Reading Hats

Weekly I/O#11


Two reading hats: RICLS(Read for information) and REAS(read for skills).

Podcast: Safi Bahcall — On Thinking Big, Curing Cancer, and Transforming Industries | The Tim Ferriss Show

Safi Bahcall is the author of Loonshots. In Weekly I/O #9, I noted about his writing hats: hunting, drafting, and editing. Here are his two hats for reading: RICLS and REAS.

RICLS is reading for information, content, lessons, and stories. In RICLS, we’re reading very fast, as fast as we can and as deep as we can, and chasing different threads, different footnotes, and different archival. We read for the resources we want to use and the stories we want to tell.

REAS is reading for ear, art, and skill. In REAS, we're reading about styles, word choice, rhythm, pacing, how people write things instead of what people write. We read for the techniques we want to use to express our thoughts.

It's important that when putting on the RICLS hat, we have to shut off the part of the brain that cares about style and read it really fast for stories or content. And in REAS hat, we have to ask ourselves "Where am I weak" and find the writing techniques and style intentionally to improve the weakness.


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