I like reading. A lot. I’m excited to be currently stuck into a work of fiction involving time travel that I can’t put down (The Other Valley by Scott Alexander Howard if you are interested). I’m even more delighted by the fact that I feel I can count reading as a fully legitimate part of my work – books, articles, fiction, non-fiction (I count podcasts as reading too which I know some folks might take issue with!).
However my critical mind sometimes trips itself up by judging me for whether or not I’m reading ‘properly’. What if I read a book but skim over a bunch of it? What if I only take away one or two key nuggets? What if I can’t remember it at all? What about all the multiple times when I read a development book, enjoy it, but don’t take any of the practices to heart and nothing actually changes about me? Was it even worth reading it in the first place?
A chapter in Oliver Burkeman’s Meditations for Mortals gave me some new perspectives. And for those of you who don’t have the book, his blog Treat Your To-Read Pile Like a River not a Bucket has a lot of the reassurance in it. He invites us to , “ (treat) your “to read” pile like a river (a stream that flows past you, and from which you pluck a few choice items, here and there) instead of a bucket (which demands that you empty it). After all, you presumably don’t feel overwhelmed by all the unread books in the British Library – and not because there aren’t an overwhelming number of them, but because it never occurred to you that it might be your job to get through them all”. And we could feel the same way about the books that we do actually pick up – we could enjoy the flow of the content and be happy if we take just one or two idea from it, not try to bottle the whole stream.
On the other hand, when I do want to be using or integrating knowledge that I am consuming and avoid nuggets getting lost in the mix, here are some tactics that I have found useful over the years:
- Write notes in the margins (this runs deeply against the ‘never mark up a book’ values I was given as a child but has been transformative for me) – underline key passages, make it easy to return to the book (assuming it is yours!) and find the parts that resonated deeply. This for me is one of the most profound ways to keep access to the knowledge. And who knows, maybe a subsequent finder of the book will appreciate what jumped out to me!!
- Take time to journal, or synthesize or copy out key bits… there is something powerful in taking even 10 minutes at the end of a book, or a chapter to write down what stuck out. Some kind of magic happens when we transfer thoughts in our minds through the power of an old fashioned pen or pencil.
- Find someone to share it with. Another type of magic happens when we have to communicate the essence of something we find possible. It’s as though it sinks a level deeper into our consciousness. Hopefully it’s interesting to the other person as well (be discerning in who you share what with!) but I would argue that the primary benefit of sharing may be to you.
- Commit to doing one thing differently. OK so maybe I don’t have time to run through all the exercises, journaling prompts that the author suggests. Or I feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of the challenge I’ve just read about. But what is ONE thing I can do to experiment. Maybe it sticks and becomes my next major passion. Maybe it doesn’t. What I do know is that if I don’t try anything it’s definitely not going to change me.
What other strategies do you have for ‘enjoying the river’? I’d love to learn from you all on how to experiment with all of this.
