My Strategy To Consume Information Effectively
Summary
TLDRThis video explores an effective reading strategy starting with summaries to understand core ideas before delving into details. It emphasizes the importance of selecting and evaluating books wisely, using 'Short Form' summaries to streamline the process. The host shares personal workflows integrating 'Short Form' with 'Obsidian' for note-taking and knowledge management. Additionally, the video introduces 'Short Form's AI browser extension for summarizing articles and YouTube lectures, highlighting its potential to enhance learning and research.
Takeaways
- 📚 The key to effective reading is starting with a summary of core ideas and gradually adding details.
- 🤔 The quantity of books read per unit time is not the best metric; it's more important to focus on what and how to read.
- 🔍 Reading book summaries before committing to a full book can help filter through the vast amount of literature and save time.
- 📘 Summaries provide an overview of main ideas and structure, which can improve focus and comprehension while reading.
- 📝 Taking notes and having specific questions can keep the brain engaged and thinking critically during the reading journey.
- 🔗 Reading summaries alongside the book can help track progress and is useful for note-taking.
- 📈 Shortform is recommended for detailed book summaries and guides, which include 'content augmentation' for deeper understanding.
- 📚 Shortform's book guides are rich in information and organized, offering a holistic view of the book's content.
- 🔑 The Shortform browser extension can summarize any online content, including YouTube videos, providing an accessible and aggregate source of information.
- 📝 The process of note-taking involves highlighting, summarizing, and refactoring information into atomic notes linked together.
- 🔑 The AI-generated summaries by Shortform include context and background information, enhancing the understanding of the content.
- 🚧 While the AI tool is effective, it has limitations, such as occasional confusion of uncommon words or inclusion of unnecessary information.
Q & A
What is the main argument presented in the video regarding the quantity of books read per unit time?
-The main argument is that the quantity of books read per unit time is not the right metric to optimize. Instead, the focus should be on what and how one reads, emphasizing the importance of selecting books that are worth the time and effort and reading them effectively.
Why does the video suggest starting with the summary of a book before reading it in full?
-Starting with a summary provides an overview of the book's core ideas, which can prime the brain for incoming information, help maintain focus, and allow for critical thinking and engagement with the content.
What is the significance of book summaries in the context of the vast number of books available?
-Book summaries are significant because they help filter through the overwhelming number of books, allowing readers to identify which books are interesting and relevant to them before committing time and effort to reading them in full.
How does the video propose to optimize the reading process for non-fiction books?
-The video suggests optimizing reading by first reading the summary of a non-fiction book to understand its main ideas and structure, then reading the full book with an understanding of these key points, and taking notes effectively to ensure the time investment pays off.
What is the role of the 'Short Form' platform in the video's recommended reading workflow?
-The 'Short Form' platform provides detailed and holistic summaries of books, which can be used to decide whether a book is worth reading in full. It also offers content augmentation, providing additional insights and background information that enrich the reading experience.
How does the video describe the process of note-taking while reading a book?
-The process involves highlighting important points in the book, syncing these highlights to an Obsidian vault via a Readwise API, and then refactoring the notes by rewriting information in one's own words and linking them to existing notes or creating new atomic notes.
What is the advantage of using the 'Short Form' browser extension for summarizing content like articles or YouTube lectures?
-The 'Short Form' browser extension allows for the summarization of any content, providing a condensed version of the information along with context and background information, making it easier to decide whether the content is worth investing time in.
How does the video suggest leveraging the 'Short Form' platform for books that do not have a guide available?
-The video suggests using the 'Short Form' browser extension to generate AI summaries for books without a guide, which can then be used in a similar way to the platform's book guides for note-taking and understanding.
What are some of the limitations of using AI-generated summaries as mentioned in the video?
-Some limitations include the potential for the AI to confuse uncommon words or names, and the inclusion of unnecessary information at times. However, the video notes that these are minor issues and the tool performs well overall.
How does the video recommend integrating the use of 'Short Form' with the note-taking system in Obsidian?
-The video recommends using 'Short Form' summaries to identify key points and then syncing these highlights to Obsidian. As the reader consumes the content, they can pause to rephrase key information in their own words, consult the summary for context, and write down notes in Obsidian, linking to existing or creating new atomic notes.
What is the final recommendation given in the video for those interested in trying the 'Short Form' platform?
-The video provides a referral link in the description, which offers 5 days of unlimited access and a 20% discount on the annual membership for those interested in trying the 'Short Form' platform.
Outlines
📚 Optimizing Reading: Book Summaries and Effective Strategies
The speaker introduces an experiment about the quantity of books read per unit time and questions the standard of measuring reading effectiveness. They argue that the content and method of reading are more crucial. The video aims to demonstrate the speaker's approach to discovering and evaluating books, as well as effective reading and note-taking techniques. The speaker emphasizes the importance of starting with a summary of core ideas and gradually adding details. They also discuss the value of book summaries in filtering through the vast number of books available, enhancing understanding, and maintaining focus while reading.
🔍 Discovering Short Form: A Comprehensive Book Summary Platform
The speaker discusses their experience with the Short Form platform, which provides detailed and holistic book summaries. They highlight the platform's one-page summaries and full guides, which offer a rich, well-organized overview of books and additional context through 'Short Form notes.' The speaker appreciates the platform's content augmentation feature, which provides background information and different perspectives. They also touch on the platform's growing library, despite not having every book available, and demonstrate how they use Short Form alongside Obsidian for effective book reading and note-taking.
🤖 Leveraging AI for Content Summarization: Short Form Browser Extension
The speaker explores the application of AI in summarizing content beyond books, focusing on the Short Form browser extension. They discuss their skepticism towards AI tools but find the extension useful for summarizing articles and YouTube videos. The speaker describes how the extension provides context, background information, and related literature, enhancing the understanding of the summarized content. They also share their workflow of watching lectures with Obsidian open, noting down key points, and linking them to existing ideas in their note-taking system.
🚀 Enhancing Learning with Summaries: The Power of Context and AI Limitations
The speaker concludes by emphasizing the importance of summaries in identifying valuable content and enhancing the learning process. They acknowledge the limitations of AI-generated summaries, such as occasional inaccuracies with uncommon terms and inclusion of unnecessary information. Despite these limitations, the speaker finds the tool effective for skimming through videos and articles. They encourage viewers to try Short Form and provide a referral link, inviting feedback and subscription to their channel for more informative content.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Book summaries
💡Reading approach
💡Short Form
💡Content augmentation
💡Obsidian
💡Readwise
💡Atomic notes
💡AI-generated summaries
💡YouTube lectures
💡Note-taking philosophy
💡Zerocast note-taking system
Highlights
The key to effective reading is starting with the summary of core ideas and gradually adding details layer by layer.
Book summaries can be an amazing tool for more effective reading, especially for non-fiction books.
There are about 150 million book titles written by humanity, making choosing a worthy one challenging.
Books are a high investment, high reward information source, offering years of author's experience and research.
Reading book summaries before committing to the full book helps ensure valuable time and cognitive effort are not wasted.
Summaries provide an overview that primes the brain for incoming information, aiding in grasping complex ideas and following the author's reasoning.
Having a book's summary in mind while reading can increase engagement with the content.
Short Form is recommended as the go-to place for detailed and holistic book summaries.
Short Form summaries are rich in information and well-organized, often containing key ideas and judgments in a streamlined fashion.
Short Form's unique content augmentation feature provides additional insights and context, enhancing the book's content.
The Short Form browser extension leverages AI to create summaries of arbitrary content, including articles and YouTube lectures.
AI-generated summaries provide context and an overview of the subject matter, along with related background information.
The extension simplifies the process of summarizing content without needing to set up an API key or think about prompts.
Lecture recordings on YouTube are valuable for their accessibility, aggregation of research, and accuracy from the authors themselves.
AI summaries can help identify whether a lecture is worth watching by providing a condensed version of the information.
The process of note-taking during lectures involves pausing to rephrase key information in one's own words and consulting the AI summary for context.
AI summaries may have limitations, such as confusing uncommon words or including unnecessary information, but they perform well on a high level.
Short Form's approach to book and content summarization can significantly enhance the reading and learning experience.
Transcripts
okay here's an interesting experiment
for you try typing in reading a book A
Week into YouTube search bar you'll
probably see something like this a lot
what has always puzzled me is who the
hell came up with this standard now
seriously is the quantity of books per
unit time the right metric to optimize
for I believe that what you read and how
you read it are much more important in
this video I will show you my Approach
for optimizing those two things
particularly how to discover and
evaluate what books are worth pursuing
and how to read them and take notes
effectively in order to ensure that the
time investment pays off and in the
second part of the video I will also
show you a way to apply this strategy to
any article or even YouTube lectures if
you're interested stay tuned
I'm gonna
if I were to summarize the point of the
video in one sentence it's this the key
to effective reading is to start with
the summary of the core ideas and then
gradually add details layer by layer
alright let's unpack what this means a
little bit previously I used to think
that the only use of book summaries was
to save me from getting an app in middle
school you know how when you are
assigned to read something but since you
had better things to do you instead just
Google the brief summary of the book
while the teacher is handing out the
quiz well it turns out that summaries of
books especially non-fiction ones can be
an amazing tool for more effective
reading and that is for several reasons
do you know how many books in total
Humanity has written well me neither but
Google says it's about 150 million
titles and let's be honest only a tiny
proportion of them would be actually
interesting and relevant to you so it
seems like picking a worthy one is like
a shot in the dark additionally books
are a high investment High reward type
of information Source it takes about two
weeks to read a single book from cover
to cover but in return you get several
years worth of authors experience and
research now that's pretty powerful this
is why we need to be extra picky about
the next book to invest our time and
effort into and one great way to filter
all this information overload is to
actually read the book summary before
deciding whether it's worth committing
to reading the whole thing this helps to
make sure that you don't waste valuable
time and cognitive effort on something
that would later turn out to be not what
you expected
when you're reading fantasy novels or
detectives knowing the content in
advance takes all the fun out of it but
with non-fiction books it's actually the
other way around checking out the
summary before diving into the content
itself can be super helpful in boosting
your understanding summaries give you a
quick rundown of the main ideas
arguments and the overall structure of
the book having this overview in mind
kind of primes your brain to the
incoming information and helps you stay
focused while reading making it easier
to grasp complex ideas and follow the
author's reasoning plus it sets you with
specific questions and objectives which
keep your brain engaged and thinking
critically throughout the reading
Journey For example suppose in the very
beginning the provides a very detailed
personal anecdote if you are unfamiliar
with the Roth outline of the book it
might seem out of blue and you may lose
interest however if you have read this
summary beforehand you can relate this
story to The crucial ideas coming up
further in the book which makes you much
more engaged with the content it is also
a great idea to read the summary kind of
side by side while reading the book if
you decide that it's worth investing
into the full version this helps you to
keep track of where you are in the books
schema and it's especially helpful when
taking notes but I'll get to that
[Music]
finally the summary can be very useful
even after you read the entire book for
example suppose at some point you'd like
to include or reference ideas from the
book in your own work be it a blog post
essay or just a personal note skimming
through the summary will help you recall
the content and evoke similar chains of
thought and insights you had during
reading also seeing the whole book laid
out like this makes it much easier to
link ideas together now that I hopefully
convinced you that book summaries is
something to consider let me tell you
what I believe is the best place to find
them and how exactly it integrates into
my workflow in my opinion the go-to
place for book summaries is the platform
called short form now they are
sponsoring this video but don't let this
fact put you off personally I have been
using short form for almost two years
now and I genuinely often recommend it
to the people I meet so rest assured
that everything in this video is my
unbiased opinion about the product
product that I love in fact they have no
idea what I'm about to say in this video
okay so for starters short form
summaries or book guides in their
terminology are much more detailed and
holistic than what I've seen on other
platforms like blinkist for example
every single book in their Library
contains a one-page summary which is
like a 10 to 15 minute read containing
the book's key ideas and judge it by my
personal experience in most cases this
is more than enough these one-page
summaries are super rich in information
and are organized extremely well now
seriously I take my head off to the team
of writers who produce them because it
takes a lot of hard work to flesh out
the entire book like this and lay out
the ideas in such a streamlined fashion
and if you want to go deeper some books
not all of them usually the more popular
ones have the full guide feature which
is an even more detailed chapter by
chapter breakdown of the content and the
number one my absolute favorite feature
that makes short form unique is what I
like to call content augmentation
essentially throughout this summary
which outlines the book's key ideas and
takeaways you can see blocks of text
tagged as short form note
this is information which is not a part
of the original book but which was
inserted by the author of the guide as
relevant and because the short form
writers clearly know what they are doing
these notes sprinkled throughout don't
overshadow this summary itself instead
they make a nice addition and truly
augment the book's content for example
such notes often provide background
information on what the author is
talking about different perspectives and
even the drawbacks of the original point
of view backed up by relevant literature
so the name book guide is well deserved
you're not merely reading the drive
summary it's like you're having a
conversation with the person who not
only read the book thoroughly but also
knows background information interesting
facts supporting works and other
perspectives related to it now to the
library you can find books from almost
every field from science and health to
business and finance in terms of the
sheer number of books I'd say it's one
of the short forms weaker signs not
every book is available on the platform
which is not surprising given the amount
of effort it takes to create a book
guide so you might find that only one of
every n books you're interested in has a
short form guide where n really depends
on how peculiar and non-mainstream your
interests are but on the bright side new
books are being added weekly and I think
as the platform grows and scales up this
rate can likely increase in the future
to show you short form in action let me
take you on a tour and actually show you
how I use it in combination with
obsidian to read books effectively
[Music]
so whenever a new book Falls onto my
radar the first thing I do is check
whether there is a short form summary if
there is I begin to go through it and
highlight important points these
highlights can be automatically linked
to my obsidian Vault via a readwise API
as you can see inside the reference
nodes folder there is a subfolder called
readwise which is the home for all the
content generated and synced via
readwise for example not too long ago I
began to read this summary of building a
second brain by Tiago Forte and make it
highlights as soon as I made the first
highlight it was synced and read wise
created a corresponding node inside my
obsidian Vault notice that the author
says short form rather than Thiago Forte
to point out that it's about the summary
of the book and not the book itself in
this case about halfway through the
summary I realized that the book is not
quite what I expected so I usually just
add a little message to myself to know
what exactly happened to reading the
book and keep the note inside the
readwise folder for potential future
reference in case I decide to read the
full book this process goes one step
further for instance take the book when
by Daniel pink which is about how
circadian rhythms affect things like
cognitive abilities focus and mood and
how we can harness the biological clocks
to be most productive and intentional
with our time I recently discovered it
on short form and after reading this
summary I decided to read the full book
for more details especially on chapters
that resonate with me I'm currently
reading it with Apple Books usually on
my iPad or iPhone and as I read I
highlight and occasionally add brief
notes right there in the books app these
highlights are then automatically synced
to obsidian via readwise now there are
two notes corresponding to the same book
this is because one of them was brought
to read wise via short form and contains
highlights and notes that I made on this
summary while the other one was synced
from Apple Books and contains highlights
and notes from the full book itself but
these highlights are usually not the end
goal if you watched some of my previous
videos you may know that I follow a
little cast and note-taking philosophy
where individual ideas are stored as
atomic notes in one folder and linked
together this is why once I fill that my
highlights reach the critical mass so to
speak I start to refactor the nodes
rewrite information in my own words
create new idea notes and Link them to
existing mods it can happen after I
finish reading the entire book or on a
chapter by chapter basis here is an
example of such a refactored book note I
recently finished reading Richard
feynman's autobiography titled surely
you're joking Mr Feynman fascinating
book by the way if you haven't checked
it out I highly recommend it even though
it's an autobiography lay down in the
form of stories there are some
interesting lessons and ideas
interspersed in the narrative such as
the importance of teaching embracing the
Natural Curiosity and drive for learning
scribbled down a few notes while reading
it myself but the amazing summary by
short form really helped me gain an
overview and isolate important points
and here is a more extreme example of
turning the book into Atomic ideas this
is what my note on Scott Young's Ultra
learning looks like it initially started
with highlights as well then I rewrote
information in my own words and because
the book was so good I actually turned
the majority of what I wrote down into
individual ideas as separate markdown
files in my zetelcast and network so now
the resulting reference node just
contains links to the corresponding idea
notes
guides are really amazing when it comes
to books but there are only so many of
them because
a lot of my numbers to put them together
so would it be possible to leverage the
recent advancements in the development
of large language models to create
similar summaries of arbitrary content
well this is precisely what short form
has done now I'm usually quite skeptical
about the swarm of different AI agent
apps out there but I think the new short
form browser extension is the one of the
few that actually makes sense and that
has a lot of potential plus it's very
simple to use you don't need to think
about the prompt no need to set up an
open AI API key just open any page you
would like to get a summary of be it an
article or a YouTube video press the
short form extension icon and voila I've
been playing around with it for a few
weeks now and I can confidently say that
it integrates nicely with how I consume
information particularly the game
changed it for me was its ability to
summarize any YouTube video you see when
I research information for my own video
scripts or just learn for the sake of
curiosity apart from reading a ton of
papers I also watch recordings of
lectures and conference talks and
YouTube has a surprisingly Rich library
of those I found that such recordings
can be amazing sources of information
that are what I call Triple A Accessible
Aggregate and accurate they are
accessible because this speaker usually
explains the topic in a much simpler way
compared to the source paper accounting
for the audience with diverse
backgrounds aggregate because unlike a
paper which Dives very deeply into
tackling an isolated problem talks very
often contain results of many
consecutive papers tied together into a
larger story so you get an overview of
lust in years of the speaker's research
in just one hour finally they are
accurate since the tops are usually
given directly by the authors so you
have a unique chance to acquire some
first-hand knowledge without a risk of
misinformation this makes lecture
recordings an invaluable source of
information but there are a lot of them
so we Face similar problems as with
books though be it on a smaller scale so
just like with books skimming through
the summary of the lecture helps you
identify whether it's something you
actually want to watch because sometimes
it's not clear from the title what the
speaker is going to talk about now
previously I used to just scrub the
YouTube playhead through the video to
get a rough outline of the talk now this
scrubbing which has a visual component
can be augmented within AI generated
summary also it's much easier to take
and refine nodes which I do a lot while
watching The Talks remember what made
the short form boot guide special this
augmentation that gives you a bigger
picture well props to the developers
these AI generated summaries not only
give you a condensed version of the
information but they also contain this
context which is an overview of the
subject matter and related background
information like the research directions
of the speaker or the current problems
in the field
there are also links to further readings
and often paragraphs about counter
arguments and limitations of what's
talked about in the video itself
so nowadays if by scrubbing through the
YouTube video and skimming through this
summary I think that this particular
lecture is worth the time investment I
begin watching it with my obsidian open
next to the browser with a reference
note corresponding to the talk whenever
I hear new information that is worth
writing down I watch a bit further until
the speaker finishes the point then
pause the video rephrase the key
information in my own words and consult
with a short form summary to check how
the AI decided to phrase this finally I
write it down in obsidian usually
following a bullet list format though
sometimes I like to add the admonition
boxes just to spice things up crucially
because I've been using the zerocast
note-taking system for more than two
years now a lot of the ideas mentioned
in various talks turn out to be already
present in my obsidian vault as atomic
notes in this case instead of rewriting
the same information again I simply in
insert a link to the corresponding idea
note sometimes if the lecture just adds
some new details to the existing idea I
would go and modify the idea node itself
and try to write a small summarizing
paragraph in the reference node on my
own like a take-home message finally
it's worth pointing out some of the
limitations of this tool first of all
because it is based on the video
transcript which in turn is generated
via YouTube speech recognition the AI
summary can often confuse uncommon words
like specific terms or people's names
take this example here a wonderful
lecture by Timothy lillycrab on the
biological plausibility of back
propagation which by the way contains
spoilers to my next video this summary
mentions that the speaker is Timothy a
little and sometimes especially in the
beginning of the summary it may include
not necessary information like this
sentence here that the author has been
interested in this topic for a long time
twice but really that's just nitpicking
if you just keep in mind that this is an
AI tool after all which means it may
contain its own quirks it's no big deal
again on a high level it performs
surprisingly well just for fun I
actually ran it on a few of my own
videos and it did a pretty good job it
actually found some super relevant
readings well I hope this video was
helpful if you want to try short pump
for yourself there is my referral link
down in the video description below
which will get you 5 days of unlimited
access and a 20 discount on the annual
membership if you enjoyed this video
press the like button share it with your
friends and colleagues And subscribe to
the channel if you haven't already stay
tuned for more interesting topics coming
up goodbye and thank you for the
interest in knowledge
[Music]
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