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Writing More in 2021
Synthesizing knowledge, even if no one reads it, is a valuable experience for learning
Despite the coronavirus, 2020 has been a great year for my personal development. I’ve read nearly 90 books so far this year, although many of the are just indie fantasy, I did manage to finally finish The Histories by Herodotus. I obtained my undergraduate degree, and began the arduous climb towards my doctorate. I dabbled in Latin, and then later decided that taking Spanish seriously would be both more fun and more useful (and Latin only has the first two Harry Potter books). I ran a marathon for the first time, despite having been a semi-pro level runner for the past five years.
In short, I absorbed massive amounts of information this year. But a lot of that information, including some great non-fiction I read this summer, is already gone. If you don’t use knowledge, or review it periodically, it vanishes like the wind on a summer day. Anki has been somewhat helpful in preventing this, but it’s pretty damn hard and annoying to ankify a long nonfiction book (more on this as soon as I finally finish Thinking Fast and Slow). And even for the topics that I can effectively use Anki for, like school or a foreign language, the web of synthesis can take a long time to form on its own. So what is the solution for effective personal synthesis? In my opinion: writing.
