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In 1936 the prolific self-help guru and famous eccentric James T. Mangan published You Can Do Anything! — an enthusiastic and exclamation-heavy pep-manual for the art of living. Among its highlights is a section titled 14 Ways to Acquire Knowledge — a blueprint to intellectual growth, advocating for such previously discussed essentials as the importance of taking example from those who have succeeded and organizing the information we encounter, the power of curiosity, the osmosis between learning and teaching, the importance of critical thinking (because, as Christopher Hitchens pithily put it, “what can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence”), the benefits of writing things down, why you should let your opinions be fluid rather than rigid, the art of listening, the art of observation, and the very core of what it means to be human.
This is why writing down notes on everything I read is an important habit I've sadly let falter. My own preference is a Github repo full of markdown files with notes on books, blog posts, and whatever else I want to save for later. Important syntax rules, term definitions, personal tricks or ideas, quotes or summaries - I write down anything I find inspiring or useful from the texts
Wie ein Buch mehr oder weniger aktiv gelesen werden kann, so kann es auch mehr oder weniger gut verstanden werden. Ein guter Leser schöpft mehr Verständnis – und nicht nur Informationen – aus einem Buch als ein schlechter Leser.