Help me read more.

January 4, 2007 7:41 AM

I read too many online articles and not enough books. Help me.

Being self-employed, I've developed a mental attitude of "if I'm awake, I'm working." Even if I'm not actively performing a task, I'm still thinking about my business all the time. I make regular trips to the library, bringing home books that relate to my business, but rarely actually finish reading them. Rationally, I understand the value of reading a book, but I tend to look for small tasks that show results quickly (unlike the several hours a book would consume). How can I train myself to build reading into my schedule, and overcome the nagging "stop reading and do something more productive" feeling?

posted by davebush to education (9 comments total)

I ran into this same problem last week: I have a pile of work-related books to get through, but no allocated time to read them. If I do find a half hour here or there to read a bit, I find my information retention rate is so terrible as to make the bother not worth it.

I love reading and literature in general (the non–computer-science half of my degree was English), but yeah, being self-employed, putting aside an afternoon for a book seems frustratingly unproductive.

I've put together a plan which I think will help. I've set up a loose schedule: nothing too firm, no specific books, but two chapters a day, preferably from two different books. Ideally, one book will be a more design-y book and the other one a more development-y book, but as long as I get my two chapters in, I'm fine. I then summarize the chapters in a few sentences on my weblog: mine is just shared among a few friends, who don't care about the material, but the pressure to keep posting is still there. Yours seems like it would work even better for this purpose.

How's it been working? In all honesty, I'm still drafting the first post. But I'm hoping that once I get going on it, it'll actually, you know, work.
posted by DrJohnEvans at 7:56 AM on January 4, 2007

I'm also self-employed and tend to check out a lot of books that relate to my business. Some of them I read, some of them I don't. Here are some things that I do...

1. Read when I'm too tired to do anything else. For me this tends to be late in the evening. For a "night person" this might be with a cup of coffee in the morning when you're waking up. Or during that late afternoon slump.

2. Read with an eye for informative material and don't get hung up reading every single word. I think it helps if you remember that you're reading the book to get something out of it, not as some assignment. So skim until you see something interesting or possibly useful, and then read this passage carefully and mark it or whatever. Using this technique you can get through a book in a few hours and still feel like you learned something.

3. Take notes. If you're actively taking notes down and building a tangible record of what you're learning, I think it helps overcome that feeling of not being productive.

Hope some of this is helpful to you.
posted by crackingdes at 7:58 AM on January 4, 2007

Read when you go to bed or on the can.
posted by Blandanomics at 8:54 AM on January 4, 2007

Reading before bed is the best approach I've found. Just build it into your schedule; when you know your day is over and you're beginning to wind down (but still alert), open your book and start reading. I don't personally see any value in trying to set time/page goals, prefering to just read until I've had enough. Though this can work too well, and I run into the opposite problem of reading all night, so beware this approach in conjunction with sugary snacks and caffine.
posted by MetaMonkey at 9:38 AM on January 4, 2007

Rationally, I understand the value of reading a book, but I tend to look for small tasks that show results quickly (unlike the several hours a book would consume)

I'm going to question the assumption that there is value in reading the books. It depends on the subject matter of course but many practical books as well as business books are heavily padded. Usually they can be skimmed rather than read cover to cover. Or they can be used best as reference books and read pieces at a time. But many books are just padded articles which extend the format of:

1. Background/show why Thesis is necessary. Historical precedent (can be skimmed)
2. Exposition (Thesis itself. Usually short. The meat of the book.)
3. Examples (This is just further exposition and can be a big chunk of the book but can be skipped if your understanding is solid enough)
4. Objections (An attempt to defend anticipated criticisms of the Thesis.) Can be skipped.
5. Extensions (Possible refinements to the Thesis. Further avenues for exploration)
posted by vacapinta at 10:53 AM on January 4, 2007 [1 favorite]

I have a similar problem.

I love books, reference and fiction, but over the last few years my reading has diminished and my reading list is still growing.

I blame podcasts and rss and google, but I should just blame myself.

When I read technical books, I want to google every idea that comes into my head.

On my commute it's so much easier to listen to a podcast than to lug an often large book about.

For my staff at work, I've asked them to assign time each (30 mins weekly) to read a chapter of some books I have found useful. Work time, not their own time. So far this has been well accepted.

I think I'm going to adopt this strategy for myself.

Fiction : First week of every month no podcasts.
- If the book is half decent, i know I will finish it.

Non-Fiction : Read away from a computer, but with pen and paper.

The simple fact is, I need to be picky about how I use my time and actually place value on activities.
posted by matholio at 4:41 PM on January 4, 2007

Consider asking yourself to read one book a week. Keep track of books you read throughout the year and strive to finish the year with 50 or so books (more is better, but 50 is the goal). If you convert that into pages, it comes out to about 40 pages a day (of an average-sized book). This is *not* that much.

I had a similar problem to yours. I really enjoy reading, but recently I realised I've been reading much less fiction that I'd thought I did. I always have a few good books I'm currently reading, but I rarely actually read them because I was busy all the time with something online or something else. After I thought about it a bit, I realised that it's not a problem of motivation, it's the problem of attention. I love reading, but my mind learned to treat it as a backburner activity, as something to do when you're not doing anything else - even if I actually would rather read than do those other things, if I thought about it explicitly.

A few months ago, I discovered there're groups of various sorts that revolve around setting an explicit goal of reading a particular number of books, and encourage each other to stick with it. Check out the 50 books challenge community in LiveJournal, for example. At first, I thought it was silly and juvenile, counting books or pages. But I re-considered after it dawned on me that it's not like I would be forcing myself to do something I don't want to do. Setting an explicit goal simply helps "raise the priority" of the book-reading task in the operating system of my mind. And 50 books a year was, I realised with embarrassement, way more than I was reading at the time.

So for a few months now I've been requiring myself to read roughly one book a week, 40 pages or so per day. It's not a fixed goal. If it's a large book, it can take me more than a week. If I didn't find any time to read on some particular day, I try to read twice more the next day, but I don't obsess with it or carry large debts of unread pages over days and weeks. It's simply an attention-focusing device. It worked out great for me. I've read about three times more books than I had previously over the same time period, I enjoyed it immensely, and I didn't really have to cut down on any other important activities. Because, after all, 40 pages a day from a book you like isn't too much time (in fact, neither are 80 or 100 pages). And it adds up.
posted by avva at 5:43 AM on January 5, 2007

My advice is to read a fast-paced, thrilling book that will keep your attention and inspire to read more books in the future. Currently I'm reading To Live by Yu Hua, which is an excellent insight into Chinese political and social culture. The best thing about it is that it reads so quickly, albeit it's pretty pretty depressing.

So my advice: definitely find a book you can get into, and you might find yourself reading more books.
posted by Aanidaani at 11:35 AM on January 7, 2007

Well, if you absolutely can't pry yourself away from the computer but still want to read, there's gutenberg.org which has free e-books.
posted by macsigler at 8:35 PM on July 6, 2007