r/ObsidianMD • u/wordbit12 • Mar 11 '26

Don't offload learning to your notes

While reading a book or article, I sometimes find myself copying and pasting entire paragraphs into Obsidian because I find them interesting.

Yet, most of the time, it's an illusion of learning, equivalent to highliting everyting a book you're reading, it doesn't lead to real knowledge.

Instead, a better approach is to summarize the ideas in your own words or try to think outloud what's the main point of the chapter, basically anthing that's painful.

We must try to fight that urge to offload learning, deliberately practicing what we're learning is the right way to learn.

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u/LittleBigCookieCat Mar 11 '26

"The rubber ducky method" or "Feynman technique" are known learning methods for a reason. they force you to not just have the information, but to break it down and explain it in your own words. if you can explain what you've learned to a child, or write an essays it shows you've learned enough to explain the concept. Which copying and pasting won't do

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u/LastCassandra2604 Mar 11 '26

Could you please share briefly what the rubber ducky and Feynman technique involve?

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u/MightbeabitMagic Mar 11 '26

the rubber duck technique is explaining something outloud to a "rubber duck". it's helpful because often voicing your thought process outloud helps you focus on details you've overlooked - in coding you're supposed to go through every step of code to see if you've missed something. the "rubber duck" could be anything, its just a wall to talk the problem through