Tag Archives: Reading

A few months ago I posted about my reading habit, or lack thereof. Unfortunately, I haven’t made much of a dent in making reading more of a habit. So before the year ends, I’ll have to make a better effort to include reading in my day.

One thing I realized once I started trying to read more is that I lost valuable reading time when I stopped commuting. I used to read for 40 minutes or so on the train, and now I work from home. So I’m going to try to start reading after breakfast to try and reclaim that time. We’ll see how it goes.

Even though I didn’t put it on my list of habits this year, I want to read more. I trimmed my list at the start of the year, but haven’t made any progress. No books completed yet.

When I sit down to read, I stumble from Twitter link to Twitter link, from blog to blog. This counts as reading, of course, but doesn’t add up to something bigger and end with a grander destination like a book. I like reading Twitter accounts and personal blogs because their tied to real people. I don’t have to hold my attention on any one thing, like facts, a plot or a collection of characters, for too long. In reading books, I usually lose touch with these things because I lose my momentum thanks to large gaps between reading. Sometimes, it’s because I try to read multiple books, and sometimes I just get bored.

How do I solve this and enable myself to read more books. Like my other explorations in minimalism, I’m going to:

• read one book at a time.
• keep a running list.
• try to set aside an hour a day, twice a day for reading.

We’ll see how it goes. I’ll try to post an update on this in the summer.

I stumbled across a Frank Chimero post from 2010 called “Text Playlist” recently. He says:

… I keep what I perceive to be a more valuable, important morgue file: one made of the best writing on the web I come across. I take this list and revisit and reread it every 4 to 8 weeks. You could almost consider it a playlist of text: it’s very select (I artificially limit it to 10–15 articles), I typically read them all in one sitting, and the order and pacing is very purposeful.

I love this idea, so I compiled my own. I have both books and web articles on my list, so I cheated a bit.

Before His Time: The Untold Story of Harry T. Moore, America’s First Civil Rights Martyr (book): I came across Harry’s story when I wrote about him as a freelance writer, and I’ve never forgotten him. His life and work remind me about focus, unwavering determination and courage.

What Should I Do with My Life? The True Story of People Who Answered the Ultimate Question (book): I first read this book after college. It’s a reminder that we all have our own path, and we need to embrace that. Also, what ends up fulfilling us for “work” may surprise us.

Navigating Stuckness (article): This piece by Jonathan Harris has stuck with me from the moment I read it for the first time, particularly this part:

We have these brief lives, and our only real choice is how we will fill them. Your attention is precious. Don’t squander it. Don’t throw it away. Don’t let companies and products steal it from you. Don’t let advertisers trick you into lusting after things you don’t need. Don’t let the media convince you to covet the lives of celebrities. Own your attention — it’s all you really have.

In the tradeoff between timeliness and timelessness, choose the latter. The zeitgeist rewards timeliness, but your soul rewards timelessness. Work on things that will last.

Inside each of us is a little ten-year-old child, curious and pure, acting on impulse, not yet caring what other people think. Remember what you were doing at ten, and try to get back to doing that thing, incorporating everything you’ve learned along the way.

As we get older, things become more complex. We seem to easily forget what really matters. Here, Jonathan reminds me to remind myself what really matters every now and then.

Wake Up Excited (article): This post by Brad Frost helps me get excited when I think that I’ve exhausted all the turns and have nowhere else to go creatively. Nothing just happens, it’s all a process that you must work through. Just keep going.

That’s my list, and obviously, I’m not going to read these, including the books, in one setting. I do hope to add articles and refine the list over time so that I can move the books to their own list, maybe here. These four items come from thinking about the writing that has impacted me most over the past 10 years or so and putting it down in five minutes. I thought I would have a longer list, but there’s always time to add to it.