I’ve been asking myself this question a few times. I know that I want to read a lot. I have a lot of books. I have books I want to read that I haven’t yet. So what do I do? What are the first steps? I got to break it down into all the components. Here are just some of the thoughts that I have:
- Re-reading books that I think I should
- Reading the books that I say I want to
- Reading the books that I really, really want to
- Figuring out how all the books interplay with each other
- Figuring out what are the categories of books that I have, and which matter the most to me
I think I have a lot of books about scientific phenomena, about big picture things like how things work– and I’m not incredibly interested in that right now. It’s stuff that I would like to have had read, but right now the thing I most want is some heroic inspiration from great men and women, on how to live my life.
I also want to read books that I can crunch and review. I’ve read quite a bit of Good to Great– I’m about halfway through. I should quickly finish that up– why haven’t I yet? Maybe because the expected value isn’t that great. Understanding what makes a company great isn’t really the most important thing to me right now. It’s fairly important but not the MOST important thing.
Okay. So what’s THE MOST IMPORTANT thing? I think first I need to focus on the books that are already on my shelves. Buying more books is a sort of escapism… and I know that I’m very guilty of that.
Alright. I turned around to look at the books on my shelf and I’m not sure what I’d prioritize. I think I should instead work backwards and remove the books that I’m not interested in? That would annoy my wife though. I should pick the books that I want to read instead. Okay– yes. There are many, many, many of those. What do I want to get out of those books? Is it just the pleasure of reading itself? Is it having processed something?
I feel like I don’t have time for pleasure-of-reading for the sake of pleasure-of-reading. And that’s a little sad to hear myself say, because one should always have the time for pleasurable reading! But what would actually give me the most pleasure right now? Refactoring what’s already in my head? I feel like I have all this tidying up to do. All these loose ends to tie up. I think I’m just going to focus on finishing Good To Great and then writing a few notes on that… is that what I really want to do?
Argh, it’s so frustrating! What I really want to do I guess is to read all the blogposts I’ve highlighted about Procrastination. I want to work with that exercise… I suppose I’d like to finish reading Dostoyevsky’s Letters From Underground, and maybe read Wozniak’s biography. Then I want to re-read Bradbury’s Zen In The Art Of Writing. I’ll take all these books out and lay them out so that I have to encounter them. And then I must prioritize them… I’ll read Dostoyevsky next. Good To Great is my current sorta-businessy-read, and Dostoyevsky shall be my “soul-read”. I suppose I can do that. I have a businessy-read, a soul-read… and maybe a learn-about-the-world read. I bought The Box with the intention of doing more “learn-about-the-world” reading, but that doesn’t feel like a huge priority right now… though of course I’ll be the first to say sometimes what you most need is something that you don’t think you need, that you don’t feel that you need.
So– again. Dostoyevsky, Bradbury, Wozniak, Ogilvy. I think in that order. And i have to make it really small. I keep wanting reading to become this massive consuming thing, like I spend a whole day reading and doing nothing else. But that’s not necessary– I just need to start. I need to commit to starting, and maybe to reading a few pages at a time. Again, it feels sad that I even have to say this because I remember that there was a time where I’d do nothing else but read books all day. I suppose back then I didn’t have such easy Internet access. And I was young enough that every single new book seemed to be absolutely amazing. Now I’m old enough and have enough background to recognize that some books are shitty and not worth my time.
I also feel like I want to get some context and think about why I want to read each book, and what each book will mean to me. Dostoyevsky is my introduction to some Russian thinking. Bradbury is about sharpening my axe as a writer. Wozniak… I just want to get inside that guy’s head, because so much of the time everyone focuses on Steve Jobs.
But I suppose I ought to take a few minutes to breathe deeply, stare out the window and think about what I really, really want to read next.
Did that. Heh. The answer is actually my own writing. There are things in my own work that I haven’t examined. I feel like only after I examine all my own work will I actually have the context I need to figure out what’s the next most important thing I should read. I want to go through my own work and figure out what are the gaps, what are the low-resolution bits that need improving, what sort of remixing do I want to do?
So there’s the answer to my question. I haven’t been reading other people’s work because I haven’t been reading my own. I even want to read all my old tweets, and all my old Facebook posts… should I do that? Should I schedule that, at the expense of all other reading? Why the fuck not, actually? I’ve decided that moving forward I want to really break from the script and do whatever I think is interesting. I want to go somewhere new. So I’ll do that. I’ll postpone all my Heavy Reading until I do a Heavy Read of my own feeds- Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and so on. And I’ll do it in a very deliberate, systematic way, and I’ll write down my thoughts about it. Boom.