I’m one of those people who has been told I have an above average reading speed. I’ve never measured it although I seem to devour good books at a very rapid pace. Legitimate or not, I am owning the kudos because my ego likes it. At a reading rate of 15 books per year that is not bad. However, Bill Gates as an example reads 50 books per year with Mark Zuckerberg reading 2 books every week and Elon Musk at his prime rumoured to read a book a day. I am but a “small boy” in comparison.
Something changed today as I finished my latest read. I struggled to find a space on both my bookshelves to store it. We have reached capacity. This is partly self imposed because I struggle to listen to audio books (I fall asleep) and I don’t own a kindle. Reading e-books also strains my eyes and feels like additional screen time. Nothing beats paging through the real pages of a good book. The dopamine enhancing feeling of seeing the bookmark progress through from start to conclusion.
Out of pure curiosity I decided to try and see which books I had read that were taking up valuable shelf space. I didn’t count them but they are in the hundreds now. What scares me, however, is that I could not even remember reading many of them or what they were about and what their lessons were. Suddenly a lot of things started making sense, and going back to why I started reading books provided the real reason why I didn’t remember them.
My “ why” as to why I love to read is because of the two ideas that 1) Leaders are readers…and almost every successful leader reads widely and 2) If you are able to read and do not read…then you are just as equal as someone who is illiterate and cannot read. So in an effort to satisfy my natural curiosity of the world and to behave like a leader who reads I set myself the goal of reading at least one book per month. Therein lies the problem at the root of it!
Initially I found it hard to read until a friend of mine who reads a lot informed me that his goal is literally to read 20 pages every day. With this strategy he comfortably finishes a book per month. And this is when it went horribly wrong because finishing a book every month became the goal. With each closing of a chapter came brief reflection of the learnings in the book and also a major injection of dopamine. Finishing the book became the goal, not extracting learning or perspective! Thankfully, now that my bookshelf has run out of space, I have come to that realisation.
My reading strategy, therefore, for the balance of the year will be to re-read as many books as possible from my current collection. I will also make a conscious effort to give away or lend out as many books as I can. Rather than them gathering dust in my home.
Sometimes, there is an event which disrupts your normal routine and forces you to reflect on why you behave in a certain way. For me, that event was the day I failed to find enough space on my bookshelf for another book.
PS/ my wife didn’t force me to write this blog post!
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