Karl Fast on Reading

The Informed Life

Karl Fast is an independent scholar, information architect, and futurist. He’s the co-author with Stephen Anderson of Figure It Out: Getting From Information to Understanding. Karl is one of the most avid readers I know, and in this conversation, we compare our reading practices. We discussed this subject in preparation for a personal knowledge management workshop we will teach later this year.

Show notes

• Karl Fast - LinkedIn
• The Informed Life episode 69 - Karl Fast on Interactionism, part 1
• The Informed Life episode 70 — Karl Fast on Interactionism, part 2
• Be Useful — Arnold Schwarzenegger on 7 Tools for Life, Thinking Big, Building Resilience, Processing Grief, and More (#696) - The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss
• War and Peace - Wikipedia
• Obsidian
• God, Human, Animal, Machine: Technology, Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning by Meghan O’Gieblyn
• Our Own Devices: How Technology Remakes Humanity by Edward Tenner
• To Be a Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of DeathTo Be a Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of DeathTo Be a Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death by Mark O’Connell
• The Bodybuilders: Inside the Science of the Engineered Human by Adam Piore
• No-dig gardening - Wikipedia
• Mise en place - Wikipedia
• Everything in Its Place: The Power of Mise-En-Place to Organize Your Life, Work, and Mind by Dan Charnas
• Readwise
• Slow Reading in a Hurried Age by David Mikics
• Fight Club (1999) - IMDb
• Build a Personal Knowledge Garden (Karl and Jorge's workshop)– use discount code TILPKG before October 30, 2023 for 20% off the regular price

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Chapters

1. About Karl (00:02:07)

2. Karl's reading habits (00:03:13)

3. Jorge's reading habits (00:06:08)

4. Comparing our approaches (00:09:38)

5. Reading strategies (00:11:06)

6. Cross-pollinating ideas (00:16:23)

7. Emotional reactions to reading (00:18:39)

8. Reading habits and places (00:22:29)

9. Annotating books (00:29:17)

10. Epistemic benefit (00:35:24)

11. Karl and Jorge's workshop (00:39:08)