Review: The Science of Self-Learning: How to Teach Yourself Anything, Learn More in Less Time, and Direct Your Own Education

The Science of Self-Learning: How to Teach Yourself Anything, Learn More in Less Time, and Direct Your Own Education by Peter Hollins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Science of Self-Learning was a great read for me! The author, Peter Hollins, includes an appeal for a review, so I have put some time and thought into some of the book's positive attributes as well as a few things I found lacking. As someone who has done quite a bit of self-learning in recent years, it was comforting for me to encounter so many of the same techniques and methods which I have used. These include Cornell Notes, the Feynman method, and critical thinking, to name a few. It was great validation to find these and others in this book. What was missing? I was very surprised in the "reading" chapter to find no mention of the speed-reading tools commonly available these days. Two which I use regularly are Instapaper's tool as well as Kindle Fire's Word Runner. It seems all of the book's rather lengthy advice would apply only to conventional hard-copy books. And speaking of Kindle, this is the format I purchased "The Science of Self-Learning" - where is any comparison of this approach, including its note-taking/highlighting capabilities? Another shortcoming I found was the lack of mention of the popularity of the Pomodoro technique of learning, which centers around 25-minute spans of distraction-free focus. Instead we get Peter Drucker's (essentially the same) 50-minute method. Not a big difference but it makes it seem quite dated (as due a few other references like "civics" as an area of study). All in all, I am happy to rate the book at four stars, and the suggested improvements could elevate it to a fifth star.

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