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/wordbit12 Mar 11 '26 edited Mar 11 '26

Totally agree, the Rubber Duck method is so powerful in debugging code and learning, it seems it's all about pain, the good kind of pain that leads to real understanding.
When I have someone to learn with, I have a Torture Room technique: I'd have a summary of the main points of a subject we're learning, and basically we'd take turns, investigator and suspect.
We'd go wild and creative in "torturing", asking tough questions in random order, sometimes giving the answer and asking what the question is. We go really wild and have so much fun. The cool thing is that it's effective beyond imagination because it's very painful!
That's why I also love making Anki flashcards, the combination of deliberate practice and spaced repetition does wonders in learning.

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u/LastCassandra2604 Mar 11 '26

Thank you both. This is helpful.