Writing summaries is more important than reading more books

写总结比读更多书更重要

One thing I’ve learned over time is to read fewer books but to take the time to write summaries for the good ones. The ROI of spending 2h writing a synopsis is much higher than spending those 2h powering through the next book on your list. Reading is not about page count or speed ¹. What matters is how it changes your thinking and what you take away from it. Optimize for comprehension, not volume.
我逐渐认识到，与其读更多书，不如花时间总结那些好书。花两小时写概要的回报率远高于用这两小时匆匆读完下一本书。阅读不在于页数或速度¹。重要的是它如何改变你的思考方式以及你从中获得什么。要优化理解力，而不是数量。

If your goal is to maximize comprehension, you need to ask questions while you read — questions that you yourself must try to answer in the course of reading. This is something I believe curious people do naturally. Forcing yourself to ask questions and to answer them also makes it easy to write a synopsis: When you’re done, simply write down the most important questions you’ve encountered and how the book has answered them. This is the template I use:
如果你目标是最大化理解力，你需要在阅读时提问——那些你必须自己在阅读过程中尝试回答的问题。我相信好奇心强的人会自然而然地这样做。强迫自己提问并回答它们，也能轻松写出概要：读完书后，只需写下你遇到的最重要的问题以及书是如何回答它们的。这是我使用的模板：

1. In 1-2 sentences, what is the book about as a whole?
   用 1-2 句话概括这本书的整体内容是什么？
2. What are the 3-4 central questions it tries to answer?
   它试图回答的 3-4 个核心问题是什么？
3. Summarize the answers in one paragraph each.
   将答案每条总结为一段。
4. What are the most important things you have learned personally?
   你个人学到的最重要的事情是什么？

While the end product is short and concise, it takes time and focus to write it. Which is of course why it’s effective: It forces you extract and re-formulate the book’s insights in your own words.
虽然最终成品简短精炼，但写作它需要时间和专注。当然，这也是它有效的原因：它迫使你用自己的话提炼和重新表述书中的见解。

Not coincidentally, I use a similar framework for writing essays: I structure them around questions I’m trying to answer, typically no more than 3-4. If I can’t formulate those concisely, or if there are more than 3-4, it’s usually not worth posting the piece. Without that clarity, it ends up either rambling or shallow and not offering any coherent insights.
毫不奇怪，我写文章时也使用类似的框架：我围绕自己试图回答的问题来构建文章，通常不超过 3-4 个。如果我不能简洁地表述这些问题，或者问题超过 3-4 个，通常就不值得发布这篇文章。没有这种清晰度，文章最终要么东拉西扯，要么肤浅，无法提供连贯的见解。

Since summarizing leaves you with less time to read, you’ll have to get better at selecting books. I use a combination of two simple techniques for this, topical reading and inspectional reading²:
由于总结会占用你阅读的时间，因此你必须更擅长选择书籍。我使用两种简单的技巧来做到这一点，主题阅读和检视阅读²：

• Topical Reading — Each quarter, I select 4-5 topics I care about and want to gain a deeper understanding of. Start wide and get a sense of what the important works are for each topic. Collate a broad list of works.
  主题阅读 — 每个季度，我选择 4-5 个我关心并希望深入理解的课题。从宽泛的范围开始，了解每个课题的重要作品。整理一份广泛的作品清单。
• Inspectional Reading — Use inspectional reading to prune the list for each topic down to max. 2 books. Inspectional reading is simply systematic skimming or pre-reading: Read the summary on the back of the book, and the preface or introduction, study the table of contents to get a general sense of the book’s structure, read the summary statements at the beginning or end of each chapter. This typically takes no more than an hour and can be extremely effective at filtering out works that are not useful or irrelevant to you.
  检视阅读 — 使用检视阅读将每个课题的作品清单缩减至最多 2 本书。检视阅读就是系统性的略读或预读：阅读书的封底总结，以及前言或引言，研究目录以了解书籍的结构，阅读每章开头或结尾的总结性陈述。这通常不会超过一小时，并且可以非常有效地过滤掉对你无用或不相关的作品。

It’s surprising how even many of the most prolific readers I know are unaware of the value of inspectional reading. Most readers start on page one of a book and plow through until they’re done or decide to cut their losses — without ever reading the table of contents or the preface.
令人惊讶的是，我所知道的许多高产的读者都未意识到检视式阅读的价值。大多数读者从书的第一页开始读，一直读到结束或决定放弃——而从未阅读目录或前言。

One great alternative to writing summaries is to talk about the books you’re reading. Explaining the ideas you’re reading about to someone else is one of the best ways to engage with the material, since (a) it forces you to formulate it in your own words, and (b) they might challenge the ideas and get you to examine them more critically.
写总结的一个很好的替代方法是谈论你所读的书。向他人解释你所读的思想是参与材料的一种最佳方式，因为（a）它迫使你用自己的话来表达，以及（b）他们可能会挑战这些思想，促使你更批判性地审视它们。

Footnotes 脚注