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- William James' essay The Energies of Men has some remarkable stories of endurance, and bodily transformations under extreme circumstances, in it.
- First post, so I'll try to make it useful.
I base my studies on how the ancient scholars studied. In my opinion, the The Scholastics, also known as Schoolmen, marks the pinnacle of intellectual productivity and focus.
1. Stop speed reading
2. Stop listening to music or background noise
3. Stop taking frequent breaks
4. Spend more time reflecting vs moving on
5. Hit the "Runner's High of the Mind"
Speed reading is a curse of the modern age. If we analyze scholars of the past, we'd find that they were actually reading at talking speed. It wasn't until much more recently that people studied and read quietly to themselves. Walter Ong discusses this at exactly at 1:00:00 in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2Z7ezRpz1c
There is no such thing as "focus music" or "music for studying". It's all a distraction. Research repeatedly show that music is detrimental to study. If you're still unconvinced, then let me put it another way for you: How many "renaissance men" studied with music? The answer is: zero
Reading a lot of books, articles, etc. does not make you smarter. Reflection is where real knowledge is created. The reflection processes forces one to recollect, which is crucial to solidifying whatever it is you learned into your memory so that it can be readily retrieved and used in the formation of new ideas. This is why hyperfocus always triumphs scattered focus, and why it is far better to study single subjects at a time over a span of months or years, rather than mixing up your days with many studies. Ultimately, the reason that reading lots of stuff doesn't make you smart is because nothing actually solidifies, so everything you read is more akin to entertainment than actual studying. Seneca discusses this: https://fs.blog/seneca-on-reading/ So yeah...read fewer books, but study more deeply! Naturally, this means you should be far more cautious as to what you should put your time towards reading.
Taking frequent breaks, as encouraged by Pomodoro, actually hinders your thinking. William James wrote about this in Energies of Men and calls it "Second Wind". It's like a runner's high for the mind. There comes a difficult point in our studies where we give up and take a break. The idea is to push beyond this point to reach a new state of thinking. We rarely are able to do it, but everyone has done it at some point in their life. The issue is sustaining it. You can read a little on it here: https://www.themarginalian.org/2015/06/15/william-james-the-...
