On Reading
Having high expectations for a fun hobby
"The good ones know more."
David Ogilvy
I’m convinced that reading is one of the most underrated and highest leverage activities someone can spend their time on.
Today’s society is built by people who moved mountains to shape the technologies, industries, arts, and pop culture that we regularly enjoy.
With $10, anyone can buy access to these figures; decades of worth experiences, research, stories, perspectives, and art are on paper binded by glue and sitting on shelves accessibly by anyone.
It seems as if hardly anyone reads anymore.
It’s something everyone says they should do more, but never actually do.
Attention is fixated on speed. AI exists. All the information one can ever need is a couple keystrokes away. Accessibility is praised while the slow meandering of knowledge is devalued.
In this context, sitting down and staring at paper and ink hardly seems like a good use of time. Why bother when the world’s information hub is perennially present?
Despite knowing how important reading is, I always seem to relegate it as a trivial hobby—something to do when I run out of things to scroll and have time to kill.
I don’t ever take reading with the seriousness that I know I should give it.
When I read biographies, the world's greatest founders sit me before me and tell me their secrets.
When I read non-fiction, researchers bring me through their decade long obsessions, studies, and discoveries.
When I read sci-fi, a new universe engulfs me into a dreamy state where imagination spawns galactic struggles between heroes and villains.
These are all opportunities to be inspired, to learn, and to relax.
Yet, I allocate the times when I’m most cooked to reading, reasoning that my more alert and lucid mind is spent better elsewhere.
I never really read when I’m most mentally nimble. Only when I’m slightly motion sick commuting on the subway or I’m in my bed brain dead from a long day do I start reading.
At this point, my eyes merely skip through the pages, my mind too empty to comprehend and my resolve too exhausted to re-read the same page.
In this tired state, finishing books is more rewarding than actually understanding them. I get to have the feeling of being, dare I say, better than the social media addict.
When I move reading into a priority, I can’t help but feel like I’m wasting time.
There’s only so many hours in a day and even less hours when I’m mentally fresh. Why consume books when I can produce progress? Why read about others’ stories when I can write my own?
It’s this desire to see output which hampers the time spent on reading.
The significance behind the accumulation of knowledge that comes with wresting potentially useless information during reading is difficult to quantify.
It’s usually the most random times when I notice my time spent reading was not wasted, during which references to random passages pop into my mind, as if history’s greatest founders are directing me how to act.
It’s also difficult to weigh reading against other ways to spend my time.
FOMO is heavy; “I gotta read” seems like a terrible excuse not to go out, hang out with friends, and live a little.
Compounding upon the solitary nature of my other hobbies, reading feels akin to traveling alone.
I get to see all the wonderful sights I want to see, but I can’t share the joy in the moment—only snippets of highlights in the photo album equivalent of quotes in random settings.
Deep down, I know I just need to plop down and read.
There’s tremendous value in reading. All the titans I read about have read about the titans preceding their eras.
The people I want to emulate just know more. And I want to know more too.