, and difficult
to extend or maintain—and it's often ugly to boot. The difference between

    
    
        x$_{spring} = A sin(\omega t)$
    

and

    
    
        $x_\mathrm{spring} = A \sin(\omega t)$
    

is qualitative and unmistakable.

If you care about making things, there's no substitute for _doing_. If you
care about quality, there's no substitute for learning from the experts who
have gone before you.

------
gxs
Interestingly enough, this was the same approach that worked for me in school.

In college, I always felt that I couldn't start my math homework until I'd
read the chapter thoroughly. It wasn't til my last year/year and a half that I
realized, the best way to learn upper division math was to dive right into
solving the hard problems, referencing back as needed.

~~~
dbtc
This is what I have done since high school, but only because I never gave
myself enough time to review the chapter before having to rush through the
homework.

Sometimes I wondered if I would have done better having given myself more time
to study the materials.

------
Swannie
The basic premise is correct. Most people on HN are liable to read too much,
and not do enough.

Personally I believe you have to do both for the fastest learning process. The
"read, do, reflect" cycle. If you're not actively "doing" then you will read
and associate things quite differently. Without doing, you can build up a very
strong theoretical knowledge about a subject, but in doing, not realise the
correct time to act on that knowledge. It can also lead to analysis paralysis,
as you /know/ there is a bigger picture, and you're trying to figure it out -
where as the guy who never read, but just learned by doing, never got slowed
down by wondering about that bigger picture.

I know people who just do, and never read - they miss out on a lot of
shortcuts they could easily learn, or understanding the bigger picture,
motivations etc.

Reflection happens quite naturally for most of us here, but you'll often find
it works best when you are actively writing ideas down, or communicating them
to others. It then fuels going and reading or doing to fill knowledge gaps.

If you're not doing, then the next best thing you can do is mental rehearsal -
if you /did/ have to apply this skill/knowledge to a real situation, how would
you do it. You can then find yourself self-coaching when you do the activity
for real.

As an aside, this is why hobbies are a Good Thing (tm). They allow you to have
different sets of associations, so when I'm learning about a new area, I can
link an idea to say organising a scuba dive, rather than something like a
sprint planning session.

------
hrabago
At a certain point, it's no longer reading to gain more knowledge, it's about
procrastination.

Doing takes work, it requires making decisions, it requires critical thinking.
Reading helps you delay this with an activity you can justify to yourself as
being helpful in the long run.

However at a certain point, you've delayed too long and the time investment
you've sunk into reading has been way too much for what you're getting out of
it, compared to the act of doing and producing something and/or learning from
experience.

(Edit: spacing)

------
samdk
To add: stop reading the same things over and over.

A recurring theme of discussion on HN is whether or not the submissions are
getting worse. I tend to think they're not. (Although the comments are another
story.) It's just that the twentieth article you read on something like lean
startup methodologies is a lot less interesting than the first one.

------
KenjiCrosland
"Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be
chewed and digested" -Bacon

Unfortunately, most of what's out there on the blogs are only meant to be
tasted...if that. Direct experience is valuable, but direct experience guided
by an informed authority can be even more valuable.

------
angelbob
And yet here I am, not stopping.

I probably have some ulterior motive for reading, rather than really doing it
in order to be qualified for that startup idea I have.

But I won't know that until the next article gets upvoted that tells me my
mental state in one sentence!

------
austenallred
While it's true that reading one article, be it on HN or TC or wherever else,
won't make a huge difference, what makes a difference is the aggregate of
gleaning what information you can over a long period of time. Much like most
(real) classes, you can't really cram, but as you continually ingest
information it becomes a part of you.

Coming from the business end of things before I started programming, I learned
about IPOs not from business classes but from reading about which companies
would IPO. I learned about vesting schedules and cap sheets by reading about
people discussing these things. While it's taken years for me to feel like I
understands most of the ins and outs, it's also something that you really
should be learning second hand. You don't want to be talking to a potential
investor and have to ask him what a cap sheet is.

It's not about, "I will read this and understand," it's about immersing
yourself in the culture and picking things up as you go.

------
Tsagadai
You probably haven't read enough. It really depends on your goals and what you
are trying to learn (or whether you are trying to learn at all). Doing is
great and it's how you get things done but not everything can be learnt in a
few short articles. It also depends on what you are reading too. Reading
within a narrow field or an echo chamber can only take you so far. Reading and
discovering new ideas can completely transform your entire way of thinking.

Personally, I've set myself the arduous task of mastering English. If you are
reading for less than half your day, you will probably never get there with
that one.

Written language is a wonderful tool for understanding the past. If you think
you know everything there is to know about the past you are indisputably
wrong.

~~~
tcarney
If mastering English is your goal, then reading == doing

~~~
hrabago
If mastering English is your goal, then doing includes conversing. I know a
lot of children of immigrants who can understand their parents' language, but
can't converse in it.

~~~
kami8845
Where does one converse in English while in a foreign country? I basically
taught myself English using the Internet and even though my understanding is
top-notch due to copious amounts of reading & watching TV shows, my speech &
active vocab are severely underdeveloped.

~~~
fleitz
Get a VOIP/Skype account, find something to sell, phone people in English
speaking countries, and sell them it. Google for the expat community in your
country if you want someone local.

Apply for VISAs or other things at an English speaking foreign embassy.

Go on craigslist and find stuff for sale phone them and ask questions about
whatever it is they are selling. Phone recruiters from craigslist or
something.

Figure out something to do that involves English and just do it.

------
jorkos
Follow up: i've probably written enough...

------
daenz
Reminds me of
[http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103111...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002210311100031X)
Which basically alludes to visualizing your success tends to de-motivate you.
I can't help but wonder if the people who soak up articles/videos of other
people's accomplishments aren't living out their fantasies vicariously through
those people, and weakening their own potential.

------
mtgentry
I read HN and listen to podcasts like TWIST to expose myself to good ideas. My
theory is the more you expose yourself to talented thought leaders, the more
likely you are to think like them.

Then when you come across a problem while building your product, you can say
to yourself "Hey, this is what Mark Suster was talking about in that one blog
post...how did he solve the problem?"

~~~
swah
I wish that were true, but actually playing with SQL for the first hours can
teach you much more than 20 articles about InnoDB vs MyISAM, MySQL tuning, Sql
vs NoSql, etc...

------
taylorbuley
I have definitely not read enough.

I've been "self-teaching" (mostly via O'Reilly books) since 2007 and I have
completely changed my career. I grow as a programmer more and more every day,
mostly thanks to reading.

Sure, I've read books like "Learn You A Haskell" without putting much into
practice. But I feel I am much better off reading about new ideas even if I
can't make every day use of them.

------
dasil003
I think this is a relatively new phenomenon. 20 years ago you had to try hard
to find an exhaustive amount of information on any specific topic, and what
you did find tended to have been through a few gatekeepers. Now you can
fritter away the days reading "useful" information because it's so prolific
and readily available almost anywhere you are.

~~~
larrys
Absolutely. One of my first real programming books was "C" and also one on
Unix. I had to drive for a half an hour to the Princeton Univ. bookstore. No
such thing as computer books really at normal bookstores back then.

Ditto for gatekeepers. Have a legal issue you want to research? You went to
the law library and sat there for hours and used the coin op copier.

------
bprater
When I want to jump into a new interest, I usually spend a chunk of time at
the beginning watching videos or grazing thru a manual.

Even if I don't "get" everything yet -- knowing that Final Cut can do "X, Y,
Z" and it's somewhere in the middle of the manual -- can be useful in removing
some of the early frustration in the learning process.

~~~
div
This is very much how my brain works too, and I wonder if it's prevalent at
all.

I'll know something is possible, and vaguely know what the technique is
called, and I will be able to incorporate that knowledge into my thinking.

Then whenever it is time to build stuff, there's a lot of very specific
googling to lay down a strong foundation of a solution.

------
ofca
Exactly > take the red pill! :) there is too much ambiguation. People spend
months,years even, daydreaming. Fuck that childish nonsense. I am learning JS
atm and loving myself for actually doing something. It is hard as hell but at
least I'm moving forward, instead of being trapped in a dream.

~~~
Mediocrity
"People spend months,years even, daydreaming."

 _Raises his hand_

And the damned truth is, I know I'll probably fail because of it.

Not that that helps.

------
denzil_correa
Would this hold true for all "kinds-of" audience? People opting in for a
career in research (for example) are asked to read & assimilate more than the
norm. The trick though is to remember the good parts and the ability to recall
the good parts. Your thoughts?

------
LVB
I think that learning something new was a lot easier for me when I had the
completely incorrect impression that almost everything I needed to know was in
the one book I got from the library or bookstore (especially back when these
places would often have only one book on a technical topic). Once I understood
the book, I'd be a master! Being young, naive, and without any internet left
me awfully gung-ho and I didn't need any external "Just Do It" prodding. Now
when I think I'm interested in learning something new, and I dare do search on
it, it's something akin to the scene in The Lawnmower Man where the guy's head
almost explodes when he walks into the library and tries to absorb everything.

------
fleitz
I find that a read/do cycle works really well, especially with a specific task
at hand. Doing is important, but if you can learn from others at the same time
I find it works really well.

The task at hand is merely to focus your attention on the specific path and
along that path you'll learn what you need to do the other things in the
field.

If you're trying to learn accounting it won't work by just reading a book, or
just trying to balance your cheque book, but if you have a book and you refer
to it while progressing through the balancing of your cheque book you'll learn
what you need to know, and a large number of things that you didn't know you
didn't know which you can learn later with a specific task in mind.

------
sbov
I think this is good advice if you have a particular goal in mind ("be able to
edit videos"). It's harder if your goal is more vague ("be better at what I
do").

I've found that I read through technical books/articles to get through them as
fast as possible rather than actual learning. In the end, they don't help me
much because I forget most of it.

Lately, instead of reading chapter after chapter of a book, I like to take in
a concept, reflect on how it might have applied to past, present, and future
projects. Then, I like to write code to prototype the concept, while examining
at how I might have done it previously. I find it helps a lot more than blind
reading. Of course, it also takes a bit longer.

------
ericdykstra
Like most things, it's not an extreme of one or the other. Once you stop
reading and start doing, it's not like you can never go back to reading. If
you dive into doing right away, that doesn't mean you can't go back and read.

Studying, doing, reviewing is a good feedback loop. You study what you're
going to learn in small chunks, spend some time grinding it out and working on
it the best you can, then stepping back and reviewing your progress or lack
thereof. Then back to reading, either reviewing what you read before, or
moving onto the next chunk if you've mastered the previous one.

------
miles_matthias
I used to read HN a ton when I had a job that I hated and they didn't give me
much work to do. Now that I'm doing what I love (mobile development), I read
HN much less often. And I think I'm learning a lot more.

------
vanni
> What is reading one more article going to do? Probably nothing.

Reading articles after articles instead of doing things is a very common form
of procrastination. From Wikipedia: "procrastination refers to the act of
replacing high-priority actions with tasks of low-priority".

<on-topic-shameless-plug>

To fight this plague I'm working on an anti-procrastination web community for
startup founders and people working on side projects: asaclock™
(<http://www.asaclock.com>).

</on-topic-shameless-plug>

------
redouane
> To get started on one of your lingering interests, you probably don’t need
> to read about it as much as you think. Go. Do it. And learn from there.

before you "do", you have to read how to do (otherwise you wont know where to
start, and will most likely end up getting bored and give up ) , do it , and
then read how "they" do it. that one more article could piece together the
puzzle you're stuck on. while i agree that learning by doing and breaking
stuff is the way to go, reading is just as important to me.

------
wavetossed
But reading is good for reminders. Go ahead, read a couple of books on a topic
and then try to "do". You will soon be knee deep in alligators and unable to
remember everything that you absorbed in those two "great books". The solution
is to read everyday and let it remind you, directly or indirectly, of the
great stuff that you studied but have nearly forgotten because you haven't put
it into practice.

------
saturdaysaint
There's a profound difference between having "read enough" insightful books
and/or lengthy articles on a subject and having "read enough" Youtube videos
and blurby articles on a subject. With the former, a few days of deep reading
can yield insights and techniques that months of unskilled "jumping into it"
wouldn't have revealed. With the latter, yeah, you'll face diminishing returns
pretty quickly.

------
shn
This is the reason I like hanging out at HN, finding people like me with
similar problems. Glad that I am not alone trying to deal with this as well.

------
ethank
Every time I think that I read too much I take a break and miss something that
I know I would have liked, needed or benefitted from.

And then I end up in the other place where I have tabs of articles and
kindle's of books, instapaper and reading list full.

Right now, since I'm in "startup" mode I'm both producing (code, writing, on-
boarding docs) and consuming and I'm completely overwhelmed. But I wouldn't
have it any other way.

------
djacobs
I find people who 'do' and don't 'read' annoying. They tend not to understand
their current cultural and mathematical context and end up re-inventing the
wheel in their products.

These are the guys who tweet about 'this cool new language, Lisp' and talk
about basic CS algorithms as if they were breaking news, discoveries that will
disrupt the industry.

That said, at the end of the day, yes: doing is great for understanding.

------
Hortinstein
i have a huge problem with this, between HN, /r/programming, /r/netsec,
/r/technology, fastcompany, I find myself not really "doing" that much with
programming as a hobby. I studied computer science in college, and for the
last 3 years have been working in the military outside the field, but my
passion still lies with computer science. Unfortunately these days it seems I
mostely read into the success of others.

I guess a lot of it was getting burned out on tutorials, I have a hard time
completing them, because the thrill of programming for me lies in solving a
new problem, not typing in someone else code. It has been hard for me to pick
up rails even with the excellent rails tutorial just because I dont find it
all that exciting to type in verbatum code. Anyone have any good suggestions
for learning new languages?

I think that just starting small scope projects and adding to them
incrementaly with some good ref materials might be the solution.

~~~
Apocryphon
That's what I'm grappling with right now myself, I've assembled a hefty doc's
worth of links to useful resources I've found, and I've got a small library of
programming books I've bought lately.

For the holidays, my current plan is to go through a chapter a day of the
programming books. Not just read through it, but actually do the example
projects, retyping out the code line by line, understanding both the big
picture and seeing if there's any gaps in the code that I don't understand.
Actually try to experiment afterwards, try to build on top of smaller projects
and put them together.

------
kolinko
I think it's like saying "listen, you've learned enough as a programmer, that
one additional technique won't change too much in your career".

Sure - there is a limit of healthy news consumption, but if you stop reading
altogether (or limit yourself only to "worthy" content) you may wake up in a
couple of years and discover that you're an ignorant fool.

------
cmaggard
This is completely true for me. Every time I want to start a project using
something new, I get completely sidetracked wanting to read everything I can
get my hands on regarding it. So many side projects have died before they ever
really began that way.

------
noonespecial
Just to throw up a counter example. I spent a ridiculous amount of time in
Photoshop using warp when what I really wanted was liquify. 10 minutes of
reading could have fixed that.

------
aravindj
My perspective : Take much time to read (probably learn). Take less time to do
(No. I haven't said, do little!)

------
pnathan
Depends on the subject, there's an asymptotic dropoff in usefulness as you
become more and more read in it.

------
mmmmax
Does anyone else see the irony here?

------
ulisesrmzroche
The algorithm is actually read, do, repeat. "Do" gets entirely too much credit
because of Yoda.

------
cannibalbob
I'm illiterate though.

------
freemarketteddy
Our brains are much more complex data processing systems than we or even the
latest neuroscience research can fathom...my advice would be to just keep
reading whatever and whenever you feel like it...leave the analysis and
processing to your brain!

That being said...I also think that going on information diets(vacation to a
beautiful place) for a cpl weeks every few months can be very advantageous for
very long term memory retention and also for letting the brain derive awesome
conclusions from all that information...just like sleeping for 8 hours
everyday has been proved to improve short term and near long term memory
retention.

------
billpatrianakos
I think this is true in phases. When you barely know something, readin can
help a lot. Then you do it, get it, and reading about the same things does
nothing. Once you move up the ladder so to speak you can once again gain a lot
from reading. It's only once you've really mastered something that reading no
longer helps and you end up just repeating the same articles over and over.

------
DefinitelyNbdy
Re-posting a comment to the blog to get HN reaction:

Since this article doesn't obviously have an intended audience, you seem to be
saying that everyone, everywhere should stop reading all articles once they
posses the ability to read English well enough to comprehend this article. It
is an interesting idea, but I suspect that this would lead to very uneducated
people, so that people who ignore your advice are going to be better educated.
If a senior citizen is told, "You've probably read enough" then, yes, maybe
they will agree and proceed to purchase a plane ticket to the Bahamas. But if
a teenager reads this article, the reaction will probably be, "sure, and by
the same token, can you tell my teachers to stop assigning me homework?"

In any case, the core of the point is that by ignoring your advice, your
readers can be better educated. Now, I am a Christian, but stupid priests who
proclaim the creation myth until their vocal chords give way share something
with you: if you ignore THEIR advice, you will be better educated, at least in
science.

But really, you're right. The human race has reached the end of knowledge.
There really isn't anything more anyone could possibly learn, so why try?

