It’s easier to take notes when we’re listening to content. That’s because our hands are free and we can focus on writing down whatever seems important to remember. However, when reading a book, taking notes interrupts our reading flow. It means there is a fine balance between taking too many notes—and reading extremely slowly—and taking … Read More
Ask anyone their opinion on one of the many political and ethical divides of the moment, and you will receive a strong opinion as to what “ought” to be. While people tend to appeal to logic to justify their stance, many of these positions are actually guided by their personal values. Our values are our … Read More
A few months ago, a tweet popped up on my timeline, where Juvoni Beckford shared an incredible achievement: reading 450 books over the course of a decade. As someone who loves reading and thinks that everyone would benefit from reading more books—whether fiction or nonfiction—I was understandably impressed by Juvoni’s consistency. Juvoni Beckford is a … Read More
Tsundoku (積ん読) is a beautiful Japanese word describing the habit of acquiring books but letting them pile up without reading them. I used to feel guilty about this tendency, and would strive to only buy new books once I had finished the ones I owned. However, the concept of the antilibrary has completely changed my … Read More
Historians and physicians alike are constantly fighting an invisible beast: the hindsight bias, also known as creeping determinism, which is the tendency for people to perceive past outcomes as having been more predictable than they actually were. Linked to distortions of our memories, the hindsight bias causes us to think we knew how an event … Read More
As a neuroscience student, I need to read lots of research papers. Despite the subscriptions my university pays for in order for students to have access to most scientific journals, I sometimes hit a paywall which I can’t get around without paying quite a bit of money, just to access one article. Lucky for me … Read More
Discover the latest trends in personal knowledge management with our 40-page report. Explore a directory of 120+ tools for thought, the competitive landscape for tools for thought, and examples of knowledge management stacks. Learn about the 5 C’s of personal knowledge management and 3 opportunities for makers to leverage these trends.
For a text to be interpreted, you need a text and an interpreter. This may seem obvious, but too often we forget that our interpretation of a text is shaped by our pre-existing beliefs, knowledge, and expectations. Hermeneutics is the branch of research that deals with interpretation. When we interpret a text, it’s not a … Read More
Do you know someone who always seems to jump to conclusions? While this behaviour may be more obvious in some people than in others, we are all prone to it. In fact, doctors themselves often jump to conclusions: “Most incorrect diagnoses are due to physicians’ misconceptions of their patients, not technical mistakes like a faulty … Read More
I’m obsessed with thinking in maps: discovering and creating connections between ideas, adding nodes to a knowledge graph, finding patterns across distant areas of knowledge. However, the traditional way of exploring connections between research papers is fairly tedious: read the paper, scan the references, search for any relevant title, rinse and repeat. Connected Papers aims … Read More