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By C. Jake Williams. April 29, 2010
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Here's the plan: Think about the necessary steps to acquiring a mountain of knowledge, list them, then prioritize them with the earliest task to tackle coming first.
Since I'me starting my new college career on August 23rd, now is a great time to flesh out this post. Luckily, I've already thought this through, mostly, so it shouldn't be an encyclopedic read like some days.
The needed steps, in order, are:
1. Improve your memory
2. Increase your reading speed
3. Expand your reading volume
4. Sophisticate your reading selection
5. Teach to solidify what you have learnt
That's it. That's all you have to do to acquire more and better knowledge, and retain it for longer. It should take all of, what?, a lifetime!
Improving memory starts with consulting a memory expert, someone renowned for their recollection skills. I recently turned to Harry Lorayne's book Ageless Memory. The book covers simple philosophies and techniques, and if you follow the link in the preceding sentence, you'll find yourself an affordable copy. There were at least eight copies available under $10 as of this posting. I highly recommend this publication, even though I haven't yet vastly improved my memory. I'll get there, methinks.
Speeding reading requires a conscious effort to hurry yourself, and possibly a computer program that groups words together, highlighting them in rapid succession to help you look ahead more quickly. I recommend a free application available for iPods and iPhones (I assume; someone please confirm this) called QuickReader Lite. Again, I recommend this on principle, as I have sampled the program but have not heavily used it yet. I say wait on this step until after you've started the memory stuff, that way you remember to push your pace.
Volume expansion means reading more. Duh. How can you get lots of knowledge without accessing lots of knowledge? The key is that you have to wait for this step until you have the ability to remember what you've read and to get through each chapter quickly.
Selection sophistication is all about weeding out literature that doesn't meet your knowledge goals and focusing on the best books and magazines for your tastes. This is a subjective process; your choices for sophistication will not match my choices! The main idea is that you won't know which books and authors to focus on until you've read a variety of them.
Teaching is the truest test that you are learning and remembering. You don't know if you can't teach, so find someone thirsting for knowledge and regurgitate all over them!
That's it. Let me know if you agree with these steps or their order. I'm usually close to correct, but maybe I'm way off on this one.
You were there.