Reading
This story probably sounds familiar to many people.
I used to love books as a kid—Goosebumps, the Percy Jackson series, you name it—I could read for hours on end without needing a break. As I got older, reading felt like a drag. During my middle school and high school years, if I had spare time, reading would’ve been my last choice activity with which to fill that time.
As high school drew to a close, my perception of reading still carried the weight of a chore. I knew I wanted to start reading again, but I’d tell myself “I don’t have time”, “I don’t know how to make reading feel enjoyable”, and “I don’t know where to start.” Graduating from high school at the peak of COVID-19 in Taiwan, though, the subsequent summer vacation and lockdown—months stuck at home with nowhere to go—gave me the chance to test the waters and pick up a book again.
That book turned out to be Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. Super random. I had a hard copy of it since we were assigned to read it for my AP Literature class, but I’d never actually read it (thanks Sparknotes).
What truly made a difference was having unstructured and (what felt like) unlimited time during those three months. A summer without school imposing external constraints meant a summer spent doing things as an active choice rather than as a response to hit goals set by others and meet arbitrary deadlines.
In a few days, I finished reading Things Fall Apart and enjoyed the experience, proving to myself I could still finish books, an ability I’d begun to doubt I still had after it’d been so long since I’d read any book from cover to cover.
But, after that summer, after that brief victory, nothing changed about my reading (or lack thereof) habits. If anything, starting college, moving to the Bay Area, living on my own for the first time, meeting new people, and getting adjusted to the rigor of college classes made me put reading on the back burner.
It wasn’t until the end of freshman year that I tried audio books, which turned out to be a complete game-changer. Ever since then, I’ve started filling up idle time—time spent putting together Ikea furniture, cooking, or walking to campus—with audio books, and my biggest takeaway from doing this is the importance of consistency. Carving out fifteen minutes to read while waiting for the bus, or chipping away an hour by listening to an audiobook every three days while cooking accumulates into a meaningful progression over time.
That is not to say one should be filling every spare minute they have with content. When I made the mistake of trying to replace all my downtime with content consumption, namely listening to audiobooks and podcasts, I felt overwhelmed. I felt guilty if I wasn’t being “productive” every minute of the day. I love music. I spent 68,000 hours listening to music in 2022 according to Spotify Wrapped, but I felt bad for listening to music when I could be listening to something “useful” instead.
Not falling into that trap of toxic productivity again.
Unintentionally, I developed a counterproductive mindset when I first got into audiobooks that I later had to recalibrate. But audiobooks most importantly became the gateway to my establishing reading as a habit. The convenience of engaging with an audiobook while doing some other activity involves much less friction than blocking out hours exclusively to sit down and read, and friction reduction is especially important during the initial phases of building any habit.
So, I kept listening to audiobooks, and eventually, I found myself reaching for ebooks on my phone, PDFs on a Kindle, and physical books. Initially, this was because some books, interactive or rich in diagrams and charts, aren’t meant to be listened to. In any case, the medium through which I read these books was never what mattered.
What does matter is this:
Reading…[trains] your model of the world. And even if you forget…what you read, its effect on your model of the world persists.
—Paul Graham
Take The Housekeeper and the Professor, for example. The short novel tells the heartwarming story of a mathematician with a short-term memory span of only 80 minutes, his bond with his dedicated housekeeper and her son, and the power of their relationship to transcend the limitations of memory.
Math has never been my favorite subject, but I enjoyed feeling the professor’s genuine enthusiasm for numbers, patterns, and the beauty of mathematical relationships through the pages of The Housekeeper and the Professor. Mathematical thinking doesn’t have to be confined to academia. It can be a lens through which to view the world in all its intricate glory. The way the professor encouraged the housekeeper’s son to think for himself and not be afraid to be wrong was inspiring and resonated with my inner child.
Books are also a compelling media form for these reasons:
- Depth of information: when I think about the amount of information and possibly decades of expertise authors distill into several hours of reading, I find books to be such a steal.
- Deep Focus
- Reading a book requires sustained attention and focus. Maintaining deep focus for an extended period is a valuable skill (see Deep Work), and reading helps me practice and get better at this skill.
- I’ve found it difficult to both start projects and finish strong. Take songwriting, for example. I have tens of files sitting on my computer with 4-bar loops waiting to be turned into full-length songs. Reading books I set out to finish (I abandon some books on purpose) from cover to cover gets me into the habit of starting and finishing things.
- Personal Engagement, Imagination, and Interpretation
- Engagement: I control the pace at which I read. I can take notes, annotate, highlight, and be as careful and reflective with each page, or not, as I’d like. I also have the freedom to turn any notes into blog posts and essays to create a deeper, more personal connection with the material.
- Imagination
Fiction can show you a different world. It can take you somewhere you’ve never been. Once you’ve visited other worlds, like those who ate fairy fruit, you can never be entirely content with the world that you grew up in. Discontent is a good thing: discontented people can modify and improve their worlds, leave them better, leave them different.
—Neil Gaiman (source) - Interpretation: When we engage with a text on a personal level, we become active participants in the storytelling process. I love hearing what other folks have to say about the same book I read.
- Improved Writing Skills
Annual Personal Goal-Setting
So, reading is pretty darn cool. For all the reasons I mentioned above, I want to read a book every month in 2023. You can read more about that here: 2023 Initial Goal Setting