On fighting tsundoku
I buy books faster than I read them. I'm trying to fix it, but I can't help it. I don't think it's a terrible behaviour, god knows I could have worst vices than tsundoku and it's not making me go bankrupt. But in my current personal quest to become a better reader, I feel like I should be more in control of my antilibrary and have a higher percentage of books I own read.
I recently watched a really good video by Tristan and the Classics that explained my struggles very accurately. The main idea is that when we buy a book, we are chasing the short-term feeling of having read a book, not the long-term feeling of reading a book.
I use the feeling of finishing a book as a constant motivator to keep reading, that's why I read two books at the same time and stagger them, so that every week I'm close to finishing a book. I think this is a valid tactic, the problem is in using the number of books read as the main success metric. Surely the goal should be to enjoy and learn from the books you read, not finish them as quickly as possible to make number go up. It's difficult to escape this mentality in the world we live in. If you are currently enjoying a book and you have reasons to believe you'd enjoy other books in your piles at home, then you don't need a new book, no matter how interesting it sounds or how nice the cover is1.
The false feeling of scarcity or that I'm going to "miss out" on a book is also real and insiduous. This can be solved with a bit of common sense (books generally don't sell out) and with a list of books I'm interested in. Another new mindset I've learned recently is to not think of a list of things as something you must complete. The image of a river is helpful here, the river flows and you pick some things and others flow by. It's not a number going up that you have to tame, it's a constant flow that you dip in and out of.
The last idea I really liked from the video was the definition of frustration as the difference between what you'd want to be doing and what you actually have to do now. I love the simplicity of it and how it points you in the direction of what you should do: focus on the present. Don't read to finish a book, read to enjoy the current page.
The truth is, I'm not going to stop buying books. But I do think by applying some of these tactics I can reduce the frequency until I've reduced the number of existing unread books in my house.
From now on:
- I shall focus on developing the habit of reading, not obsess over page counts and books finished
- I'm allowed to buy a new book for every 5 already owned books I read (I'm behind on this, but not far) 2
- I will be more aggressive abandoning books I'm not interested in after
100 - my agepages (stole this idea from Ryan Holiday) - I will write down the books I'm interested in instead of blindly buying them
- I will reduce unnecessary visits to book stores to avoid temptation
💬 Thoughts? Email me a comment