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Letting go of the idea of keeping up

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Re: Letting go of the idea of keeping up

#71

Post by vasco »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #38
deebosong wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Respect. I'm gonna start using "shitlit" from hereon out. And also, there are people I respect who said they read 100+ books a year, and that you should, too. But while others in my circles were eager to jump on the train, for me, I thought it would be performative, and be about having read said 100+ books than digesting any of it. And what more, I recall that I best retain info via reading if I have skin in the game…

For "shitlit", I highly recommend novels written by Charles Bukowski. They are very funny.

Bukowski's books are funny and sad at the same time, but I would not consider it shitlit! Well maybe some if it like Hollywood I could see it, but definitely not Post Office.

Re: Letting go of the idea of keeping up

#72

Post by paganel »

SeriousM wrote: post #57

Reading is part of my daily job, my education path, and in my free time. Even here on HN (ignoring the fact that the internet is no book). I have so many open tabs in my browser with articles I want to read because I see value in reading them eventually, but I can't keep up with all the new content that gets produced. Then I read the article with different eyes, the eyes of a youtube consumer. I have a huuuuge list o…

> Step back from the Internet, unsubscribe from non essential creators, close tabs without verifying if still needed

Pretty much, yes, that's the answer, at least for me. I've stopped keeping tabs on much of what's considered as being "new" and I've surrounded myself (literally, I think I might have a hoarding problem) with books that I consider to be close to my (hobby-ish) interests.

Even when it comes to those books I 100% realize that I won't have enough time to read them all, but whenever I see a mention/reference being made from a book that I'm currently reading to a second book it's good to know that I have that second book in my piles of books located around the house. Hard to logically explain, but it is what it is.

Re: Letting go of the idea of keeping up

#73

Post by rdlw »

tsunamifury wrote: post #63
rdlw wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I create fake tasks to stress myself out and compel myself to do things that make me feel better in the long run. I don't use Goodreads but I've been trying to read 20-24 books this year (I'm on track for 20). Obviously word count can drastically change the difficulty of this, but I'm not worrying about it since I know what I'm reading—if I only end up with 15 in December, but one of them is War and Peace, I'll still…

It has it actually benefited you? I’ve found hat most books are roundly useless in application — which is fine if you are having fun. But if you’re not your just wasting time.

Application?

I think adding something to my mental model of the world is a benefit, yes, but I'm not sure that's what you mean. I find that reading books enriches my life in a way that YouTube doesn't (with many, many exceptions).

Maybe let's try a concrete example: The Republic. It taught me about ancient Greek society, made me feel a connection to people that lived 2400 years before me, made me interested in the ancient Greek language, gave me lots of ethical questions to discuss with my friends, caused me to slow down and deliberately think through many important problems, and allowed me to take part in the intellectual tradition that people have been participating in for over two millennia.

It did not make me overthrow the government, so it goes under "roundly useless in application", but at least I "had fun", so I wasn't just "wasting time"?

What do you do with all your time?

Re: Letting go of the idea of keeping up

#74

Post by starbugs »

NalNezumi wrote: post #48

When I saw the title I thought the article would be about the dreadful stress of keeping up with new tech or research .. But it's about spare time reading? Granted the problem seems similar, but only because the author is in the field of reading (working in books related profession). I'm not sure how much it can be applied to just hobby reading. Stress of keeping up with tech/research comes from a sense of profession…

> So the conclusion is not that helpful.

Isn't the conclusion from the article inherently transferable to what you described? (I was assuming a different topic as well.)

Re: Letting go of the idea of keeping up

#75

Post by kortilla »

vasco wrote: post #70
starkparker wrote: post #51

At one of my jobs the entire team read at least a book a week, often more and seemingly non-stop. Every standup started with every person talking about what we'd read that week. I'd never been a huge longform reader (more like a book a month, at best) and rarely had anything to contribute. Sometimes I'd say "our documentation" because that's what I'd been working on, and when I wasn't working _I wasn't reading_ becau…

I'll be honest, they sound rude for laughing behind your back, but I really disagree with the notion that you're reading "as much" by reading some reddit articles or docs pages. People who keep up a book per week or month ALSO read those things. I've found many people that don't read have this notion that just going on reddit for an hour a day "is the same thing", but it's nothing like sitting down and properly divin…

People who “read a book a week” aren’t absorbing anything useful for technical work anyway.

When I think about the best (as identified by both myself and widely within the org) engineers I spent the last couple of decades working with, exactly 0 of them went through a book a week.

Reading that much means you’re just skipping across some other author’s ideas. The person that reads a single article about some new algorithm or research and spends multiple hours internalizing it, trying it, analyzing it, debating it, etc is gaining far more than the book guzzlers.

Re: Letting go of the idea of keeping up

#77

Post by NalNezumi »

starbugs wrote: post #74
NalNezumi wrote: post #48

When I saw the title I thought the article would be about the dreadful stress of keeping up with new tech or research .. But it's about spare time reading? Granted the problem seems similar, but only because the author is in the field of reading (working in books related profession). I'm not sure how much it can be applied to just hobby reading. Stress of keeping up with tech/research comes from a sense of profession…

> So the conclusion is not that helpful. Isn't the conclusion from the article inherently transferable to what you described? (I was assuming a different topic as well.)

I'd say it is transferable only partially? But still not that helpful.

It is helpful to people that are not aware of the source of the stress (often in the form of feeling overwhelmed) to be able to identify it. The article spend most of the words actually just describing this phenomenon. I think newly-graduated-in-tech-startup me in the past would've felt validated reading it.

But the article falls short on any good remedies for the situation. Like yeah I'd love to be able to just "not worry about it", but the problem is that I (as a researcher needing to keep up) can't just stop worrying about it, but I'd love to find a balance where I can keep the enthusiasm and up to date while not feeling overwhelmed and dreadful while doing it.

It works for the author because ultimately, the author is in a position when they can walk away or explain WHY they don't keep up and get accepted for it. Worst case the author will lose respect or some snobbish friends.

That's not the case for most tech or research people. Not worrying about it might be close to just quitting (or silent quitting) and require a bit more mental change than "to not just worry about it". Even if that's the ultimate goal, the advice is as helpful as telling a homeless man how dreadful it is to not have a home, and then tell him to just buy a house.

Re: Letting go of the idea of keeping up

#78

Post by anal_reactor »

starkparker wrote: post #51

At one of my jobs the entire team read at least a book a week, often more and seemingly non-stop. Every standup started with every person talking about what we'd read that week. I'd never been a huge longform reader (more like a book a month, at best) and rarely had anything to contribute. Sometimes I'd say "our documentation" because that's what I'd been working on, and when I wasn't working _I wasn't reading_ becau…

I can really understand how it feels from their perspective. Work feels much better when we do stuff that makes us connect as humans, and quarterly corporate events don't cut it. They created a culture where they did something fun together and had a conversation topic other than work, and there's this one guy who just refuses to participate and doesn't even try to find a way to include himself in the group.

Sure, reading a book a week takes time from your other activities and is way too much to expect, but if you had spent 15 minutes on Monday morning browsing Wikipedia on the topic of literature and brought some trivia, that would have been much appreciated.

People often complain about the soullessness of corporate jobs, but when someone tries to do something about it, there's usually huge pushback because everyone wants that something to fit their personal preferences, and since we can't find a thing that everyone likes, we go back to treating job as a pure business relationship.

Re: Letting go of the idea of keeping up

#79

Post by freetinker »

starkparker wrote: post #51

At one of my jobs the entire team read at least a book a week, often more and seemingly non-stop. Every standup started with every person talking about what we'd read that week. I'd never been a huge longform reader (more like a book a month, at best) and rarely had anything to contribute. Sometimes I'd say "our documentation" because that's what I'd been working on, and when I wasn't working _I wasn't reading_ becau…

This sounds super toxic - unless you got paid for reading novels.

Re: Letting go of the idea of keeping up

#80

Post by sandspar »

kortilla wrote: post #75
vasco wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll be honest, they sound rude for laughing behind your back, but I really disagree with the notion that you're reading "as much" by reading some reddit articles or docs pages. People who keep up a book per week or month ALSO read those things. I've found many people that don't read have this notion that just going on reddit for an hour a day "is the same thing", but it's nothing like sitting down and properly divin…

People who “read a book a week” aren’t absorbing anything useful for technical work anyway. When I think about the best (as identified by both myself and widely within the org) engineers I spent the last couple of decades working with, exactly 0 of them went through a book a week. Reading that much means you’re just skipping across some other author’s ideas. The person that reads a single article about some new algor…

Reading a book a week isn't difficult. If you read at a hobbyist reader's comfortable pace then you can finish a medium novel in five to seven hours. Hobbyist readers with full-time jobs who read on the side can read from one to six hours a day. Think of the average person's daily phone screentime.
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