{"id":9031,"date":"2015-02-07T10:39:21","date_gmt":"2015-02-07T10:39:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/?p=9031"},"modified":"2016-03-19T01:44:04","modified_gmt":"2016-03-19T01:44:04","slug":"0228-heavy-reading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/0228-heavy-reading\/","title":{"rendered":"0228 \u2013 getting back into the groove of Heavy Reading"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been asking myself this question a few times. I know that I want to read a lot. I have a lot of books. I have books I want to read that I haven&#8217;t yet. So what do I do? What are the first steps? I got to break it down into all the components. Here are just some of the thoughts that I have:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Re-reading books that I think I should<\/li>\n<li>Reading the books that I say I want to<\/li>\n<li>Reading the books that I really, really want to<\/li>\n<li>Figuring out how all the books interplay with each other<\/li>\n<li>Figuring out what are the categories of books that I have, and which matter the most to me<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I think I have a lot of books about scientific phenomena, about big picture things like how things work\u2013 and I&#8217;m not incredibly interested in that\u00a0<em>right now<\/em>. It&#8217;s stuff that I would like to have had read, but right now the thing I most want is some heroic inspiration from great men and women, on how to live my life.<\/p>\n<p>I also want to read books that I can crunch and review. I&#8217;ve read quite a bit of Good to Great\u2013 I&#8217;m about halfway through. I should quickly finish that up\u2013 why haven&#8217;t I yet? Maybe because the expected value isn&#8217;t that great. Understanding what makes a company great isn&#8217;t really the most important thing to me right now. It&#8217;s fairly important but not the MOST important thing.<\/p>\n<p>Okay. So what&#8217;s THE MOST IMPORTANT thing? I think first I need to focus on the books that are already on my shelves. Buying more books is a sort of escapism&#8230; and I know that I&#8217;m very guilty of that.<\/p>\n<p>Alright. I turned around to look at the books on my shelf and I&#8217;m not sure what I&#8217;d prioritize. I think I should instead work backwards and remove the books that I&#8217;m not interested in? That would annoy my wife though. I should pick the books that I want to read instead. Okay\u2013 yes. There are many, many, many of those. What do I want to get out of those books? Is it just the pleasure of reading itself? Is it having processed something?<\/p>\n<p>I feel like I don&#8217;t have time for pleasure-of-reading for the sake of pleasure-of-reading. And that&#8217;s a little sad to hear myself say, because one should always have the time for pleasurable reading! But what would actually give me the most pleasure right now? Refactoring what&#8217;s already in my head? I feel like I have all this tidying up to do. All these loose ends to tie up. I think I&#8217;m just going to focus on finishing Good To Great and then writing a few notes on that&#8230; is that what I really want to do?<\/p>\n<p>Argh, it&#8217;s so frustrating! What I really want to do I guess is to read all the blogposts I&#8217;ve highlighted about Procrastination. I want to work with that exercise&#8230; I suppose I&#8217;d like to finish reading Dostoyevsky&#8217;s Letters From Underground, and maybe read Wozniak&#8217;s biography. \u00a0Then I want to re-read Bradbury&#8217;s Zen In The Art Of Writing. I&#8217;ll take all these books out and lay them out so that I have to encounter them. And then I must prioritize them&#8230; I&#8217;ll read Dostoyevsky next. Good To Great is my current sorta-businessy-read, and Dostoyevsky shall be my &#8220;soul-read&#8221;. I suppose I can do that. I have a businessy-read, a soul-read&#8230; and maybe a learn-about-the-world read. I bought The Box with the intention of doing more &#8220;learn-about-the-world&#8221; reading, but that doesn&#8217;t feel like a huge priority right now&#8230; though of course I&#8217;ll be the first to say sometimes what you most need is something that you don&#8217;t think you need, that you don&#8217;t feel that you need.<\/p>\n<p>So\u2013 again. Dostoyevsky, Bradbury, Wozniak, Ogilvy. I think in that order. And i have to make it really small. I keep wanting reading to become this massive consuming thing, like I spend a whole day reading and doing nothing else. But that&#8217;s not necessary\u2013 I just need to start. I need to commit to starting, and maybe to reading a few pages at a time. Again, it feels sad that I even have to say this because I remember that there was a time where I&#8217;d do nothing else but read books all day. I suppose back then I didn&#8217;t have such easy Internet access. And I was young enough that every single new book seemed to be absolutely amazing. Now I&#8217;m old enough and have enough background to recognize that some books are shitty and not worth my time.<\/p>\n<p>I also feel like I want to get some context and think about why I want to read each book, and what each book will mean to me. Dostoyevsky is my introduction to some Russian thinking. Bradbury is about sharpening my axe as a writer. Wozniak&#8230; I just want to get inside that guy&#8217;s head, because so much of the time everyone focuses on Steve Jobs.<\/p>\n<p>But I suppose I ought to take a few minutes to breathe deeply, stare out the window and think about what I really, really want to read next.<\/p>\n<p>Did that. Heh. The answer is actually my own writing. There are things in my own work that I haven&#8217;t examined. I feel like only after I examine all my own work will I actually have the context I need to figure out what&#8217;s the next most important thing I should read. I want to go through my own work and figure out what are the gaps, what are the low-resolution bits that need improving, what sort of remixing do I want to do?<\/p>\n<p>So there&#8217;s the answer to my question. I haven&#8217;t been reading other people&#8217;s work because I haven&#8217;t been reading my own. I even want to read all my old tweets, and all my old Facebook posts&#8230; should I do that? Should I schedule that, at the expense of all other reading? Why the fuck not, actually? I&#8217;ve decided that moving forward I want to really break from the script and do whatever I think is interesting. I want to go somewhere new. So I&#8217;ll do that. I&#8217;ll postpone all my\u00a0Heavy Reading until I do a Heavy Read of my own feeds- Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and so on. And I&#8217;ll do it in a very deliberate, systematic way, and I&#8217;ll write down my thoughts about it. Boom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been asking myself this question a few times. I know that I want to read a lot. I have a lot of books. I have books I want to read that I haven&#8217;t yet. So what do I do? What are the first steps? I got to break it&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[22],"class_list":["post-9031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-word-vomit","tag-copes"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>0228 \u2013 getting back into the groove of Heavy Reading - 1,000,000 words by @visakanv<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/0228-heavy-reading\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"0228 \u2013 getting back into the groove of Heavy Reading - 1,000,000 words by @visakanv\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I&#8217;ve been asking myself this question a few times. I know that I want to read a lot. I have a lot of books. I have books I want to read that I haven&#8217;t yet. So what do I do? What are the first steps? I got to break it&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/0228-heavy-reading\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"1,000,000 words by @visakanv\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2015-02-07T10:39:21+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2016-03-19T01:44:04+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"visakanv\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"visakanv\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/0228-heavy-reading\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/0228-heavy-reading\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"visakanv\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/#\/schema\/person\/00fa55864dce66e27bca9ff58fc30290\"},\"headline\":\"0228 \u2013 getting back into the groove of Heavy Reading\",\"datePublished\":\"2015-02-07T10:39:21+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2016-03-19T01:44:04+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/0228-heavy-reading\/\"},\"wordCount\":1132,\"commentCount\":0,\"keywords\":[\"copes\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Word Vomit\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/0228-heavy-reading\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/0228-heavy-reading\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/0228-heavy-reading\/\",\"name\":\"0228 \u2013 getting back into the groove of Heavy Reading - 1,000,000 words by @visakanv\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2015-02-07T10:39:21+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2016-03-19T01:44:04+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/#\/schema\/person\/00fa55864dce66e27bca9ff58fc30290\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/0228-heavy-reading\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/0228-heavy-reading\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/0228-heavy-reading\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"0228 \u2013 getting back into the groove of Heavy Reading\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/\",\"name\":\"1,000,000 words by @visakanv\",\"description\":\"1,000 word vomits of 1,000 words each.\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/#\/schema\/person\/00fa55864dce66e27bca9ff58fc30290\",\"name\":\"visakanv\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/eb0258044c14d754c4ec19351286486b5cb4b0dbed3927a8e318a3da693d7ea3?s=96&d=identicon&r=g\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/eb0258044c14d754c4ec19351286486b5cb4b0dbed3927a8e318a3da693d7ea3?s=96&d=identicon&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/eb0258044c14d754c4ec19351286486b5cb4b0dbed3927a8e318a3da693d7ea3?s=96&d=identicon&r=g\",\"caption\":\"visakanv\"},\"description\":\"@visakanv\",\"sameAs\":[\"http:\/\/visakanv.com\"],\"url\":\"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/author\/visakanv\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"0228 \u2013 getting back into the groove of Heavy Reading - 1,000,000 words by @visakanv","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/0228-heavy-reading\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"0228 \u2013 getting back into the groove of Heavy Reading - 1,000,000 words by @visakanv","og_description":"I&#8217;ve been asking myself this question a few times. I know that I want to read a lot. I have a lot of books. I have books I want to read that I haven&#8217;t yet. So what do I do? What are the first steps? I got to break it&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/0228-heavy-reading\/","og_site_name":"1,000,000 words by @visakanv","article_published_time":"2015-02-07T10:39:21+00:00","article_modified_time":"2016-03-19T01:44:04+00:00","author":"visakanv","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"visakanv","Est. reading time":"5 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/0228-heavy-reading\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/0228-heavy-reading\/"},"author":{"name":"visakanv","@id":"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/#\/schema\/person\/00fa55864dce66e27bca9ff58fc30290"},"headline":"0228 \u2013 getting back into the groove of Heavy Reading","datePublished":"2015-02-07T10:39:21+00:00","dateModified":"2016-03-19T01:44:04+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/0228-heavy-reading\/"},"wordCount":1132,"commentCount":0,"keywords":["copes"],"articleSection":["Word Vomit"],"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/0228-heavy-reading\/#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/0228-heavy-reading\/","url":"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/0228-heavy-reading\/","name":"0228 \u2013 getting back into the groove of Heavy Reading - 1,000,000 words by @visakanv","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/#website"},"datePublished":"2015-02-07T10:39:21+00:00","dateModified":"2016-03-19T01:44:04+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/#\/schema\/person\/00fa55864dce66e27bca9ff58fc30290"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/0228-heavy-reading\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/0228-heavy-reading\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/0228-heavy-reading\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"0228 \u2013 getting back into the groove of Heavy Reading"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/#website","url":"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/","name":"1,000,000 words by @visakanv","description":"1,000 word vomits of 1,000 words each.","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/#\/schema\/person\/00fa55864dce66e27bca9ff58fc30290","name":"visakanv","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/eb0258044c14d754c4ec19351286486b5cb4b0dbed3927a8e318a3da693d7ea3?s=96&d=identicon&r=g","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/eb0258044c14d754c4ec19351286486b5cb4b0dbed3927a8e318a3da693d7ea3?s=96&d=identicon&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/eb0258044c14d754c4ec19351286486b5cb4b0dbed3927a8e318a3da693d7ea3?s=96&d=identicon&r=g","caption":"visakanv"},"description":"@visakanv","sameAs":["http:\/\/visakanv.com"],"url":"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/author\/visakanv\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9031"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9031\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9032,"href":"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9031\/revisions\/9032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}