Do I Read Too Much?

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.580 | - All right, what do we got here?

00:00:06.980 | Who's our next question?

00:00:08.600 | - Next question's from Greg

00:00:10.500 | and it's about information overload.

00:00:13.000 | - Hi Cal, I struggle with information overload.

00:00:15.960 | Basically, I think I read too much.

00:00:18.060 | All the amazing articles, books, papers,

00:00:20.520 | newsletters and blogs that are available by the thousands,

00:00:23.760 | no matter how narrow a person's interest is.

00:00:26.440 | I mean, I'm interested in programming Haskell

00:00:29.640 | and just for that, I have a dozen papers,

00:00:31.960 | three books and about 50 bookmarks.

00:00:34.840 | Even if I try to drive my reading backwards from goals

00:00:37.320 | and have a philosophy of just in time, not just in case,

00:00:40.840 | there are other reasons to read widely,

00:00:42.880 | like the responsibility of being a good citizen,

00:00:46.320 | the steward of family wealth,

00:00:48.440 | or even being the head of the household.

00:00:50.000 | This all means keeping up is important

00:00:51.920 | and that involves a lot of general reading.

00:00:54.560 | Have you thought about this much?

00:00:56.260 | It seems like FOMO, but is less frivolous.

00:00:59.900 | Thank you.

00:01:00.740 | - Yeah, Greg, it's a good point.

00:01:03.880 | It sounds like you probably are reading too much,

00:01:08.560 | but more importantly,

00:01:10.260 | you're probably putting too much pressure on yourself

00:01:12.100 | about all these different things that you need to master.

00:01:17.100 | And so I'll give you a couple of practical suggestions

00:01:19.900 | for structuring what I think is like a reasonable,

00:01:23.660 | aggressive, but reasonable life of reading.

00:01:27.380 | So you have your books

00:01:28.380 | and you wanna read a fair number of books each month,

00:01:31.820 | that's fine.

00:01:32.660 | So you have some sort of goal like that.

00:01:33.480 | I read five, whatever you want your goal to be.

00:01:36.140 | Don't care too much about what they are,

00:01:37.620 | diverse different types of books, different genres, examples.

00:01:41.220 | So you're kind of keeping that intellectual life going.

00:01:44.860 | When it comes to mastering a topic,

00:01:48.540 | so you have a personality type, which is common,

00:01:50.420 | but not everyone has it,

00:01:51.700 | where you really like mastering a topic,

00:01:53.180 | reading a lot about a topic and mastering it.

00:01:54.660 | I think that's fine.

00:01:55.660 | And you wanna lean into that, but do it sequentially.

00:01:58.420 | Sequentially, it's a hard word.

00:02:01.340 | So what's the thing I'm trying to master now?

00:02:02.900 | Okay, I'm doing Haskell now,

00:02:04.140 | or there's a personal finance thing

00:02:05.500 | I'm gonna obsess about now,

00:02:06.780 | or I wanna learn about whatever,

00:02:09.240 | some new hobby or something like that.

00:02:10.840 | I think that's fine, but just do it one at a time.

00:02:12.420 | Like here's my obsession of the moment.

00:02:14.020 | And if that's your personality type,

00:02:15.180 | it's fine to have an obsession, but just do one at a time.

00:02:17.660 | And maybe have a nice place

00:02:19.140 | for actually keeping notes on that if you want.

00:02:21.260 | You can use some sort of system

00:02:22.620 | where you type up a lot of notes

00:02:24.420 | and keep track of them and do your research

00:02:25.960 | so that you're not losing that information, and that's fine.

00:02:28.660 | But you just do one of those things at a time,

00:02:30.340 | so you don't feel this pressure

00:02:31.260 | if I have to keep up with everything.

00:02:33.980 | So now, so we have books.

00:02:35.900 | I wanna keep reading books, wide variety.

00:02:39.040 | Your singular obsession, only one at a time.

00:02:42.080 | Now that obsession might include books

00:02:44.340 | that will influence what some of your books are,

00:02:45.780 | but don't let your obsession

00:02:46.620 | take over your monthly book quota.

00:02:48.500 | The final thing to add in there

00:02:49.720 | is serendipitous, entertaining, or shorter form reading.

00:02:53.940 | So you have newsletters and magazines,

00:02:55.740 | and there's these type of things.

00:02:57.940 | And you find some benefit to this.

00:02:59.700 | A Cal Newport article that I get

00:03:02.860 | might get me thinking about this,

00:03:04.740 | and maybe I subscribe to Ben Thompson's "Strategery,"

00:03:07.200 | and that gives me some interesting insight

00:03:08.820 | into the world of business.

00:03:11.560 | And maybe you subscribe to "The New Yorker,"

00:03:14.220 | and there's a YouTube channel of someone you like to watch

00:03:18.260 | but it's more funny.

00:03:19.100 | So you have all this type of stuff too.

00:03:20.380 | So what do we do with that?

00:03:21.380 | And I would say for that third category,

00:03:23.660 | work backwards from time slots.

00:03:26.560 | So you see that all as programming,

00:03:30.080 | like on a TV channel, like HBO or something.

00:03:32.620 | And you put aside time you watch HBO.

00:03:35.400 | Like, okay, it's Saturday mornings,

00:03:37.860 | and I like to take a long lunch break on Fridays,

00:03:41.080 | or end my day early on Fridays, or whatever.

00:03:43.500 | Like you have it figured out.

00:03:44.420 | There's certain times where I just wanna expose myself,

00:03:46.500 | and I don't wanna overthink it,

00:03:47.660 | to the interesting, the random, the serendipitous,

00:03:49.700 | the funny, all what the internet has to offer.

00:03:52.220 | And maybe this is where social media comes into play too.

00:03:54.300 | There's this platform I like to go on.

00:03:55.780 | I follow these people, I wanna see what they're up to.

00:03:57.620 | Set the times, and then work backwards

00:04:00.980 | to what am I drawing from in those times?

00:04:03.300 | So when I'm out of time, I'm out of time.

00:04:04.380 | So that leads to a natural curation.

00:04:05.780 | Like, okay, well, I don't usually pull

00:04:07.900 | from these four podcasts, so I'm gonna stop,

00:04:10.300 | you know, listening to those.

00:04:11.140 | And these email newsletters I don't read,

00:04:12.460 | but I usually like this guy's email newsletter,

00:04:14.100 | so I'll keep subscribed to this guy,

00:04:15.420 | I'm not gonna subscribe to those.

00:04:17.060 | You can use tools like Flipboard, et cetera.

00:04:20.780 | There's a lot of tools like this where you go Instapaper,

00:04:23.380 | where you can kind of pull information

00:04:24.980 | from the web in various places

00:04:26.460 | into like a clean, easy format.

00:04:28.900 | You can put it on your tablet,

00:04:29.860 | and bring that tablet to the coffee shop,

00:04:31.500 | and that's where you sit and read.

00:04:32.700 | I'm a big fan of that, so pull it out of context.

00:04:35.340 | But you have a set amount of time,

00:04:36.900 | and that puts back a natural curation.

00:04:39.540 | For someone like you, Greg,

00:04:40.540 | that's interested in information, likes information,

00:04:43.460 | likes having obsessions, like understanding things,

00:04:45.580 | that's my three-pronged suggestion.

00:04:47.860 | Of a fixed number of books you read,

00:04:49.860 | have an obsession, but you only do one obsession at a time,

00:04:53.660 | and for the serendipitous, random, and funny,

00:04:57.460 | have set times you do that.

00:04:59.340 | And if it doesn't fit in that time, you don't get to it,

00:05:01.260 | and that will naturally curate

00:05:02.340 | what you actually pull from.

00:05:03.180 | Do those things, I think you have,

00:05:04.780 | you're keeping up with your responsibilities,

00:05:06.100 | you're keeping life interesting,

00:05:07.180 | you're gonna be exposed to a lot of interesting things,

00:05:09.060 | but you're not gonna have that stress

00:05:10.700 | of I can't keep up with everything,

00:05:12.820 | and you're not gonna have the accidental side effect

00:05:15.660 | of, let's say the frivolous or serendipitous

00:05:18.220 | takes over all your time from the deeper book

00:05:20.900 | you wanted to read, or the obsession gets in the way

00:05:23.700 | of anything interesting in your life.

00:05:25.100 | This gives you a nice balance.

00:05:27.780 | (upbeat music)

00:05:30.380 | [MUSIC PLAYING]

Do I Read Too Much?

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