Last year, I tried to be a bit more intentional with reading. In some respects, I was trying to get back to a time when I would always have a book on me and would read it throughout the day, on public transport, in the office, or whilst waiting for something. It is an activity that I have lost and missed, and, I think, to many other people since the attention capture of Social Media.

I largely achieved that goal, and it has been good for the soul, but I’m sure that I could have done better. I’m largely off anything social, although I read a few posts on —non-nazi bar— forums and Mastodon. But it got me thinking about the types of reading I do and how I can fine tune the intentionality for (hopefully) better outcomes.

If I had to categorise the types of reading I do, it tends to fall into one or more of the following bins:

  • Skimming / Getting up to speed
  • Learning / Education
  • Novels and Entertainment

For the first type, I am starting to limit myself to a maximum of an hour over a full twenty-four, to catch up on posts on Mastodon and news-related sites with NetNewsWire’s fine RSS reader. This is high sugar content that satiates a need in the instant, but quickly dissipates from my brain, leaving room for other things. It used to be MOAR of the same, but this is a habit that I am slowly kicking. But damn, the world going to hell in a handbasket is really not helping!

For learning, this is highly intentional reading, where I will need to set aside time to read, re-read and digest the information. Within this category, there are probably a couple of other subtypes. For example, for training materials, I tend to read quickly, take a couple of notes to get the gist, re-read then take the test / exam. This serves me well, and I generally get high grades. For other writing that is ostensibly something I’d like to “learn” something from, I have a tendency to read it, think I’ll remember it, and of course don’t. Typically, this is on personal blogs of writers, or others sharing on a topic that interests me. It’s not formal training, or journalism, but it is nonetheless interesting and helpful to developing one’s particular interests. The change this year —if I can achieve it— is to treat it more like education and take notes. Even if these notes are not extensive, structured and written with poor handwriting skills. They might never be seen again, but that doesn’t matter because the exercise of effort to write them in the first place is likely to have a positive effect on retention and learning capacity.

For novels, I want to get back to the wonder I felt when reading books when I was younger. I’ve never been one to take reading notes and write my personal summaries. Whilst I aspire to that, I don’t think I’m wired that way, so I’ve decided not to fight against it. I’m going to read them. Enjoy them. Finish them. And then move on to the next book. This doesn’t preclude me from taking an interesting note at some point in the future, but I’m not going to ‘intentionally’ start reading a book with the purpose of producing reams of notes. And, to be honest, I have a fairly unique relationship to novels, in that I cannot re-read them in the future, as I already know the story and what is about to happen that it kills all the joy for me. I can count on one hand the number of novels I’ve re-read over my life. I just can’t do it.

I’ll see how I get on this year and in trying to keep myself on track, I’ll return to this post every now and again.