On the struggle to develop a reading habit
By: Thiagarajan Nagarajan
Tags: Reading, Consumerism, Creativity

Growing up, I have never read anything outside textbooks. Even in the textbooks, I didn’t read full chapters. Our exams were only on the questions at the end of each chapter, for which our teachers have dutifully marked the answers. So that is what I read (memorized).

The school boards that chose the textbooks were remarkably consistent in one thing — they made sure the textbooks were boring. Even stuff like wars, which have all the components of an interesting story — courage, strategy, sacrifice, envy, betrayal, etc. were so poorly narrated that you would rather get lost in your fantasy of becoming the spiderman and saving the world than paying attention to the class. In my 9th-grade history book, the world wars were one chapter each out of 10 chapters. That’s how much importance the author gave to world wars. Holocaust was a couple of paragraphs. I don’t even remember feeling sad after reading it. Textbooks were all facts; no opinions, or emotions. Most of us got our first taste of reading from textbooks and it was horrible.

We had a library hour every week. Except for one or two kids, the rest of us would just sit and talk in the library. The kids who did read mostly read sports columns; not an actual book. For us, library hour was just free time. Our teachers shared this attitude as well. Often, a math or a science teacher would effortlessly borrow the library hour if she is lagging behind the schedule and would never return it. Even if our schools had been more serious about library time, I still doubt if we would have picked up reading. Not being serious about library time was not the main issue. The main issue was that we have never seen anyone enjoying reading. In all my years at school and college, except for one teacher, I have never seen anyone else read in their office in a free hour, or during the commute. They never quote from books nor talk about influential authors; never recommended books other than textbooks, because they themselves didn’t read any. Paradoxically, the school was not a good place to pick up reading.

At home, dad wanted me and my sister to read outside textbooks. Not being a reader himself, he didn’t know what books were likely to be interesting. He bought us books like 1000 general knowledge questions, General knowledge — value pack — volumes 1–6, and some 50 page -poorly written biographies of some leaders like Gandhi or Nehru. These were worse than textbooks, no narratives; just fact after fact. We never cracked those books open. So, there went all my years at school and undergrad, without reading a single book outside academics.

Late in undergrad, one of my friends lent me a couple of books — “The monk who sold his Ferrari” and “The Secret”. As much as I am embarrassed to admit that I liked these books once, these were the first books that I read cover to cover. This was the first time I fell in love with reading. In the next few years, I read few other similar books, the ones that exaggerate the effect of being optimistic, prescribe one-size-fits-all solutions, and downplay execution, power, politics, and human nature. These books didn’t make me a better person but made me a better reader.

Gradually, I grew tired of that genre, but I still loved to read. I started exploring different genres. I bought books based on the titles, then tried some books from random reading lists on particular topics. I found some of these to be a little interesting but still had to force myself to read. It didn’t feel natural. Then one day I bumped into The Tim Ferriss’ podcast. The guests in this show are avid readers, have accomplished incredible things in their fields, good talkers; overall interesting people. They talk with passion about books they love, the books that had a profound influence on them, the ones that they re-read often. Listen to these interviews often, and their love for reading rubs off on you. Most of these guys are good salesmen too. They know how to sell ideas to their employees and customers, and if you just hear them talk, they will sell you the reading habit. I started picking out books mentioned by interesting guests. Boom! I hit the right spot. I fell in love with reading all over again. I still needed to push myself every now and then, but it was effortless for the most part. I started reading almost all the time. I read in all three formats, physical books at home, ebooks during breaks and nights, and audiobooks during commutes and walks, reading around 15–20 books a year. I read biographies, memoirs, history, business, philosophy — Stoicism, Taoism, Buddhism, science, diet, psychology, etc. Reading enriched all aspects of my life; relationships, money, work, diet, taste, emotion, thinking, awareness, etc. But there was a drawback.

For someone to whom the concept of reading for pleasure was totally foreign, reading so many books a year felt like an achievement. I enjoyed reading a book, but I also wanted to just finish it as if I can automatically go one level up in some imaginary intellectual rank when I finish reading that last page. I would get my hands on a book that I had been waiting for a long time to read, and 10 pages in, I already start looking for the next great book to read. This sense of achievement was detrimental because a good portion of my satisfaction came from consuming rather than building. Yes, books are salads, and TV is fast food, but what good is a life spent eating healthy all the time and not producing any value? Will I be content at the end of my life if I had read all the great books in the world but have not even attempted to build something sincerely, however small, throwing my heart and soul into it? Some amount of consumption is essential to nourish the body, soul, and mind, to relax and to have fun, to get inspired and cautioned, but if consuming takes precedence over producing, no matter how rich and healthy the meal is, I won’t be happy. Reading shouldn’t be a shortcut for feeling productive without actually doing the hard work of producing.

I was not alone in perceiving reading as an achievement. I see the pride in parents when they say their kids read a lot, especially parents who aren’t readers themselves. When I mention something about a book, a friend would jokingly say “Do you want to just show off that you have read that book?”. It is not just people, companies share this perception as well. Netflix doesn’t say “Congrats! You are on a streak. You have watched Netflix for 25 days in a row.”, they don’t ask you to set a watching goal at the start of a new year nor do they award you silver and gold badges for watching all ten seasons of “Friends” within a month, but Kindle does this:

If you are reading for pleasure, why do you need a reading goal?

I still love books and continue to read every single day. I take counsel from them. I enjoy their company, and will probably continue to read till the end of my life. But I don’t obsess about it. Reading is an important tool, a very important one, but not an achievement.