A Few Thoughts on Reading
Why and how you might start reading again
Reading is an activity that is tragically misunderstood. Today, we’ll attempt to fix this.
Chances are, our relationship with reading is unpleasant. It’s not something that we would like to do voluntarily.
When we do read, we are often pursuing a greater end, say reading a dense leadership book to improve our management skills or a “sophisticated” novel to impress others.
There is an unmistakable element of pain and sacrifice to all of this. It is no different than taking a spoonful of bitter medicine to deal with an illness.
Let’s investigate why.
A brief history of why most people hate reading:
For the vast majority of people, reading is an activity done in school. We read books for our literature courses, chapters for our chemistry courses, and so on. Perhaps some of us read for leisure, but even so, the lion’s share of reading was assigned by our teachers and professors.
As a result, reading becomes inseparable from academia. Reading is school and school is reading. This has a few interesting effects.
First, since curriculums are controlled by teachers and administrators, students have little say over the material that they read. As a result, the vast majority of a student’s reading experiences are with material that they did not choose themselves.
Second, since most reading occurs during school, the underlying motivation is not the material itself, but success (or not failing) in school. As a result, reading is usually no more than a means to an end.
Put more simply, think of your favorite hobby, let’s say cooking.
Imagine being forced to cook nearly every day for 12 to 16 (to far more than 16) years of your life. Although you love to cook, some days you might prefer to order take out, and you might be forced to cook something you think is not worth eating. This friction is bound to be unpleasant.
One day, you wake up and decide that you aren’t someone who likes to cook.
This is arguably how even someone who loves to read can have their interest crushed by academia. This is all not to say that academic reading should be abolished, but simply that it has potent side-effects.
Today, we will attempt to reverse this damage.
I. Reading is fundamentally about curiosity
If you’re reading this, you’re curious. If you weren’t, you would have clicked away.
Boredom and excitement are two powerful natural filters. If we simply pay attention to what excites us, we’ll know what we are curious about. This point might seem obvious but consider many people’s experiences with reading for leisure.
A person might pick up an “interesting” novel or a “bestselling” book, read the first 15 pages and begin to feel bored. Remembering that this book is supposed to be “interesting” this person might ignore these feelings of boredom and continue reading. Eventually, this person calls it quits and decides that reading is simply too difficult and unpleasant.
Philosopher Nassim Nicholas Taleb (of Black Swan fame) offers us a better strategy.
“The minute I was bored with a book or a subject I moved to another one, instead of giving up on reading altogether - when you are limited to the school material and you get bored, you have a tendency to give up and do nothing or play hooky out of discouragement.
The trick is to be bored with a specific book, rather than with the act of reading. So the number of the pages absorbed could grow faster than otherwise. And you find gold, so to speak, effortlessly, just as in rational but undirected trial-and-error-based research” (Source)
Regardless of the opinions of critics and the general public, at the end of the day reading should excite us. If it’s not, we’re simply reading the wrong thing.
II. Reading is its own reward
Reading is not a status symbol. Our ultimate goal of reading is ideally not simply to say that we read. Instead, we should simply seek to explore our curiosity.
The first step to unlearn the habit of using “number of books” as our north star and metric of choice.
The reason this mindset is silly is that it assumes all books are the same. It’s similar to counting the number of states you travel through on a road trip as a proxy for distance. On your short trip from Maine to Rhode Island, you might pass through 5 states. But from Maine to Alaska, you might pass through 2.
If you must focus on a metric, perhaps the number of pages is a better alternative. However, our fundamental motivation can simply be to consistently read what we find interesting.
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.
III. Books are tools
At their core, books are devices for exchanging information. They are tools. As readers we can treat them as such. This means unlearning many of the practices that academia preaches.
The beauty of books is that no matter what the cover looks like or when they were printed, the words are the same. As a result, used books are fundamentally the same as new ones. Used books are also often sold at an 80%+ discount to the price of new copies.
Once we have our book, it’s our property. We can do whatever we please with it, unlike a library or schoolbook.
This means doing whatever helps us to remember and enjoy whatever we’re reading:
Highlighting,
Underlining,
Writing in the margins,
Creasing pages, or
Ripping out pages.
Obviously, this all boils down to personal preference, but give it a try. If you mess things up, just order another copy for ~$4.
IV. Reading is a conversation
This last point is arguably the most important. It turns an obligation into an opportunity. The best way to think about reading is as a conversation, albeit a one-sided one.
It’s an opportunity to listen to the brightest and most interesting individuals from the past few thousand years. It’s a way to communicate with the dead, with Roman emperors, ancient philosophers, and holocaust survivors.
Books are simply one medium of learning. And there is nothing fundamentally wrong with other mediums. However, you’d be hard pressed to find a video or podcast interview with Aristotle or Nietzsche.
The content that books offer is nearly limitless.
Conclusion
If you’ve made it this far, clearly something has struck a chord. If you don’t currently read and you’d like to, the key is to simply start. Order a $4 used book, write in it, fold the pages, read it in the shower, read it at the beach. If it’s not for you, donate it or use it as an oven mitt.
All that matters is that you keep the flame of curiosity alive.
“One can never read too little of bad, or too much of good books: bad books are intellectual poison; they destroy the mind” — Arthur Schopenhauer (Source)
Resources:
Thriftbooks.com — great website for used books
“Retaining and Applying What You Read” — great further reading
Thanks for reading guys.
If you enjoyed this one, make sure to subscribe to receive posts like this via email and consider sharing with a friend.