You can't know that. Reading is highly dependent on your perception of the activity. If you were conditioned to believe that learning is something that happens mostly in a classroom, then you'll perceive a book as "1000 pages to go through", a hurdle.
On the other hand, if you're conditioned to believe and trust in the transmission of knowledge through independent reading, like most autodidacts are, you perceive them as an opportunity to improve.
I, myself, am an autodidact programmer. I had never heard of many resources before encountering them in threads on HN, Reddit, or Stackoverflow. I haven't read all books, or followed all the videos, but at least, now that I'm aware of them, it prompted me to start working toward shifting a few things in my life to allow me the time and opportunity to dig deeper in the material.
For me, the more hard drive space I have, the more PDF's I save. Doesn't mean I read them. The more time I spend on the web, the more "to-read should-read" stuff I find. Doesn't mean I read it.
Real reading happens for me when I shut the computer and focus on just one thing.
Comments
Verysimple, how much actual reading do you think comes out of people bookmarking and voting up these lists? I would guess very little.
You can't know that. Reading is highly dependent on your perception of the activity. If you were conditioned to believe that learning is something that happens mostly in a classroom, then you'll perceive a book as "1000 pages to go through", a hurdle.
On the other hand, if you're conditioned to believe and trust in the transmission of knowledge through independent reading, like most autodidacts are, you perceive them as an opportunity to improve.
I, myself, am an autodidact programmer. I had never heard of many resources before encountering them in threads on HN, Reddit, or Stackoverflow. I haven't read all books, or followed all the videos, but at least, now that I'm aware of them, it prompted me to start working toward shifting a few things in my life to allow me the time and opportunity to dig deeper in the material.
It's a process.
For me, the more hard drive space I have, the more PDF's I save. Doesn't mean I read them. The more time I spend on the web, the more "to-read should-read" stuff I find. Doesn't mean I read it.
Real reading happens for me when I shut the computer and focus on just one thing.