How to Read

Determining what to spend your time on and how to consume it

Literacy is a metric of civilization. The ability to communicate and pass down thoughts through writing is a foundational tool to civilization. You benefit from centuries of available writing. It’s a good idea to take it in. Warren Buffett talks about reading a lot. Teddy Roosevelt was a voracious reader. So, maybe you should be reading too. It expands the mind, educates, entertains. It’s active leisure, not comparable to watching TV.  

But how do you choose what’s important when there is so much you could read? 

One strategy I’ve adopted to keep myself hitting the right books is to ‘read curiously’. Simply put, I pick up whatever is interesting at the moment. This strategy gives me license to read what I feel like reading. It ensures that reading happens instead of avoidant behaviors and that the reading is relevant to my chief interests.  

Some issues I encounter include feeling overwhelmed by the number of things I could read, and the number of things I’m already reading. Today, I want to share my reading ‘system’ that keeps me turning pages. 

First, there is an infinite supply of things to read. Nobody could read everything that’s been written. But you don’t want to miss the highlights. Great book lists loom large in any literary-inclined individual’s mind. Biographies, philosophy books, and business guides may pile up, all appearing equally worthy. 

Furthermore, there is the modern error in thinking that more information is always better. Information technology follows through on its promise of endless, instant information; the quality and usefulness of that information is debatable, however. You probably feel the suffering of ‘information glut’. You can’t and shouldn’t read everything. It's better to read one worthy book than a thousand posts. Wise selection is paramount. 

The wise man reads curiously, but does not clutter his reading life with unworthy tomes!

A second obstacle is reading too many things at once. I’ll call back to some ancient wisdom on this one, Seneca’s Epistulae Morales. In his second moral letter to Lucullus, Seneca warns against the ‘discursiveness of reading’. He calls out people who flop one book to another and thereby fail to meaningfully connect with a worthwhile author: 

Certis ingeniis inmorari et innutriri oportet, si velis aliquid trahere, quod in animo fideliter  sedeat. Nusquam est, qui ubique est.

“It is fitting to contemplate and be nourished by certain wise authors, if you want to acquire anything that might stick firmly in the mind; he is nowhere, who is everywhere.” 

Seneca is concerned that a discursive reader might suffer something of the same info-overload a modern reader does. Conflicting ideas were prevalent in the ancient world as much as this one. Seneca is right that, especially for weightier topics, it’s good to concentrate, let your mind wander around the material after you put the book down (Seneca uses the vocabulary of ‘savoring’), and even take notes. That’s how I read authors like Aristotle or Aquinas. 

This Renaissance man is in serious peril of falling victim to discursive reading!

But I want to push against Seneca a bit. I think you should read opportunistically and while that might look discursive, I think the curiosity element is worth entertaining. If something catches your eye, pick it up. Articles can be swallowed immediately. If a book looks interesting, read. Don’t allow the stringency of ‘one book at a time’ stop you from discovering something that could benefit you. 

Nevertheless, you should have a method. I tend to be in progress on between 2-4 books at a given time. But they usually vary in terms of subject matter so my mind can keep them distinct. Right now, I’m in the middle of Your Next Five Moves, a business book, Young Men in Spats, for my own entertainment, and Thomas More’s Utopia which is more philosophical and educational. I think it’s advantageous to have a few things in the works.  

Utopia was never on my reading list, I just happened across it at a bookstore. I didn’t let being in the middle of two other, unrelated texts stop me, even with Seneca’s words ringing in my ear. I can keep them distinct in mind because they’re all of very different flavors, whereas I would be hard-pressed to concentrate if I was in Utopia at the same time as Republic and The Prince for example.  

A studious reader consuming just a single text.

I encourage you to adopt whatever methodology works for you, if mine won’t apply, as long as you’re reading! Adam Knorr published a piece about the amazement of non-writers at the penman's penchant for producing perpetual streams of ideas. He has his answers, I’ve shared my own before. One of the cornerstones of that ideation is reading.

Reading keeps your thinking brain active and curious, so it’s appropriate to read curiously too. Forcing yourself to finish a book you’ve lost touch with just to finish, a habit I struggle with, is little more than a sunk-cost fallacy. You can also skirt Seneca’s charge of reading too many books at once by simply declaring “done” with said book. If it’s not nourishing, stop eating. 

Read things that energize and excite you. My friend Brian Gallagher helps people uncover what they might like to work on, and one of his questions is “what section of the bookstore would you spend most of your time in?” This is a great tell for what you’re curious about. Go for it. But don’t give your attention to just anything. Reading is an investment, but one which will pay dividends. Successful people are successful readers.