Sometimes I kick myself for not reading enough. Especially as a writer, I ask myself, how can you call this your craft if you don’t read?
Reading is a big source of creativity for me. Fiction inspires my personal life and non-fiction inspires my work. So when I don’t find time to read sometimes I notice a slowdown in new ideas.
In almost all cases I think the “I don’t have time” excuse is just prioritization in disguise. But still worth thinking about how to fit more reading into your day.
I had this thought sitting in South Park in SF the other day. It’s been dark and rainy lately and the other day was beautiful—sunshine, sixty degrees. I was sitting on the bench eating my sandwich and so many thoughts were occuring to me—stuff that I could work on when I got back to the office and even little poems about the dogs playing and tug-of-war between the seasons. It gave me a similar feeling to the one I get when I learn something new from reading.
Which made me think: there are ways to read into stories and ideas not on paper and bound in a cover.
Stories are constantly being told all around. In the city especially, you can look around and see a hundred lives that could all individually be movies with a talented director and cast. Look at a taxi cab and think of its story: the garages it’s lived in, the drivers it’s carried, the crash of ‘09 and the hard times in the auto shop.
There is non-fiction around you, too. Principles played out, like the importance of teamwork on the soccer field or the law of large numbers in your insurance work at the office.
There is a certain mindset that we get into while reading, and that is to pay complete attention to what you’re focusing on—therein lies the power of reading in my opinion. It is not that you are taking time to sit down with pages that have words on them, but that you are taking time to sit down and focus deeply and exclusively on something, anything at all.
You could just as well sit down on your front porch and watch the scenery. You would not necessarily gain the type of knowledge that our economy tends to value, but there is a lot to learn if you focus on anything deeply and exclusively.
So next time your behind on your new year’s resolution to read more or you notice dust has collected on your bookshelf, pay a little more attention on your walk to work or listen intently to a conversation with a friend, and see what you can read there.