On Reading

Dilettantism has always dogged me.  However, late in life I have decided to use that positively.  I have had to reframe my outlook.

I used to be enthused, for example, by You Tube videos like Simon Sinek’s Start with Why and try to dive into the book version.  The video and the book, however, are two different animals.  I get emboldened by the videos only to be mailed by the books.

Still, kept watching videos in their entireties while cagily dabbling with the books.  

Two books influenced the way I approach books now.  

One is Kotler’s The Art of Impossible.  In it, he states that books are the most consdenaed forms of knowledge.  That makes the return on investment on books the highest.  Kotler even specifies an effective way of using books.  He even includes a powerful and novel way of creating notes from the books.

The other one is Range by David Epstein.  In it he writes about kind and wicked learning environment.  Best example for kind learning  maybe mastering chess.  For wicked learning environment, he cites tennis.

As a shining example of mastering tennis, Epstein narrates Roger Federer’s approach.  The tennis champion sampled many sports before settling on Tennis.

Thanks to that book I no longer  see myself as dilettante.  I deliberately sample books.  Understanding that books are the most condensed form of knowledge helps me to stick to them.

Although I am still struggling, I have become a bettter reader.  More importantly, i neither mind struggling nor wandering from one topic to another.  Both are parts of the learning process.