How did I learn to read
I began to read in 5-4-3 years. The figure called by my mother, for some reason, decreases with time. I still remember the sofa, the fluffy blanket on it, and a few letters cut out of colored paper. “Mom”, “Dad”, “Sasha” - the composition of the words seemed a miracle.
Learning to compose words, I quietly learned to parse them. Tales of Andersen, Deniskins Tales, Encyclopedias - there were so many things to read! And I read. Reading no longer seemed like a miracle, but how many miracles were in the described worlds.
A breakthrough occurred in five or six years. My father read something of his own, I read “Dunno in the Solar City” (Saint Feynman, I still remember it!). I spoke the words carefully, aloud, monotonously - and this prevented my father from concentrating on his book. He asked me to read silently , and I was surprised:
- How is it, silently?
- Like me.
He really did not say a word when he read. I tried it and it worked out. At first he moved his lips, then the need for this crutch disappeared. I wonder if my diction suffered from an early transition to reading "to myself" - or from something else?
In any case, this was not the end. At school, I started reading fast . More precisely, the fastest in the class. Then it seemed that the fastest reading speed made me the smartest. It is a pity, this error was dispelled too late.
The next step is 16 years, and reading on the Internet. There I learned to skip the unnecessary (EULA and other agreements). And after a couple of years I had to learn to isolate the necessary informationfrom the flows of trash - the time has come for students.
At 25, I learned not to read : it saves a lot of time. News, blogs,Habr , used on most of the professional literature - how many opportunities open if abandon it all. Don't get me wrong: reading by itself is not bad. Reading bad is bad. In my case, boredom played a role: what is the point of reading the news, if they are repeated day by day? Why read the next article on Expression Trees if you already read this half a year ago and sold the bike yourself on a rather elegant system on these very trees?
I'm about 30 soon, and recently I learned to read slowly. While reading Brooks' Mythical Man-Month, I wondered: “How did the author come to this?”, “What has changed over the past decades?”, “Is it important now?”, “How is this related to the previous paragraph?”. I asked these questions for each subchapter, for each episode - the reading speed dropped by an order of magnitude. Now I remember almost nothing from this book. A disappointing experiment, right? You should not blame the book for such a result: firstly, now it is somewhat outdated, and secondly, I knew part of it before reading (the ideas described there are commonplace now; an excellent result for publication).
The next experiment is "How to graze cats." I wanted to close the book after declaring that a manager without an individual style isbullshitnot a manager. After several subchapters, it turned out that the author recommends not blindly following the patterns, but restructuring them for oneself, the team and the situation, forming an individual style. Feel the moment? First disappointment, and then understanding. I don’t know if it was the author’s idea, the peculiarity of the translation, or just following the canons of American managerial literature - but without a thoughtful reading, such a transition would have gone unnoticed. I did not finish reading the book itself: I realized that there was not enough experience. Or maybe the book is just slag, at least in modern realities.
One smart person recommended that I carefully read only professional literature that would be useful in work for a long time. For everything else, there is stackoverlow. Considering the previous paragraph - reading is something that you at least somehow understand, or with which you will work in the very near future. In extreme cases - you can quickly go over the book for the first time, and then dig into the details.
The last option I tried to slow down my own reading was the acceptance test of the chapter I just studied. It is necessary to recall the summary of what was read, to read it over quickly - and compare what is memorized with the actual. Now I am slowly reading the “habits of highly efficient people” and I have no regrets about the time spent thinking. It's worth it.
Learning to compose words, I quietly learned to parse them. Tales of Andersen, Deniskins Tales, Encyclopedias - there were so many things to read! And I read. Reading no longer seemed like a miracle, but how many miracles were in the described worlds.
A breakthrough occurred in five or six years. My father read something of his own, I read “Dunno in the Solar City” (Saint Feynman, I still remember it!). I spoke the words carefully, aloud, monotonously - and this prevented my father from concentrating on his book. He asked me to read silently , and I was surprised:
- How is it, silently?
- Like me.
He really did not say a word when he read. I tried it and it worked out. At first he moved his lips, then the need for this crutch disappeared. I wonder if my diction suffered from an early transition to reading "to myself" - or from something else?
In any case, this was not the end. At school, I started reading fast . More precisely, the fastest in the class. Then it seemed that the fastest reading speed made me the smartest. It is a pity, this error was dispelled too late.
The next step is 16 years, and reading on the Internet. There I learned to skip the unnecessary (EULA and other agreements). And after a couple of years I had to learn to isolate the necessary informationfrom the flows of trash - the time has come for students.
At 25, I learned not to read : it saves a lot of time. News, blogs,
I'm about 30 soon, and recently I learned to read slowly. While reading Brooks' Mythical Man-Month, I wondered: “How did the author come to this?”, “What has changed over the past decades?”, “Is it important now?”, “How is this related to the previous paragraph?”. I asked these questions for each subchapter, for each episode - the reading speed dropped by an order of magnitude. Now I remember almost nothing from this book. A disappointing experiment, right? You should not blame the book for such a result: firstly, now it is somewhat outdated, and secondly, I knew part of it before reading (the ideas described there are commonplace now; an excellent result for publication).
The next experiment is "How to graze cats." I wanted to close the book after declaring that a manager without an individual style is
One smart person recommended that I carefully read only professional literature that would be useful in work for a long time. For everything else, there is stackoverlow. Considering the previous paragraph - reading is something that you at least somehow understand, or with which you will work in the very near future. In extreme cases - you can quickly go over the book for the first time, and then dig into the details.
The last option I tried to slow down my own reading was the acceptance test of the chapter I just studied. It is necessary to recall the summary of what was read, to read it over quickly - and compare what is memorized with the actual. Now I am slowly reading the “habits of highly efficient people” and I have no regrets about the time spent thinking. It's worth it.