I always thought I could read a text once and get its essence. While deep reading the current text I am at my third iteration of the first chapter and I keep on discovering new things. Some are substantial topics treated superficially which I had just skipped, some others are nuances and implications that emerge only if you really connect all pieces. It helped me writing notes with pen and paper, copying and redoing diagrams. By annotating the diagrams in my notes with the author’s explanation I find them richer and I can connect more of my experience. The more I read it the less I have new questions (I have already accumulated a bunch of them) and the more I can make internal connections. My greatest challenge is exactly this, going through the boredom of rereading a piece of text while looking for new insights. I am slow, this is taking me ages but I am satisfied with this new approach to learning.
Category: Posts
Deeply Immersive Stolen Sleep
Sleeping when you are not supposed to sleep is like going on a prohibited journey. If you accompany your nap with an immersive audiobook then it’s like living another life. You need a book well narrated with a warm and rich voice. When you wake up you feel like you’ve been away, far away, to a distant place. And also your body is exceptionally regenerated, you’ve just added extra recovering time. That sensation! Of being well-rested while you seem to still hear the figments of the story playing in your ears. I love to steal sleep.
Free-Flowing Explanation of the Free-Flowing Practice
Free-flowing means writing whatever is coming to your mind and passing through your mind. Without stopping. Without looking back. Not knowing exactly what you are going to write. Not even approximately, actually. The trick is to transcribe your thoughts, not to think about what you might think. Or you might want to think. You are actually thinking about what you are writing.
That could be a nice, impromptu explanation of what a free-flowing practice could be. I find it fantastic to warm up my fingertips and my neurons. Usually, it takes me from five to fifteen minutes to get in the flow. But if practice and I get accustomed to this way of creating spontaneously, then, I could be in the flow after a few dozens of seconds.
The point is: what are you going to expect from this when you are in the flow? You want to go beyond the rust and routine and, slowly, gently, reach out to your inner self and really touch your deepest thoughts. If you have the patience and the guts to keep on writing, at a certain magical point, you will forget about your surroundings, reality will fade away and leave space for the sound of your thoughts forming on the screen.
It’s not easy, the first time. And it’s really difficult to maintain concentration. Even the faintest noise could break the spell. Don’t stop. Insist and persist. During several months of practice, one day, you will discover yourself taking an inner journey into your thoughts with an unbreakable concentration. There will be no family member, no dog, no bill, no ugly noise able to get you out of your creative tunnel.
Try.
The Bassline Baseline
46 days to go. 46 more articles to write. “articles”, what a big word.
I’ve received one of the best gifts I have ever had: a bass guitar. I have fingertips at both of my hands hurting and I am proud of that. When you play an instrument or try to play, you listen to music in an entirely new way. What before was something visceral and part of a group of sensations, now has become the result of different efforts that are merging into harmony. Looking at the tablature for a blues-rock bass solo is now for me like having found the Rosetta Stone. I’ve been desiring for years to play a specific monumental bassline and thinking I can now actually pursue this dream is exciting as few little things have been recent.
Writing Concisely
I constantly struggle against unnecessary artificial complexity and find myself uncomfortable when someone wants to communicate with me in an unnecessarily convoluted way. Likewise, I like to be straightforward and direct when I communicate, even, and especially, in more formal environments.
The consideration that might seem obvious, however, is that writing well and concisely takes time, effort, and skill. It is much easier to let yourself go to an uncontrolled river of words, fueling the selfishness of unloading on others the task of extracting its value. “What do I care? I told you, now it’s up to you to do something about it.”
Writing effectively and efficiently is a service rendered to others. It requires love, dedication but also the time and resources needed to do it. How do we always keep it short and direct?
My solution: write a lot, about everything, often. Reread everything, cut and forge sentences with our interlocutors in mind. It is a job, a discipline, an art. Never sufficiently appreciated and practiced.
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Try To Remember
On the 28th of September,
The heat spoke louder,You tried to dismember,
It pumped up with power,You felt it too uncomber,
buy it was going to be slower,That’s why you felt better,
Try to remember.Reviewing Notes While Deep Reading
At the of of the first chapter, in the book I am deep reading, I have more questions than answers. Besides the internal ones, related to the treatment the author reserved for the topic, I have a lot of external questions. Or, at least, questions pushing towards comparisons, similarities, counterarguments: ways of connecting notes. That is, finally, the place where I can reference my notes: where did I write about the mentioned topics? Who wrote about something similar? How can I debate the author’s position? This is an inspiring context to review and connect my collection of thoughts and references.
I am going slow, rather slower than usual. But I feel close to the knowledge shared by this chapter’s author. It’s taking me several days and it’s like having a continuous conversation with what I read and what I can connect. I feel less rushed towards complete the book and passing the next one. Although I am now in the critical stage of reviewing my notes and rereading, where needed, the related passages (the place where usually I get lost), I enjoy the sensation of a close encounter with other minds, carefully and accurately considering what they have to say.
And I like it.
This is my daily post 316.
Finding Questions While Reading
While deep reading a book on creativity I am gathering useful questions. At the introduction I had already found some prompts to go deeper in the announced sections. Priming your brain before the actual experience opens up to ingest and digest information better. That approach is going in the opposite direction, now. I am collecting more questions than quotes and I feel very critical towards the author. It’s good, in principle, but my goal, in the end, should be the one of learning principles and concepts based on experience and rationality while finding new and useful connections. This seems like a first iteration in my reading process. It will be interesting to go over the accumulated notes and question during a second reading. It would be even better finding connections and commonalities or counterarguments when reading other books. Exciting.
Un-Hoarding
Accumulating open tabs in your Web browser can be a waste of time. Will you ever read it later? Worst is if you save it in a list to be read somewhere in time. It’s better to save immediately any web clipping according to the potential action you can take over it. Reading it is only the first step, what did catch your attention about it? You should archive it or better extract the bits you deem relevant to be found again in a specific place related to a specific project or action. It is still an illusion of productivity and a “who know when it will be useful” so you need to create a workflow where you are continuously reviewing and reorganizing your notes according to their purpose. When should you do that? Each time you find something useful and you want to archive it. Leave the note better than how you found it.
Deep Reading: Authors and Sources
I am starting to have a good pace with my private writing practice. Early morning, instead of late at night. I decided to pick a book and to slowly, accurately and deeply read it page by page. By going slow I was able to collect so many questions and connections that I got already a lot of inspiration. Even before getting into the first chapter.
Checking the background of the authors give a sense on their authority on the subject. When it’s an anthology or a collection of already published essays, it helps to trace it back to the original source. How is the collection curated? Are those the best articles? Is it worth it to find the original publications of to follow in their next issues? It’s a great way to gather sources around the book topic.
It’s useful to compile lists of the mentioned authors and books. They can be cross-referenced or selected to be read when you want to go deeper.
It’s also important to put the book in the context of the time when it was published. How was it relevant? How is it considered today, if it is not recent? The publications at the source of the selected essays are still published today? What’s their reputation.
I’ve only read the introduction and I feel like I’ve learned a lot.