Reading books isn’t the best way to understand topics. I love reading. But when I want to understand something fully, I don’t start with a book. Why? It’s because of something called The Learning Pyramid.

Acquiring and retaining information is hard - especially with access to unlimited information and seemingly endless messengers. Which authors should I read? How do I determine where to spend the little attention I have to give between meetings and personal obligations? What if I go down the wrong rabbit hole and read some sort of pseudo canon on a topic that doesn’t provide a true grounding? Most importantly: How do I make sure that the information I’m trying to ascertain actually sticks so I can justify this time I’m spending?

Enter The Learning Pyramid.

The Learning Pyramid was developed by the National Training Laboratories Institute, building upon work originally completed by an education specialist in the 1940s. Essentially, the model is the culmination of many studies about how much information is learned based on how it is actioned (e.g., sitting in a lecture about a topic vs. teaching others about it). In the passive modalities like reading, we only learn 10% of the topic. Conversely, we retain 90% of the information about a topic when teaching it.

So, what does The Learning Pyramid mean for you? Well … This is where I’ll say something that runs counter to popular opinion: If you want to learn something, reading a book isn’t the best way to start. Instead, choose an audio-visual format and continue down the pyramid from there. Want to learn about Artificial Intelligence, for example? Don’t start with a book or even a blog post. Listen to a podcast. Then, watch as many YouTube videos as you can. From there, pick one way you might be able to leverage data and a use case for your organization. Then, learn some Python or a plug-and-play program like KNIME, if you’re data oriented. Be the go-to, for your organization, conceptually at least, when they have AI questions. Once you’ve taught others about it, climb back up the pyramid and read some books to go even deeper if you’d like.

End with books, don’t start with them. Try this approach with one topic to see if it works for you. We all learn differently.

Maybe you’ll learn something along the way.

Reading Books vs. Understanding Things