Why should you prefer text/image over video/audio for learning?

fewer bits

Learning with Text/Image

I’m always looking for faster ways of learning new things.

There are so many things to learn, so we need to figure it out how to learn faster if we wanna stay competitive.

This is the reason why I prefer text/image for learning something new instead of video/audio.

Text/image has a fewer resolution and bits, so I can consume them faster.

Another benefit of text, is searchability. I can easily search and go back and forth on text.

I can copy text, I can paraphrase text, I can easily highlight and add comments on pieces of text. I can easily link 2 texts.

Reading is always faster than watching a video or listening to a podcast.

When to fallback to Video/Audio

Sometimes when I’m digging in a topic/subject that I’m not grasping only on text/image I fallback to video/audio.

The benefits of video/audio is that they provide more context.

To learn with fewer context you need to already know a lot of related topics and subjects.

Learning with LLM

With the advent of LLM we can use them to help us learn even faster to ask them to provide summaries of all types of content, so we can focus only on what matters instead of noise.

I also ask a lot of questions while learning to make sure I’m understanding what I’m studying.

Social network, communities and LLM can be used to ask these questions and improve your understanding.

I also write down what I’m learning with my own words to validate that I understand what I’m studying.

Wrapping It Up

Text/Image provide a faster way to consume content. They are also searchable. They let us move back and forth easily. Moreover, it provides reduced distractions.

Fallback to video/audio when something is harder to learn, or you need to learn many concepts to grasp it. A multimodal approach can help in this case.

Use and abuse LLM to help you understand the content and summarised them.