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How To: Read more books

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Re: How To: Read more books

#71

Post by maw »

rdmcfee wrote: post #50

Beside the point of this article I'm amazed by the following: "The average person spends 1704 hours a year watching TV". From my understanding an average work year is around 2000 hours. If 'the average person' worked in an enjoyable environment that was as pleasant as watching television or reading a book they could easily almost double their input at the workplace by cutting out television. Whether that would double…

It is a lot of time, but don't forget that to watch TV you basically just need time. To work you need time and attention, and at some point you don't have the energy to give work the attention it needs to get done.

Re: How To: Read more books

#72

Post by seanc »

mcav wrote: post #17
sp332 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Finding time is never an issue. Every day, you are handed 24 shiny new hours to spend. The real issues (which Aaron addresses) are motivation and mental ability.

You get 24 hours each day, true. But it's not just about motivation and mental ability. The time you have available to read is only time you aren't doing something else. If you have a job, or school, or family duties, or anything else, you may not have much time available to read. Your downtime is available for you to use as you please -- via reading, or watching TV, or whatever. That's when it's an issue of motivati…

For many people, time management is really relationship management. I read that on a blog somewhere.

A lot of grown ups, most things we do, we do for other people, in one way or another. So when we pick a thing off of the to do list, we are picking a person to serve.

Re: How To: Read more books

#74

Post by Enra2 »

mquander wrote: post #37
maurycy wrote: post #33

Bla, bla, bla. The most important question is, I think, why force yourself to read more books? I grew up in a family where everyone reads a lot of books. No one forced me to read books but I spent most of my childhood reading something, being completely convinced that it is good for me. I used to read everything. From silly to hardcore stuff, like philosophy, sociology and literature critique. From novels to strictly…

I think this is with you, not with the books. Maybe you're talking about when you were a teenager or before -- I did a poor job of reading many books when I was younger, too. But most adults don't read good novels or tracts on philosophy or sociology and then come out learning "nothing." I promise that there is much more than "nothing" inside. I think it's awfully pessimistic to say that you can't learn anything from…

"I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it."

-Sherlock Holmes, A Study In Scarlet

Re: How To: Read more books

#75

Post by tpyo »

revorad wrote: post #13
badave wrote: post #4

tl;dr: Stop visiting hacker news, reddit and other blogs; stop interacting with people; get books from the library for free. My opinion: seriously, blogs should count as minibooks and everytime I read a particularly good and in depth blog or something that elicits the "I'm smarter for reading that" moment, I'm going to keep a tally. That tally I'll consider a chapter of a book. At 300 chapters, I'll count that as a b…

Wow, are you really reading 30,000 good blog posts in a year? Could you please share what blogs you read? I find most blogs tiring and annoying, because there is so little new content and so much reposting and regurgitating of the same things going on over and over again. I am rediscovering what a joy it is to read books. It seems it does take a lot of work to write well. Blog posts, almost by definition, are not mea…

Try Roger Ebert's one: http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/atom.xml

Re: How To: Read more books

#76

Post by klipt »

MikeCapone wrote: post #60
samd wrote: post #2

5. Stop reading Hacker News.

But how?

Do or do not. There is no try. (I.e. weigh up your plans thoroughly, but once you decide to implement one, implement it properly.)

IMO, I'd have to find some pretty amazing books to justify dropping HN entirely.

Re: How To: Read more books

#77

Post by akkartik »

badave wrote: post #35
revorad wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Examples please? I still find that number hard to believe.

Ok, for example, this morning I've gone through: http://zef.me/2913/javascript-oop-style-performance http://cairnarvon.rotahall.org/2010/02/28/search-trees-are-e... . http://norvig.com/sudoku.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knuth%27s_Algorithm_X http://www.topcoder.com/tc?module=Static&d1=tutorials.. . http://www.extjs.tv/index.php/2010/javascript-debugging-tech... . I suggest reddit.com/r/programming, Hacker News…

Offtopic: badave, I used to work on MeeHive, which is similar to yourversion. I'm now off on my own building a tool to help me read more widely. Would you be interested in trying it out? My email's in my profile. I'd love to hear about what you think is missing in google reader, yourversion, etc.

Re: How To: Read more books

#78

Post by maurycy »

Enra2 wrote: post #74
mquander wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is with you, not with the books. Maybe you're talking about when you were a teenager or before -- I did a poor job of reading many books when I was younger, too. But most adults don't read good novels or tracts on philosophy or sociology and then come out learning "nothing." I promise that there is much more than "nothing" inside. I think it's awfully pessimistic to say that you can't learn anything from…

"I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it." -Sherlock Holmes, A Study In Scarlet

I lke mnmalism.

Re: How To: Read more books

#79

Post by maurycy »

mquander wrote: post #61
maurycy wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're the essence of the problem, messieur. What's so pessimistic about it? Whatever floats your boat, pal. If books enrich you, keep reading. Do not force everyone else to do so, though. Might be that there are other sources of enlightenment. Nature, nice chicks, long discussions, Italian restaurants etc. It's pure symbolic violence what you do right now, pal. Easy test, though. Speak to a random literature folk, w…

I have to admit, you've got a point. I feel a little bit like the Christian who insists on starting every conversation with a discussion about how you ought to let Jesus into your heart. I will think a little bit and see if I can defend my position this evening.

Thank you. I appreciate your honesty.

Re: How To: Read more books

#80

Post by Psyonic »

markbnine wrote: post #5

Maybe instead of actively alienating people and getting rid of hobbies , you can find people who share the hobby of reading?

What's the use? If you'd all rather be reading, I can't imagine your parties are terribly thrilling
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