Is it better to read articles on Medium or books from Amazon?
It really depends…and there is no clear answer. Or is there?
Introduction
“If you want to become a master of a topic, books are a great way to do that.“
– Scott M. Stolz
But when it comes to rapidly evolving topics — especially in tech, medicine, and other sciences — where new information may sometimes be life-changing, when the new information needs to be published quickly, articles are preferred.
“Articles are created quickly, can be edited or added to later, and are meant to be temporary snapshots in time. Articles are much more agile. If there is a breakthrough or fundamental reinvention of how we interpret or understand something, articles can deal with that change much more efficiently than books can.“
– The Balance Newsletter
However, that’s from a publisher’s standpoint, not a reader’s standpoint. For the reader, it shouldn’t make any difference. In fact, it shouldn’t make a difference whether you just read articles or devote yourself to books. Or what do you think?
Articles on Medium
Anyone can post on Medium about almost any topic. This makes it easy to share new insights and exchange ideas with others. You don’t really need your own blog anymore. This one has at most strategic reasons, which I will not go into detail here. When it comes to scientific articles, I would prefer https://arxiv.org. This site is free, so you don’t have to pay $5 every month to read articles.
“Articles cover the most updated information. It takes more time to write a book than an article. The information in a book can be already outdated at the time of publication.“
– Anastasia Sung
Books from Amazon
Of course, you can get books from anywhere. It doesn’t matter where you get your books from. This title was chosen only so that this article can be found.
- With a book, I know: if I read this, then I have a basic understanding of the subject and it has everything I need to know about it. With a book, I have many opportunities to learn something. It can be not so good on the first pages, but better on the following ones. It can still develop.
- When reading articles, you never know when you are finished. When do you know you’ve read enough about the subject? With an article, I don’t know. I’m not even sure if you learn anything at all when I read an article. It’s always a bit of a gamble.
Conclusion
So there is already a conclusion. It didn’t take that long at all. You probably ended up here because you just skimmed the post. At least that’s how I would have read it. Just like you read an article: Quickly.
That’s what articles are good for. They give information quickly. They give us what we think we need. But it’s not always useful. We forget to focus.
A book needs much more and longer our attention span. You can’t just skim it and skip to the conclusion. That doesn’t help at all. It is important to be able to follow the author’s train of thought.
If we want to understand the full intellectual power of a genius, we must understand how that person thought. We can do that through their large and thick books.
And although I am an advocate of books, and since I advise every person to write a book, lately I also appreciate the articles here on Medium. They are written in a very interesting way. Short. To the point.
Still, in the long run, I would go back to books. Because after reading 10 or 20 articles on Medium, what do I have? A full chaos of interesting information. You would have to be systematic and really limit yourself to a single topic, when going on Medium to make the most out of it.
Then search for that topic on Medium, read everything there is, draw your conclusion, learn something from it, write a summary. But then you have a collection of articles and thus almost a book again. Therefore, in my opinion, the book wins again, even if it is just a collection of articles.
🔥 Genius Mastermind is a persona that is still being developed. More things need to be learned, more books need to be written. Follow for more articles on Book Writing and how to write your own book.
📚 Books:
📕 The Secrets to Learn Any Language
📘 Speed Reading Genius
📗 Why Everything You know About Making Money Is Wrong
