Researchers and summarists

Reading mostly non-fiction has exposed me to two type of writers: researchers and summarists. Researchers are those people who generally spend their life exploring a specific topic. They create new theories, conduct experiments, look at the problem in different perspectives and write down their findings in esoteric white papers. Summarists are people who gather researchers work, pick out most important points, summarise it in a shorter, more readable format and present that to the reader.

Both are valuable in its own ways. Summarists can expose wider audience to a wider array of topics, while researchers can present more deep analysis of a particular subject. But the important thing is to make yourself familiar with both.

Spend too much time with summarists and you’ll have only a shallow understanding of the world. All knowledge will be digested and presented to you, without any provocation of your own thought. On the contrary, reading exclusively researchers would give you a deep understanding in a small group of subjects, but will result in a narrow worldview.

Before you pick up your next book, find one thing that you liked the most from previous one and explore the sources. Dig deep when an idea sparks interest. Learning things first-hand, without anyone digesting for you, is more memorable and will have a greater impact on you. Go on, your future development depends on it.