Occasionally, I will ask someone who is very skilled in a certain subject how they became skilled in that subject so that I can copy their expertise. A common response is that I should read a textbook in the subject.

Eight years ago, Luke Muehlhauser wrote,

For years, my self-education was stupid and wasteful. I learned by consuming blog posts, Wikipedia articles, classic texts, podcast episodes, popular books, video lectures, peer-reviewed papers, Teaching Company courses, and Cliff's Notes. How inefficient!

I've since discovered that textbooks are usually the quickest and best way to learn new material.

However, I have repeatedly found that this is not good advice for me.

I want to briefly list the reasons why I don't find sitting down and reading a textbook that helpful for learning. Perhaps, in doing so, someone else might appear and say, "I agree completely. I feel exactly the same way" or someone might appear to say, "I used to feel that way, but then I tried this..." This is what I have discovered:

• When I sit down to read a long textbook, I find myself subconsciously constantly checking how many pages I have read. For instance, if I have been sitting down for over an hour and I find that I have barely made a dent in the first chapter, much less the book, I have a feeling of hopelessness that I'll ever be able to "make it through" the whole thing.
• When I try to read a textbook cover to cover, I find myself much more concerned with finishing rather than understanding. I want the satisfaction of being able to say I read the whole thing, every page. This means that I will sometimes cut corners in my understanding just to make it through a difficult part. This ends in disaster once the next chapter requires a solid understanding of the last.
• Reading a long book feels less like I'm slowly building insights and it feels more like I'm doing homework. By contrast, when I read blog posts it feels like there's no finish line, and I can quit at any time. When I do read a good blog post, I often end up thinking about its thesis for hours afterwards even after I'm done reading it, solidifying the content in my mind. I cannot replicate this feeling with a textbook.
• Textbooks seem overly formal at points. And they often do not repeat information, instead putting the burden on the reader to re-read things rather than repeating information. This makes it difficult to read in a linear fashion, which is straining.
• If I don't understand a concept I can get "stuck" on the textbook, disincentivizing me from finishing. By contrast, if I just learned as Muehlhauser described, by "consuming blog posts, Wikipedia articles, classic texts, podcast episodes, popular books, video lectures, peer-reviewed papers, Teaching Company courses, and Cliff's Notes" I feel much less stuck since I can always just move from one source to the next without feeling like I have an obligation to finish.