Items 1 through 4 rhyme with the advice in the Learning By Writing post on Cold Takes, which I found quite inspiring (emphasis in the original):
[During this process I am] trying to “always have a hypothesis” and re-articulating it whenever it changes. By doing this, I try to continually focus my reading on the goal of forming a bottom-line view, rather than just “gathering information.” I think this makes my investigations more focused and directed, and the results easier to retain. I consider this approach to be probably the single biggest difference-maker between "reading a ton about lots of things, but retaining little" and "efficiently developing a set of views on key topics and retaining the reasoning behind them."
Items 1 through 4 rhyme with the advice in the Learning By Writing post on Cold Takes, which I found quite inspiring (emphasis in the original):