Reading: Virtue or vice?
jasonleow • 23 Jul 2023 •
I love reading. I love books. I feel people in general could read more. People seem to stop reading altogether after they stop school, which is a shame.
But are books and reading really such a universal good that it can do no wrong?
Yes. Any virtue in excess, practised to extremes becomes vice.
Thrift in excess becomes cheapskate.
Reading in excess becomes intellectual vanity.
Reading in excess becomes intellectual vanity.
Like how this tweet triggered a wave of counter comments why something as good as reading gets hate:
It’s not hate for reading itself. It’s how you use reading as a habit.
There’s reading for practical application, for learning and chasing curiosity, for just the fun of it, and there’s performative reading for vanity metrics, for the 'gram. Inferring from that photo, if you’re reading 1 entrepreneur/productivity book per week for one year and defending that you’re reading to apply it and learn, who are you kidding? How much can you apply from spending 1 book per week? The hard limit here is our time. How much time is left to apply all those lessons after reading 1 book per week? Any application is likely superficial.
And let’s face it: If you’re reading those kind of (non-fiction) books, it’s likely you’re reading it to reach a goal. Maybe you want to be an entrepreneur. Maybe you have a goal to start a business, or if you started one, you’re hoping to reach some level of profitability. Reading 1 book a week won’t get you there.
Look, I’m all for reading. Like I said I love to read and I love books. If you read for fun, knock yourself out. But if you’re reading to help you reach a goal like to be an entrepreneur, maybe like, apply some moderation instead?
Read a few good ones, apply it, and spend the rest of the time executing like hell. Then come back to reading and learning where you feel your knowledge falls short.
Entrepreneurship isn’t an academic, theory-based vocation. It’s a practitioner-/skills-based, pragmatic vocation.
Taking advice or reference from your business professors in a university ain’t gonna cut it.
Comments
For me, if that 1h reading time is helpful for my goal, I’ll be happy to do it. If it’s not, it’s not worth spending time on it. But of course caveat is if reading for leisure/entertainment. That’s different bucket of time accounting. 😉🤓
Hmm, I mean at one level I get it, especially since many such books are one good idea inflated into 300 pages of text.
But, forty-four books is probably less than an hour of reading every day for a year, and this is at least a two-year pile of books for most people. Really, I worry for anyone who would think they need to hustle so much they can’t afford to waste an hour reading.
I mean, jebus, if they believe that, what the heck are they doing on Twitter? 🤔