Summary

The website content argues that modern books are often filled with unnecessary content to increase page count and sales, advocating for concise, practical manuals and alternative learning methods such as summarization apps and AI like ChatGPT.

Abstract

The article titled "Modern books are useless!" criticizes the trend of modern literature where books are padded with excessive storytelling to appear more substantial, leading to reader disappointment. It suggests that the core content of many books could be condensed into a fraction of their page count. The author proposes that readers seek out manuals with practical examples and use cases instead of lengthy narratives. To address the issue, the article introduces two main solutions: the 4Books app and ChatGPT with its plugins, which can summarize books and answer questions about their content. The article emphasizes the importance of active learning, citing Confucius and a 2014 study that correlates task difficulty with memory retention. It encourages readers to engage with material through practice and repetition, suggesting that the effort involved in learning by doing leads to better understanding and retention. The article concludes by urging readers to navigate through the "noise" of the current literary market to find knowledge that is both enduring and impactful.

Opinions

Modern books, especially in the realm of personal growth, are unnecessarily lengthy due to the inclusion of storytelling that does not contribute to the reader's understanding.
The primary motive behind the excessive length of books is the publishers' desire to increase profits.
Manuals that focus on practical examples and use cases are preferable but harder to find compared to storytelling-heavy books.
Summarization apps like 4Books and AI tools like ChatGPT offer efficient ways to distill valuable information from lengthy texts.
Active learning, as highlighted by Confucius, is more effective than passive reading, with doing and understanding being key to memory retention.
A 2014 study supports the notion that more challenging note-taking methods, such as using pen and paper, lead to better memory performance than easier methods like typing on a laptop.
The abundance of information in modern literature often overshadows truly valuable and practical knowledge.
Readers should actively seek out books that not only provide information but also enhance understanding and challenge existing ideas.

Modern books are useless!

Why books are there just to make the publication earn and they don’t teach you properly

**A man finding productivity and effectiveness in practical tasks — Image by the author (AI generated)**

You are on Amazon, trying to find your next read, you found it!

The best book about productivity that you could ever find, 593 pages! That must be full of rich content and tips!

A lot of journals describe this book as a full insightful masterpiece, only to find yourself disappointed when that book arrives and 98.56% of that book is just storytelling to have more pages to sell you.

Because the truth is, the publications want only to make money, and I don’t blame them for that, but for this reason, they put a lot of useless stuff in their books.

And the content of their books could probably be summarized in a few pages.

Who would ever buy a book of 25 pages for $15?

No one, but luckily for you there are multiple solutions to this, and I am going to explain them all in this article.

You need a manual! Not a book

**A library overflowing with knowledge — Image by the author (AI generated)**

I consider a manual a book full of practical examples and use cases, leaving behind the old storytelling long and lazy way.

Sadly is difficult to find manuals online, typically the most storytelling-feed content is the one about personal growth and less about stem subjects, but finding a good manual is still difficult.

Minimize to maximize

I am going to give you two alternatives to study 347% faster (not kidding), these alternatives take the best content out of a book and give it to you.

4Books, there is no website for this platform but you can find it on Google Play and App Store, what this app does is simply summarize the content that you need from every book and share it to you in small insightful pills, an alternative to this service is HeadWay.
ChatGPT, whether you like it or not, ChatGPT is the invention of the decade, and not using it, causes you to waste precious time, with ChatGPT 4 you can use plugins where you can feed a pdf (AskYourPDF) and ask ChatGPT questions about it: key points, summary, to create even a test of the knowledge for you.

Study, Do, Repeat

**A construction site to build your knowledge — Image by the author (AI generated)**

As the old and good Confucious once said:

“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.”

And who are we to go against Confucious?

Jokes apart, there is a reason why we remember 90% of what we do and only 20% of what we read. Doing things involves multiple parts of our brain helping create multiple connections between the neurons.

Fatigue is a memory booster

A study conducted in 2014 by Pam A. Mueller and Daniel M. Oppenheimer, demonstrated that the amount of things that we remember is correlated to the difficulty of the task.

We remember more by taking notes with pen and paper because it is more energy-consuming than taking notes with a laptop.

Mean z-scored performance on factual-recall and conceptual-application questions as a function of note-taking condition and opportunity to study. Combined results for both question types are given separately. Error bars indicate standard errors of the mean. — Image from the study

Of course, you need to study the theory of something before applying it to practice, but sometimes we get so scared of trying for fear of failing that we go into a loophole where we just keep studying without reaching any concrete goal or expectation.

Navigating Through Noise: A Look Back and Ahead

**A white fog is obscuring the knowledge from the books— Image by the author (AI generated)**

Exploring the universe of modern literature, as covered in the article, reveals a thick fog of fleeting information.

It’s as if we’re in a crowded market where everyone is shouting to be heard but few are saying something worth listening to.

In the words of Albert Einstein, “Information is not knowledge”. This is especially true now when the abundance of current works frequently drowns out the eternal wisdom found in practical books.

It’s not so much about avoiding new books as it is about discovering those rare jewels that not only supply knowledge but also improve our understanding and challenge our ideas.

As we scan through the present literary environment, let us seek out knowledge that sticks and provokes.