This book was sort of a rollercoaster in my level of interest and understood of its larger applications. I initially picked up the book after reading an excerpt which discussed the psychology of learning. That was one of my areas of study in undergrad, and it was nice to return to familiar territory. Then the author went on to discuss learning techniques, and made the memory palace and person-action-object memorization seem so strange that i couldn’t really believe either strategy would be functional for anyone. But once the author moved into discussing ways to improve and master skills, i saw a lot of useful information and even encouragement in the ways he discussed the facts that no one immediately masters something and everyone falls down or hits plateaus at some point.
I’m still not entirely sure who would pick up a book like this; if you want to learn a skill, you’d be more likely to pick up a book about that skill, i would think. So this may just be for psychology nerds who don’t want to read all the habit change books but instead want a quick overview of the points made in those books. It was a fairly quick read, so it’s worth picking up if you’re interested in how we learn and develop skills and knowledge.
I’m still not entirely sure who would pick up a book like this; if you want to learn a skill, you’d be more likely to pick up a book about that skill, i would think. So this may just be for psychology nerds who don’t want to read all the habit change books but instead want a quick overview of the points made in those books. It was a fairly quick read, so it’s worth picking up if you’re interested in how we learn and develop skills and knowledge.