So, I read textbooks "wrong".

The "standard" way of reading a textbook (a math textbook or something) is, at least I imagine, to read it in order. When you get to exercises, do them until you don't think you'd get any value out of the remaining exercises. If you come across something that you don't want to learn, skip forwards. If you come across something that's difficult to understand because you don't fully understand a previous concept, skip backwards.

I almost never read textbooks this way. I essentially read them in an arbitrary order. I tend to start near the beginning and move forwards. If I encounter something boring, I tend to skip it even if it's something I expect to have to understand eventually. If I encounter something I have difficulty understanding because I don't fully understand a previous concept, I skip backwards in order to review the previous concept. Or I skip forwards in the hopes that the previous concept will somehow become clear later. Or I forget about it and skip to an arbitrary different interesting section. I don't do exercises unless either they seem particularly interesting, or I feel like I have to do them in order to understand the material.

I know that I can sometimes get away with the second method even when other people wouldn't be able to. If I were to read a first-year undergraduate physics textbook, I imagine I could read it in essentially any order without trouble, even though I never took undergraduate physics. But I tend to use this method for all textbooks, including textbooks that are at or above my level (Awodey's Category Theory, Homotopy Type Theory, David Tong's Quantum Field Theory, Figure Drawing for All It's Worth).

Is the second method a perfectly good alternative to the "standard" method? Am I completely shooting myself in the foot by using the second method for difficult textbooks? Is the second method actually better than the "standard" method?

Only if had a control where I tried to make things harder without using interleaved practice. I haven't done that, I have less reason to suspect that simply making learning harder would make you learn better.

This is a nifty little diagram I made a while ago before I knew about the concepts of system one and system two. It was an attempt to reconcile what I knew about behaviorism with what I knew about cognitive psychology, and detail with how that played out in my own life and the self-help material I was using at the time.

Of particular interest to less-wrongers is the center, which details how to switch from system 1 to system 2 and vice versa. Obviously a simplified model but it's a skill I've found incredibly useful.

After all, you can more or less divvy up the possibilities as:

A causes B B causes A both A and B are caused by C

There are at least two more possibilities: A and B are unrelated, but happen to be in sync for a while, and the data was collected wrong in some way.

Awhile ago on my blog I broke the process down into three steps that seem to work for me:

1. Empty your head -Write down distracting thoughts, make important decisions, etc.

2. Focus your thoughts -Minimize distractions, relaxation techniques, etc.

3. Engage Your Action Mind -Use triggers, exercise, or a shock to your system.

Seems to work well for me but YMMV.

On an unrelated note it se,ems flow is actually the great state for peak performance, but it turns out to be a poor ideal for learning because it's antithetical to interleaved practice.