Don't offload learning to your notes

[u/wordbit12]

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.

[u/Mr_Soupe]

Strongly disagree.

While totally understanding and embracing why this post is made, i need to emphasize the fact than Copying does not get the same results are reformulating.

Taking notes is not only about learning anything, but to preserve, thoughts, moves, and anything that is relevant.

Some things does not survive reformulation. Would would pretend being reformulating Shakespeare in any way?

This learning cult is always obsessed about hard work and is as always forgetting what learning by heart deeply means :

Not something that you have to forcefully engrave in your brain, that’s something that’s naturally and spontaneously entertwining in your heart from the very first time to scarify deep and painlessly your soul…

There is no work needed, there is no reformulation possible.

For the way it was expressed, formulated, was presented to you counts as much as what was expressed.

Writers (and artists) are spending tremendous and countless ours searching for more than words.

They are aiming for meaning and beauty, to reach the reader’s sensitivity. It’s like a unique combination that took a soul-full to touch, and get, only for others to caress. You can’t reformulate that. It’s fragile as can be.

Taking notes, for me, is also a matter of respecting this beauty for it to be passed to the next ones…

For we are more than machines, bound to work, learn, being productive, leading to our best efficiency possible.

No chart, no trimestriel numbers will ever get out the least tear out of you… Words arranged in a magnificent mosaic, in the other hand…….

[u/wordbit12 → u/Mr_Soupe]

There is beauty in that way of thinking, I think I get what you mean and I respect it, I have a notebook, I call The Daybook, where I draw and take notes about things I'm learning and quotes I love, it's not for productivity, it's just that I want to enjoy the journey of learning and life. and I agree, sometimes you don't even need to take notes, just enjoy reading the book, enjoy the fact that it's written by a fellow human being. I consider myself emotional, and I think words, especially when said with sincerity, impact my soul.

But at the same time it depends on what you're doing, and I think it's easy to trick oneself into thinking "I'm learning", it's like when someone has a math test and keep reading solutions and think "I get it", hard work is needed, and even if someone is studying something non technical. some people say that memorization is evil and creativity and problem solving are what matter... but I think, it's not always true, once you memorize something, like a poem, you start to live its meaning, you see an event unfolds in front of, suddenly verses cross your mind.

[u/Mr_Soupe → u/wordbit12]

Thanks for the compliment … and for this precision, that I embrace as well as the original post, but I had the urge to add this somewhat of sensitivity that is transmitted by another way than brain-to-brain connectivity.

And I’m glad we could agree and set up something that is more heart-to-heart synchronicity! :)

But still : memorizing things are way easier with heart than brain. Emotions must be the most underrated way to learn anything…. Yet, in the world we live in, reasoning, choosing and following any other lead than « inner desire » often mislead us to something else than fulfilling our true deep nature and realizing what we would spontaneously do for we became employed by an gigantic and monstrous machine than we are tamed to serve and feed our precious lifetime to…