“Never read more than ten pages at a time.”

This was the advice of a first year University professor, who spoke about the cognitive demands of academic reading. Any more than ten pages and the brain would tune out, forcing you to miss the information presented on the rest of the pages.

As long as you consistently did this over the course of the week, you would get all your reading done while still retaining what is needed. This is what I call the chip-away approach.

Some work requires you to slowly chip away at it until it’s done. Trying to do too much at once is a wasted effort as anything beyond your maximum capability would be garbage anyway. You would also miss the subtleties of what you’re doing.

Other work was meant to be devoured. It makes no qualms about its standing and entices a person to keep going until it’s finished.

If I could use the analogy of food:
You want to chip away at a Michelin-star restaurant meal and devour an In ‘N Out burger.

To chip away at something that is meant to be devoured will make it un-enjoyable. To devour something that needs to be chipped away will make it cumbersome.

As long as there’s an understanding of what category each belongs, they will be enjoyed properly.