"Life it too short to read the manual"

[Maximilian Hohmann]

Hello!

Very interesting... In my experience, one only reads the first manual of any kind of new equipment one gets. First calculator, first stereo, first video recorder, first car, first aeroplane (unless the employer foreces you to read those of subsequent ones). From then on it is "been there - done it" and why should that one work differently from the ones before :-)

Also the manuals tend to get thicker and thicker whilst one's remaining life span gets shorter and shorter. My first digital camera came with a manual of less than 100 pages. Which I read, because I never had such a camera before. My current one - 15 years later or so - comes with an 338 page manual. Which I didn't bother to read because otherwise I would not have time to take any pictures. Therby I probably miss 70% of that camera's capabilities (like "4k burst mode" and "focus stacking" whatever that might be) but so what? The same, by the way, with the manuals that come with calculators.

Regards
Max

NB: My son (18yo) never reads manuals, so the theory seems to be correct. However he spends a lot of time watching tutorials on YouTube instead when he runs out of intuition about how to operate his gadgets.