This past weekend, I shared a YouTube interview that I learned a lot from (see here). It was of Joe Liemandt, principal of Alpha School, an AI-driven teaching program and K-12 school. He’s also the founder of Trilogy Software and ESW Capital. Joe said that students in Alpha School do schoolwork for two hours and learn many times faster than students at traditional schools. The key is for students to read for one hour and then summarize what they read for another hour. Joe says this works so well because it leverages the learning-science “depth of knowledge” concept, a hierarchy that I set out in my previous post.

I read every day and get a ton from it. It’s been transformative, but I’ve noticed that I get the most from a book when I create a digest of it. My digest is basically a summary of the ideas and concepts I found helpful in the book. When I’ve created digests, that process has helped me retain what I’ve learned, and I use them as references that I revisit regularly. Unfortunately, I haven’t had success in developing a habit of creating these digests, so I have only a handful of them. The main hurdle is the time involved to create each one.

After listening to Joe’s interview and reading more on “depth of knowledge,” I know I need to add a daily summarization habit to my reading habit. I’m just not sure how to do both things every day without their consuming too much time. This week, I’m going to experiment with summarizing. Hopefully, I’ll learn by doing and discover something that makes it easier to develop this into a consistent habit.