An ode to reading (non-fiction)
Before I tell my own story, here are some tips for getting back into reading:
Choose a time of day and make a habit: reading before bed can greatly improve sleep quality and get you through 15–20 pages a night, at which rate you’ll finish 2–3 books a month.
Put your phone somewhere else (and minimize screen time): I’m not explaining this one. Until your relationship with the phone changes, cultivating focus will prove elusive.
Make a list of interests (non-fiction) and start with a light read in your favorite category. Work up to denser concepts.
tl;dr I changed my relationship with gadgets and sought knowledge. Then I accidentally, amazingly, found the good life.
What happened when I left school
I grew up a shy bookworm. Like so many other children who grow up feeling socially cast out, books gave my brain somewhere else to go and even find fictional characters in whom I saw myself. I went to grad school for history and religious studies. I was in the habit, somehow, of digesting the equivalent of four to five books a week for seminars plus writing an average of three papers on the reading. Entry into the working world sapped whatever energy I had, so I stopped reading. The commute, the anxiety and distractions of the office, and taking work home.
But the real reason I used to read as much as I did in grad school was that I did not have a smartphone until after I finished. In fact, my use of Facebook is the culprit for my slightly above average grades throughout school and my mediocre thesis, though I couldn’t admit it to myself then. I remember signing up for a Facebook account at freshman orientation in June 2005. At the time, it felt like a place to find like-minded people and belonging. Instead, I became a shell of a person with underdeveloped opinions and deep anxiety all the time.
Finding non-fiction again compelled me to sharpen my thinking and seek out opposing views to those I had formed in the shallows of the Internet. When one is in a virtual world of ideological extremes and superficial analyses, it’s easy to never question one’s ardently held beliefs. It’s even easier to brush off critique with snark. I engaged in this and was on the receiving end, which only made me an unpleasant person. I assumed that it was fine to just learn things at work and not bother in other areas of life. After all, I had hobbies. Just not ones that exercised my brain.
Non-fiction books proved superior to anything on the Internet (shocker)
Learning how to think deeply again through substantial reading over a range of topics was my path out of the darkness. I could not have developed a deeper knowledge of the concepts and phenomena informing my beliefs without getting off the Internet. Getting off social media was not enough, because reading the ‘news’ was no better for my brain. The news media especially are incentivized to produce content to please their audiences and advertisers, which precludes depth. How would we ever learn to question ourselves by only consuming media reflecting our already-formed opinions?
Longform articles are insufficient, though I used to think they were a fine substitute. Once I changed my relationship with the phone, ample time opened to read thirty, then forty-three books in one year. While I read fiction, I see it as entertainment. It’s important to also read for pure pleasure. Reading fiction is still an exercise in reading comprehension and empathy.
However, fiction can only indirectly teach abstract concepts requiring logical reasoning. It was transformational for me to approach life once more as a student. I read more in the last three years than I perhaps ever have about the phenomena which shaped my views on significant questions and departures of agreement. I struggled with questions about justice and fairness, which affected me profoundly.
I changed my thinking or further honed my thoughts in so many subjects I lost count. In Think Again, Adam Grant details the problems caused by the disinclination to question one’s beliefs. Never doing so is harmful in all areas of life: relationships, careers, friendships, and civic engagement. Since people on the internet have generally demanded I cite my sources (while not citing themselves), don’t take my word for it.
Yes, you’ll also benefit at work
Rethinking or searching for more details about my interests in all these areas has made for myriad benefits. I found that my cultivation of knowledge increased my serenity overall and I performed at work. I now see product management as a craft, so I finally picked up the essential books on it. The result — I could finally think strategically and move my career beyond backlog babysitting.
My opinions on everything at work and in life are now loosely held because I sought to intellectually humble myself. The mere fact of my spending ample time concentrating on reading away from screens improved my attention span, which increased my confidence and led to intellectual breakthroughs of a quality I had never felt. It is no coincidence that I found career satisfaction after I put screens down and picked books up.
What is a life without discipline and rigor?
I had to cultivate focus to reach mental equilibrium. Because I’ve had depression and anxiety for most of my life and started using the Internet at an early age, I didn’t grasp how I was often sabotaging myself because of it (and the phone). Obviously, I read about that, too. Eventually, I realized that I was acquiring the background knowledge to find my version of the good life.
Reading about intellectual interests (or nonfiction in general) exercises your critical thinking ability, which also sharpens your perforÂmance in other areas of life. This kind of reading also enables you to make unique connections between concepts already held in your brain, much like mental health therapy aims to do.
A pleasant side effect I did not expect was the ability to completely divorce my sense of personhood and self-worth from my professional identity, which meant it faded into the background and no longer caused anxiety. I simultaneously improved my performance.
The most important reason to seek knowledge in reading books is to improve one’s concenÂtration for its own sake. Aside from the career benefits of increased concentration, it is an ability without which mindfulness is impossible. If you are constantly distracted and unable to sit in silence, by definition mindedness cannot exist in that context. Since I sought refuge in reading over the laptop (yes, even at work), phone, and TV, I feel like a different person — really, I feel like a real person for the first time. Finding my bookworm self was an essential stop on my path to my version of the good life, and I am certain that you, dear reader, can find your good life, too.
As a hard-core non-fiction reader, I endorse this message. I never found it hard to do. I am not much for television, but I love books. I studied economics at Cornell, but I got a history degree too for fun. I still buy too many history books. I love the field. I read fiction as well, actually far more as I age, but there is nothing like learning about the past.