Collectors Fallacy

The mis-guided belief that merely collecting reading material (or links to material) means that we have assimilated the knowledge in that material.

There’s a tendency in all of us to gather useful stuff and feel good about it. To collect is a reward in itself. As knowledge workers, we’re inclined to look for the next groundbreaking thought, for intellectual stimulation: we pile up promising books and articles, and we store half the internet as bookmarks, just so we get the feeling of being on the cutting edge.

Preparing reading material alone doesn’t get you anywhere.

If we read without taking notes, our knowledge increases for a short time only. Once we forget what we knew, having read the text becomes worthless

Christian Tietze blog