I believe reading is one of the best ways to absorb new information. Better than videos, better than podcasts, better than audiobooks.
While each medium above offers different benefits, there’s something unique about reading a book.
To me, reading stands out because it demands your focus. I’m not knocking audio forms—they have their place—but they’re much more susceptible to distraction in my experience.
If I’m listening to a podcast and I start thinking about something else, I’m probably not rewinding too often. But if I’m reading a book and get lost in thought, I can’t as easily fool myself into thinking I just absorbed the last half page that my eyes grazed over.
Yes, this is more cognitively demanding, particularly if it’s something technical and over my head like Gödel, Escher, Bach (which is still sitting on my bookshelf to finish). But this challenge is good.
I’m not only taking in new information with a clear focus, I’m also training my mind to be more patient and present.
Outside the social craze of “dopamine fasting” and whatever clinical studies may prescribe to reset our brains to a healthy state, I can subjectively report that difficult things feel easier when I move further away from behaviours and activities that provide immediate gratification.
Naval Ravikant had a good quote on this: “the modern devil is cheap dopamine”. Technology and chemical compounds are wonderful servants but terrible masters. In the twenty-first century, it is our duty as individuals to balance their use and influence in our lives.
For recalling information, I’ve been using Readwise for the past nine months. While I don’t review my highlights every day, I’ve found it to be a very simple and effective recall tool. Whether on a physical book or the Kindle, I can highlight and upload directly to the Readwise app and receive a daily reminder of excerpts from every book I’ve read.
For those looking for a new read, here are the top 3 books I’ve read (or re-read) in the past year.
Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman
The average human lifespan is absurdly, insultingly brief. Assuming you live to be eighty, you have just over four thousand weeks.
Nobody needs telling there isn’t enough time. We’re obsessed with our lengthening to-do lists, our overfilled inboxes, work-life balance, and the ceaseless battle against distraction; and we’re deluged with advice on becoming more productive and efficient, and “life hacks” to optimize our days. But such techniques often end up making things worse. The sense of anxious hurry grows more intense, and still the most meaningful parts of life seem to lie just beyond the horizon. Still, we rarely make the connection between our daily struggles with time and the ultimate time management problem: the challenge of how best to use our four thousand weeks.
Drawing on the insights of both ancient and contemporary philosophers, psychologists, and spiritual teachers, Oliver Burkeman delivers an entertaining, humorous, practical, and ultimately profound guide to time and time management. Rejecting the futile modern fixation on “getting everything done,” Four Thousand Weeks introduces listeners to tools for constructing a meaningful life by embracing finitude, showing how many of the unhelpful ways we’ve come to think about time aren’t inescapable, unchanging truths, but choices we’ve made as individuals and as a society – and that we could do things differently.
Awareness by Anthony de Mello
Awareness awakens you to the truth that you possess everything you need right now to be happy and fulfilled.
Happiness is your natural state. You don’t need to do anything to acquire it; you only need to drop something. This book shows you what that is. There is not a single person who ever gave time to being aware who’s quality of life didn’t change.
You see life differently because you are different. You respond to people and situations differently. You see things you have never seen before. Beautiful things. You’re much more energetic, much more alive. When you finally awake, you don’t try to make good things happen; they just happen. You understand suddenly that everything that happens to you is good. You understand that all is well, even at times when things seem a mess. You discover that there is a loving force surrounding you at all times that is always within reach, always right here in your midst, making your life meaningful and beautiful and rich.
Not Fade Away by Laurence Shames & Peter Barton
Some people are born to lead and destined to teach by the example of living life to the fullest, and facing death with uncommon honesty and courage. Peter Barton was that kind of person.
Driven by the ideals that sparked a generation, he became an overachieving Everyman, a risk-taker who showed others what was possible. Then, in the prime of his life—hugely successful, happily married, and the father of three children—Peter faced the greatest of all challenges. Diagnosed with cancer, he began a journey that was not only frightening and appalling but also full of wonder and discovery.
With unflinching candor and even surprising humor, Not Fade Away finds meaning and solace in Peter’s confrontation with mortality. Celebrating life as it dares to stare down death, Peter’s story addresses universal hopes and fears, and redefines the quietly heroic tasks of seeking clarity in the midst of pain, of breaking through to personal faith, and of achieving peace after bold and sincere questioning.