Hello everyone,
I have been following some outstanding electrical/IC engineers on LinkedIn and other platform and I must say that I think they are not the same species as me. They read hard core technical books in electrical engineering, physics or any others high scientific books in just few days to weeks. While me, I am fighting to finish a chapter or even few pages as I do need to fill some gaps or go through the maths and proof of certain concepts.
The same people also write technical articles and advanced concepts for every another day!!do they even get sick?
How can we catch up with these engineers, if it is even possible? Or Am I just extremely slow ?

 

Why would you think two people at very different levels of expertise would take the same time to absorb new material?

I recently started learning piano with a teacher after trying to self teach on and off for years. We breezed through the first 50 pages of the book in just a couple of lessons. Now, it is a couple of pages per week.

 

Hi Tarik,
What is your 'techno reading' method/style/approach.?

You don't read technical books in the same way as say a fictional novel.
E

https://interestingengineering.com/...ineer-9-tips-for-reading-technical-books-fast

 

Hi Tarik,
What is your 'techno reading' method/style/approach.?

You don't read technical books in the same way as say a fictional novel.
E

https://interestingengineering.com/...ineer-9-tips-for-reading-technical-books-fast

Hi Eric,
actually, it is the first time I hear techno reading. Yes, I know reading a fictional novel book is easier than reading integrated circuit book of Razavi for example. I was referring to the later one where I hear people reading a technical/scientific book in a week!!
for example, I am reading a book on DSP now and it takes a day to finish a page sometimes as it has demonstrations

 

Hi Tarik,
As I cannot see how you are studying the documentation, it is hard to suggest changes.
Do you personally know any of the speed readers you have posted as being 'fast'.
Perhaps you could persuade one of them to watch you and advise how you read, give you idea's on how to speed read.?
On that one day page saga, what notes did you create.

E

 

You might try giving the following a look. I wrote it based on my own experience, so it reflects something that worked extremely well for me. Your mileage may very, but I have talked to a number of people over the years and done a bit of research and most things I have found indicate that I am not unusual as what they say works well in general is in pretty good agreement with this.

So where did this come from? When I got out of the service and went back to college (as a sophomore), I was pretty motivated to get back at it. I was also very poor and the school I was attending had a tuition policy that really rewarded you taking as many classes as you could handle -- namely the tuition was capped at 10.5 semester hours. So I signed up for 21 sem hours (and 18 sem in most of the subsequent semesters). I new that if I didn't keep my act together, that I would get hammered. So I sat down and crafted a game plan, since I'm a natural procrastinator and not nearly as organized as I like to think I am. The first thing that I decided was that I would do every assignment as soon as I new what it was (in those days, before the Internet, almost all instructors wrote the assignment up on the chalkboard about a week before it was due, except for long term projects. So I made a set of books, based on accounting principles I had learned in a course I took while in the service, and kept track of every assignment, be it reading or homework, with columns for when it was assigned, when it was due, when it was finished, when it was submitted, when it was returned, and the grade. If reading assignments weren't explicit, I generated them based on what topics were going to be covered, with due dates being the class before the material was scheduled for. Every Friday night, I would stay up as late as it took to clear the entire list, with the exception of long-term projects (which I broke into multiple assignments with associated due dates). All semester, every single week I managed to clear off every thing that was assigned and due up through the following week. Sometimes it meant an all-nighter, but usually not, since I found myself making a game of it all through the week and so I really stayed on top of things. This ended up having some unexpected benefits. Because I was completely caught up whenever I finally turned in on Friday, the entire weekend was mine to do whatever I wanted, without any stress or anxiety. This made for a remarkably stress-free semester, despite the heavy load. Because I actually read and studied the textbook before we covered it in class, my time in class was far more productive since I knew a good portion of what was being presented and could focus on gained a deeper understanding and/or making sure that I asked questions about the stuff that was giving me problems. Finally, when Finals Week came around, I didn't study for a single final exam save one -- I spent about half an hour reviewing Differential Equations. I was that confident in my grasp of everything. It paid off -- that semester was the first time I ever got a 4.0, but it wasn't the last.

As for the reading, I did it the way that I describe in the attached PDF. As others have already noted, you do not read a technical text the same way you do a recreational novel. You need to seriously engage with the material in order to really get a handle on it, and very disciplined note taking, combined with working through the examples and the development of equations for yourself, is one very reliable way to do that.

Hope you find it helpful.

 

Hi Eric,
actually, it is the first time I hear techno reading. Yes, I know reading a fictional novel book is easier than reading integrated circuit book of Razavi for example. I was referring to the later one where I hear people reading a technical/scientific book in a week!!
for example, I am reading a book on DSP now and it takes a day to finish a page sometimes as it has demonstrations

If I sit down and read a new textbook on a topic with which I am very familiar, I generally go at about 50 to 60 pages per hour (I've timed it several times, for reasons I won't go into here). So if I needed/wanted to fully read an 800 page text in a week, I would need to commit about two to three hours a day, which is not too unreasonable. I've only done that on a couple of occasions, because usually I only need to read a portion of the text, or I need to engage with it more deeply. When I do the full approach that I describe in the PDF file, I typically can get through about 15 to 20 pages an hour (but it can be higher lower). But there have certainly been times that I have spent hours on a single paragraph -- and the Ahah! moment when the pieces fell into place made all that time worth it.

If you are going through demos, or working through examples, don't expect to get through a full text in a week, or a month. Those folks on Linked-In almost certainly weren't doing that on any text they read in a week (and they almost certainly were really reviewing the text more than anything else).

 

Hi WB,
Scanning through your authored PDF, I agree, that method has worked very well for me during my long career.
Pleased to see that you considered creating the documentation that would be helpful to others.
E

 

Hi WB,
Scanning through your authored PDF, I agree, that method has worked very well for me during my long career.
Pleased to see that you considered creating the documentation that would be helpful to others.
E

I put it together a number of years ago and make it recommended reading to my students at the beginning of each semester, along with a couple of others, including one I titled, "The Proper Care and Feeding of Homework Graders". As expected, few people ever even access it and it's usually the better students. But I have had enough people come back to me, either that same semester or sometimes a lot later, and tell me that it made a significant difference in their enjoyment of the field, as well as their grades.

Similarly, I've had enough people come back and thank me for being a hard-ass about units tracking that it makes it worth the effort (not that it would change things if they didn't). The first time that I had a student come back and thank me, many years later when they were a grad student in another state, it felt so good that I realized I had never bothered to thank the prof that changed my life in that regard, so I made a point of going to visit him the next time I was a my alma mater (he was the president of the university by then) and thanking him.

 

Why would you think two people at very different levels of expertise would take the same time to absorb new material?

I recently started learning piano with a teacher after trying to self teach on and off for years. We breezed through the first 50 pages of the book in just a couple of lessons. Now, it is a couple of pages per week.

thanks for your answer. you are right about the influence that has the level of expertise. now I feel I need to find and improve my speed reading as first task

 

thanks for your answer. you are right about the influence that has the level of expertise. now I feel I need to find and improve my speed reading as first task

You will be better served by improving your ability to read for comprehension.

The summer I graduated from high school I went through the Evelyn Woods Reading Dynamics program (which was all about speed reading). While there were some valuable tips for quickly skimming material to get the gist, I found that the techniques for speed reading were completely incompatible with reading technical material for comprehension (at least for me).

 

WB;
Reading your reply, it appears that you have an additional character trait: discipline. And you got it in spades.
No matter what task you’re attempting to complete; whether it is gaining muscle, learning a foreign language, mastering a musical instrument, whatever. The key to achieving proficiency is the same. The willpower to work on it relentlessly. No excuses. No pain, no gain.

 

WB;
Reading your reply, it appears that you have an additional character trait: discipline. And you got it in spades.
No matter what task you’re attempting to complete; whether it is gaining muscle, learning a foreign language, mastering a musical instrument, whatever. The key to achieving proficiency is the same. The willpower to work on it relentlessly. No excuses. No pain, no gain.

I have some degree of discipline in a few areas, usually maintainable over relatively short periods of time. Very few areas that I have any semblance of long-term discipline in. I have LOTS of areas where I have little to no discipline, long- or short-term.

 

Reading is not the main thing here. The main question should be what they really understand.

 

Reading is not the main thing here. The main question should be what they really understand.

When I read technical books, I'm not trying to understand and retain everything from cover to cover. I jump around and study in depth things that interest me at the time. If I'm reading a technical book, it's likely because I have something specific I want to learn about. If I happen to see something that might be of future interest, I file that away so I can come back to it when I'm ready to study it in detail.

I did read a Python language reference from cover to cover because I was comparing it to other languages I already knew to see if it was something I wanted to start using. After spending several days reading and making notations, I decided it wasn't worth the bother (though I did get through the whole book). I know enough Python to hack on existing scripts, but I haven't written anything from scratch. I'd use one of the other dozen or so programming languages I'm already competent with if I needed to write something from scratch. It might have been different if Python was a compiled language.

 

Hi @TarikElec
You should find his video interesting, what do you think?

E

 

Hi Tarik,
As I cannot see how you are studying the documentation, it is hard to suggest changes.
Do you personally know any of the speed readers you have posted as being 'fast'.
Perhaps you could persuade one of them to watch you and advise how you read, give you idea's on how to speed read.?
On that one day page saga, what notes did you create.

E

That person I saw reading fast was on linkedin and I am going to check it out as I am following him as he rovides really good article on rf engineering.
I am not sure what you mean by page saga?

 

You might try giving the following a look. I wrote it based on my own experience, so it reflects something that worked extremely well for me. Your mileage may very, but I have talked to a number of people over the years and done a bit of research and most things I have found indicate that I am not unusual as what they say works well in general is in pretty good agreement with this.

So where did this come from? When I got out of the service and went back to college (as a sophomore), I was pretty motivated to get back at it. I was also very poor and the school I was attending had a tuition policy that really rewarded you taking as many classes as you could handle -- namely the tuition was capped at 10.5 semester hours. So I signed up for 21 sem hours (and 18 sem in most of the subsequent semesters). I new that if I didn't keep my act together, that I would get hammered. So I sat down and crafted a game plan, since I'm a natural procrastinator and not nearly as organized as I like to think I am. The first thing that I decided was that I would do every assignment as soon as I new what it was (in those days, before the Internet, almost all instructors wrote the assignment up on the chalkboard about a week before it was due, except for long term projects. So I made a set of books, based on accounting principles I had learned in a course I took while in the service, and kept track of every assignment, be it reading or homework, with columns for when it was assigned, when it was due, when it was finished, when it was submitted, when it was returned, and the grade. If reading assignments weren't explicit, I generated them based on what topics were going to be covered, with due dates being the class before the material was scheduled for. Every Friday night, I would stay up as late as it took to clear the entire list, with the exception of long-term projects (which I broke into multiple assignments with associated due dates). All semester, every single week I managed to clear off every thing that was assigned and due up through the following week. Sometimes it meant an all-nighter, but usually not, since I found myself making a game of it all through the week and so I really stayed on top of things. This ended up having some unexpected benefits. Because I was completely caught up whenever I finally turned in on Friday, the entire weekend was mine to do whatever I wanted, without any stress or anxiety. This made for a remarkably stress-free semester, despite the heavy load. Because I actually read and studied the textbook before we covered it in class, my time in class was far more productive since I knew a good portion of what was being presented and could focus on gained a deeper understanding and/or making sure that I asked questions about the stuff that was giving me problems. Finally, when Finals Week came around, I didn't study for a single final exam save one -- I spent about half an hour reviewing Differential Equations. I was that confident in my grasp of everything. It paid off -- that semester was the first time I ever got a 4.0, but it wasn't the last.

As for the reading, I did it the way that I describe in the attached PDF. As others have already noted, you do not read a technical text the same way you do a recreational novel. You need to seriously engage with the material in order to really get a handle on it, and very disciplined note taking, combined with working through the examples and the development of equations for yourself, is one very reliable way to do that.

Hope you find it helpful.

That is quite impressive, what you did at school.
I agree with you on going through the note-taking and development of equations. Does isn@t take all your time on that? I mean, those who read fast, do they also go through the development of these same equations?

 

If I sit down and read a new textbook on a topic with which I am very familiar, I generally go at about 50 to 60 pages per hour (I've timed it several times, for reasons I won't go into here). So if I needed/wanted to fully read an 800 page text in a week, I would need to commit about two to three hours a day, which is not too unreasonable. I've only done that on a couple of occasions, because usually I only need to read a portion of the text, or I need to engage with it more deeply. When I do the full approach that I describe in the PDF file, I typically can get through about 15 to 20 pages an hour (but it can be higher lower). But there have certainly been times that I have spent hours on a single paragraph -- and the Ahah! moment when the pieces fell into place made all that time worth it.

If you are going through demos, or working through examples, don't expect to get through a full text in a week, or a month. Those folks on Linked-In almost certainly weren't doing that on any text they read in a week (and they almost certainly were really reviewing the text more than anything else).

now I get it. so, they are just showing off somehow

 

You might try giving the following a look. I wrote it based on my own experience, so it reflects something that worked extremely well for me. Your mileage may very, but I have talked to a number of people over the years and done a bit of research and most things I have found indicate that I am not unusual as what they say works well in general is in pretty good agreement with this.

So where did this come from? When I got out of the service and went back to college (as a sophomore), I was pretty motivated to get back at it. I was also very poor and the school I was attending had a tuition policy that really rewarded you taking as many classes as you could handle -- namely the tuition was capped at 10.5 semester hours. So I signed up for 21 sem hours (and 18 sem in most of the subsequent semesters). I new that if I didn't keep my act together, that I would get hammered. So I sat down and crafted a game plan, since I'm a natural procrastinator and not nearly as organized as I like to think I am. The first thing that I decided was that I would do every assignment as soon as I new what it was (in those days, before the Internet, almost all instructors wrote the assignment up on the chalkboard about a week before it was due, except for long term projects. So I made a set of books, based on accounting principles I had learned in a course I took while in the service, and kept track of every assignment, be it reading or homework, with columns for when it was assigned, when it was due, when it was finished, when it was submitted, when it was returned, and the grade. If reading assignments weren't explicit, I generated them based on what topics were going to be covered, with due dates being the class before the material was scheduled for. Every Friday night, I would stay up as late as it took to clear the entire list, with the exception of long-term projects (which I broke into multiple assignments with associated due dates). All semester, every single week I managed to clear off every thing that was assigned and due up through the following week. Sometimes it meant an all-nighter, but usually not, since I found myself making a game of it all through the week and so I really stayed on top of things. This ended up having some unexpected benefits. Because I was completely caught up whenever I finally turned in on Friday, the entire weekend was mine to do whatever I wanted, without any stress or anxiety. This made for a remarkably stress-free semester, despite the heavy load. Because I actually read and studied the textbook before we covered it in class, my time in class was far more productive since I knew a good portion of what was being presented and could focus on gained a deeper understanding and/or making sure that I asked questions about the stuff that was giving me problems. Finally, when Finals Week came around, I didn't study for a single final exam save one -- I spent about half an hour reviewing Differential Equations. I was that confident in my grasp of everything. It paid off -- that semester was the first time I ever got a 4.0, but it wasn't the last.

As for the reading, I did it the way that I describe in the attached PDF. As others have already noted, you do not read a technical text the same way you do a recreational novel. You need to seriously engage with the material in order to really get a handle on it, and very disciplined note taking, combined with working through the examples and the development of equations for yourself, is one very reliable way to do that.

Hope you find it helpful.

I read it and it is fantastic. I liked mostly the first fast reading of a chapter, so cover up and have a rough idea about the topic before diving into it. It gives me too relief because when I was in high school, I was worried I will never finish a book that I read from the last chapter backward lol