I love learning, but I hate reading. Most of my learning now is via audio books while I'm doing something else.
In my view, software development is mostly skimming and pattern recognization. Very little actual, deep reeding in my opinion.
In my view, software development is mostly skimming and pattern recognization. Very little actual, deep reeding in my opinion.
You're not actually learning anything then. Memorizing trivia, sure. But not actually learning.
I miss nothing from listening to books while driving, doing the dishes, other houshold chores, puttering in the garage like working on a bike or car, even home repars that are somewhat technical, even electronics if only the solding/building part.
The only time I can't listen to a book (and actually get anything out of it) is when my forground activity requires the same kinds of facilities. For instance with the electronics. Listening to a book while soldering a pcb is no problem at all. The two things don't conflict, and neither hurts the other. But I can't work on the design of that same pcb whilke listening to a book. In that case the schematic gets designed fine and the book is a blank like I slept through it. pcb layout is kinda half-way. It's more visual/spacial, which is almost like doing some ordinary manual task, but it does take more problem solving attention and the book loses out somewhat sometimes.
But for all kinds of activities it's like two different things that don't impact each other at all.
Even creative things as long as it's in a different domain like drawing vs having some politics explained.
I can't listen to a book and write a song at the same time. Or code.
Cad is like pcb layout kinda 50/50 so I might still put something on but just a podcast where I don't care if I miss something.
For what it's worth, I cannot recommend medication enough. It took me 4 attempts to finish university before finally getting diagnosed and acing everything first try. Sometimes I still find myself amazed at being able to pay attention to a meeting, a lecture, or a book for more than 30 minutes, remembering how impossible it was before.
Correction: you love the feeling of consuming information, not learning.
People can learn from watching a documentary just as well as they can learn from reading, but reading teaches you how to interpret language as you continue reading, and other forms of information delivery convey understanding of their own mediums in their own ways. I would not have learned how to quickly spot a terrible documentary over a great one if I had not watched so many in my life. It doesn’t mean I didn’t learn anything because I watched and listened instead of read, it just means that I didn’t read the documentaries.
Pro tip: don’t correct people about their own lives.
Part of disagreement probably stems from what type of 'learning' we're discussing. In my view, at the broadest sense that we can define 'learning', is incorporating information about our surroundings into our internalized world model. The type of learning I see most valuable personally, is the type that expands this horizon the most, or helps us think in frameworks that break down the least in different contexts.
This type of foundational building often requires deep thought, but is also often deeply rewarding if you get it right. This doesn't require reading by itself, but ruminating and neural rewiring can often be produced by it, if you consume the right content for you. I think it's important to have different experiences, many of which come from consuming different mediums, as well as doing things in real life, but a significant part of knowledge to this day has been passed down by books.
Even if we mean 'learning' to be more similar to 'gathering information', I think it can be most efficiently done by reading, or doing. I don't hold as much disagreement there, nor any judgement, but I wouldn't equate the two. Perhaps a bit pedantic, but I read 'liking learning' beyond the means by which it's achieved, and 'hating reading' reads temperamental to me.