book … I’m reading somewhere between ten and twenty books. I’m flipping through them.” [1]
(5) Hupomnemata
Write things down in a notebook. Michel Foucault in his writing on Ethics [2] talks about the hupomnemata, a journal concept from the Ancient Greeks. It is written in order “to capture the already said, to collect what one has managed to hear or read, and for a purpose that is nothing less than the shaping of the self”. It is not meant to be “a detached documentary” but rather “the hupomnemata makes the writer just as surely as the writer makes the hupomnemata” [3].
(6) Repetition
Re-read, as Foucault continues, “from time to time so as to reactualise“[2]. Try to use methods like spaced active repetition so that each repetition leads to efficient retention.
(7) Tell others in order to clarify your own thought
Explain your ideas to someone, ideally someone with no prior knowledge. Here the famous Feynman Technique comes to mind. As America’s greatest thinker Charles Sanders Peirce put it “The very first lesson that we have a right to demand that logic shall teach us is, how to make our ideas clear … To know what we think, to be masters of our own meaning, will make a solid foundation for great and weighty thought.“
(8) Be just the right amount of sceptical
“It makes me nervous when someone believes too deeply or too much. I think that being skeptical and questioning all deeply held beliefs is essential. Of course we must know the difference between skepticism and cynicism because cynicism is as much a restriction of one’s openness to the world as passionate belief is. They are sort of twins.” [4]
(9) Read widely
“Don’t just read in business or finance. Expand the scope into new domains or fields. Follow your curiosity. It is hard to know when an idea from an apparently disparate field may come in handy” Mauboussin [5]
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