How I manage my book list
I am not an avid reader until the age of seventeen, I always bring up a book everywhere. At that time, I have a mindset that whenever there is free time, I go straight away reading books. In those days, I still experimenting with what books I like to read the most. It turns out that I hate novels 😂. I am more into the nonfiction and sci-fi category 💪.
In this post, I do not want to write about why on the earth I read books. It will be a long story and I will keep it as another blog post. I want to write about ;
How I manage my book list.
As a young teenager 👦🏻, I have a lot of questions and curiosity about this life and afterward. There are a bunch of things I still did not understand. Instead of keep questioning, I fill my curiosity with studying the things that I want to understand.
Here, there are a lot of knowledge resources out there in this world. Plus with the information overload in the 21st century, I need to filter the best of it. Books, blogs, articles, videos, podcasts, these are some of the knowledge resources nowadays. I do not want to put social media as it has a mix of elements of false and true in them. But, as you follow great people, good resources, great companies, that also can be your knowledge resources. I will focus more on books in this post.
Books are where the general idea expands to the rabbit hole. It is a connection of small ideas, evidence, example, rational, and thinking. If you follow the Zettlekasten method, the book is a combination of tons of index cards. Books are where the first principle learning method applies. Books are where the place for me to go in depth about certain topics.
But how I manage to read the books ?? Did I read all books ?? Did I have a bookshelf at home ?? Where do I buy the books? How do you pick the book? and yada yada.
First of all, I do not have any intention of having a manageable plan to read books. I read books in the first place is to just filling my curiosity about things that I do not understand and need more clarification. But, somehow when the amount of books on the topics I want to understand is bigger than I thought 😂, I need to manage the book list. Yeah, that clarifies why I need to manage my book list.
Second, I do not have a plan to read all books. Shit, there are millions if not billions of books out there. Maybe, I would read about 200-300 books in my life. The rationale is like this, I read books on topics that I like. So, I already get rid of millions of novels. Then, let say I want to study creative thinking. Some books talk about the same idea. For example, Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Deep Work by Cal Newport. For me, I already get the general idea of both books. The additional will be more scientific research, human stories, and a more actionable plan. Except for sci-fi novels, you can't do this because each of them has different incredible stories.
Furthermore, I do not want to spend the whole day in my life only reading books if I have millions of books to read. I am a human tho, I also want to travel, jamming music with friends, playing guitar 🎸, working on a side project, watching Netflix with family, workout, sleep, and yada yada.
You need to find a book-life balance.
Third, I do not have a bookshelf because I read e-book mostly. But I have an online bookshelf, the app is called Candl. So far, this is the best bookshelf app I've ever used. I do not like community based apps like Goodread. I just want an app to list out my plan book and categorize them based on topics I like. So in the future, I just go to that category If I want to make a reference and read it again. Reading E-book is the way I save my pocket with tons of book choices. So I can spend my money on buying guitar stuff 🤙.
Fourth, I skip the shitty books. Yes, I skip it. I skip boring topics, boring books, complex books, non-actionable books, boring chapters, and yada yada. I just don't want to read it 😄.
Fifth, I do not have an annual plan on how many books I need to read. Usually, people will set to read 22 books per year, 2 books per month, and yada yada. For me, I don't have any plans. Because reading books is like doing external research to fill my curiosity, so why do bother to read lots of books without filling the curiosity gap? Yeah, having a book count plan will make you accountable to read more. In my opinion, quality is better than quantity. What you get and what you can apply to your life from that book is more important than just read all that books solely because you achieve an annual book plan. But let's think positive, you can plan earlier on what books you want to read, and bookmark that book every month in your annual plan. You achieve your annual plan and fill your curiosity 🥳.
Last but not least, I read books at night. The night is the best time for me. It depends on you, your schedule, your surrounding, your family, friends, work. All that matters to help you determine what is the best time to read. A good rule of thumb is to read per time, not per page. I found that if I read per page let say 20 pages per day, I am eager to read more and tend to take more time. But if I set one day one hour, it is like a time block I spend every day to focus solely on reading books. If I set one hour my reading is super-fast and more enjoyable 😄 than 20 pages per day. It depends on you tho, this works for me :p.
It might sound like a crazy idea but most of these principles will work in practice. Remember, life is too short to read all the books. Learning from experience is also a good way to replace books. The moment when you start doing it, you will learn and experience much better than what books can give you.
Now that you are prepared, get ready to hit the books 🔥! The most important thing is the journey, not the destination. Have fun reading books 😊.
The End