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Reding: Shallow and Deep

12/06/14

So, I'm getting better at reading.

Last year, I read maybe two or three books, but this year....

Lessee...

Which is certainly an improvement over last year (and that year's book-reading only really fell at the tail-end of the year anyways). And I'm not even counting the various articles proper I've read over the year.

The problem, however, is it seems I can only manage a shallow reading of the things I read. Now, I mean, I focus on maintaining a decent level of understanding while I read, but I want my reading to be a lot more involved.

All of the books I've read have sparked ideas for doing something, but rarely have I acted on any of those sparks. Now, thanks to Getting Things Done, I've captured a lot of those ideas, but a lot of the time, the book would be an excellent reference to use when attempting that idea.

Now, I've tried doing productive things directly connected to my reading while reading before. Specifically, with Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. I got about halfway through that book. Unfortunately, what happened is I stopped reading when I stopped prioritizing time for drawing. I still remind myself to continue the book every week, but I don't.

Is this a problem I need to overcome? Or do I need to allow these ideas to build into a proper motivation to action? Should I just read through the rest of my drawing book and set aside the drawing exercises as something to do eventually?

I feel like that's better than choosing not to read the book, as I ended up doing. There's an innate worry I have where I'll just consume ideas but never act on them, but that's not really as true an issue as it was before. I'm managing to do quite a bit, and actively engaging in strategies to do more.

I guess what I'm exploring here in this post is what ratio of knowledge to action is optimal? I can consume more information than I could ever act on quite easily, but I need access to significantly more information than I can act on to give myself adequate options and even ability to do things I want to try to do. There's also more information out there than I could ever really consume.

There needs to be a balance, Stephan.

I think.

I'm going to continue reading on a read-only level, I think. I would love to read as much as a book per week, as I'm aware some others do. I will keep track of books that have a deeper reading in them, either explicitly in exercises, or implicitly in ideas that the books inspire in me, and every once in a while I'll come back to those books to either reread deeply, or simply attempt those exercises with the book as a reference.

As such, I will simply read through the rest of my drawing book, now. And, hopefully, shortly after finishing it I'll make priority for doing the rest of the exercises I neglected to do. Drawing is one of those things I really wanted to learn to do for a while, so I'll focus on implementing a plan I will execute during the next year.

Same goes for articles I read. I've already saved a few for a deeper reading with some work to do to really grok their technical content. Two of them feature javascript in some way. So that'll be fun, to see that come to fruition some time next year.

I like this, reading and action feel like they should be properly separate. A simple reading as first exploration into content feels right. Deeper exercises involving that reading should come later, after digestion and contemplation.

As long as my system captures the deeper stuff I'm interested in, I should be reminded of it often enough to do it when the time is right and I'm ready. And as long as I keep pushing myself, a time will come when the time is right.