I think there are tricks to catch yourself on unknown unknowns. But it requires being meticulous in challenging your views, not exactly easy. And I did not research that topic deeply yet so can't truly comment. But there are ways to catch yourself…

As for how I pick what I read, my answers are kinda in my questions above.

I am researching articles like yours since last year trying to gather ideas, hacks, and methodologies for getting more from reading books.

It started last year with while reading classical

"How to make friends and influence people"
I stopped in the middle of it as I had a feeling that my approach is not efficient and I will need to reread it.

My usual process is to take notes/quotes + page number for everything that seems noteworthy for each useful book I read.

And it felt that it is not good enough for really good books.

One interesting thing I found in many examples and approaches is this:

- You do not need to finish a book if it does not feel relevant at the moment, switch to books that do, get back to unfinished ones when they feel relevant again

- To truly learn you need to apply, knowledge is power only when used in ways that benefit you.

- If the book is relevant, interesting, and relates to problems and challenges you have right now you will read it with more focus, energy, and this way your brain will reward you with remembering it better. So it's the best investment of time to do it that way instead of choring through a book that resists at this point.

And this is relatively how I always read, but I was finishing books even when they were not feeling relevant anymore.

When I come upon a book that looks interesting/relevant now or for the future I add it to my reading lists.

Then when the time comes to pick a book I look through the lists for something that feels relevant/interesting/applicable now.

Now, this is far from all I have found out so far, and I did not finish summarising and organising everything yet. But I do think that this is the best approach to picking what to read, choose that what you can try applying as fast as possible to truly benefit from it. Because that is crucial to truly absorbing it and making it your own instead of just something you read someday and forgot.

But for me so far it was like that, I am forgetting some very good books I read before and am starting to feel that I will need to return and read them again and apply a process I am trying to build now to them so that I do not need to reread them completely but return to relevant parts when I need them.