I have always been fed conventional wisdom that “one should read as much as possible”. It’s only quite recently that I have started to question that old age fortune cookie wisdom that I had been feasting on my entire life.
Reading is a form of getting information into your brain, or if I simplify it in one simple word, learning. Our ancestors passed information verbally or through actions till it became inefficient. Anyone who has played Chinese whispers or even spread a rumour about their innocent friend knows how unreliable word of mouth is when conveying information over vast networks and populations. Information is lost and modified with every sucker who passes it on. Hence, we discovered writing. Now we could scale reliable information across vast populations. Information was passed reliably, and our innocent friend is also not worried about false rumours being spread about him. This was like a Delta-4 moment in our species’ lifecycle. Books were the cornerstone of learning for our species over the past few centuries in an efficient, reliable manner.
I have always loved books since I was a kid. They always fascinated me. My favourite activity is to scout the bookstore for hours and pick up one book because somehow, I love that time-consuming activity that brings me no benefit whatsoever.
We can agree that reading is pretty beneficial. But can there be a thing like “too much reading”? I didn’t think much about it until recently.
The issue with too much reading is that it robs you of the time to think. In most cases, an idle mind can conjure up clarity far better than an extremely busy one. Too much information can be counter-productive if not complemented with rigorous thinking from different perspectives.
Memory and filter
The human brain and especially, memory, is conditioned in a way that only the useful information survives. That is why we forget most of the details over a span of time after learning. It’s an evolutionary tactic for us to survive the extremities of the wild. This tactic aided us in making quick decisions. In Daniel Kahneman’s verbiology, this was pure System 1 in play built over the foundations of System 2. Even though most of the information is kept in the brain, it’s hard for us to access because if our brain had bombarded us with a huge chunk of information we collected since childhood, we would not have survived as a species. So, that’s why spaced repetition is the cornerstone of learning, as our brain learns to dissect relevant from not-so-relevant information.
Thinking is required to dissect which information is required/useful and which needs to be discarded/kept aside for the time being (or not given much importance).
There is a double-edged sword to reading. Reading great books helps to deepen your perspective and make you more self-aware. But if that perspective isn’t exposed to different viewpoints, it can impair your thinking and lead to analysis paralysis.
Truth can attack you from all directions. And sometimes, even though it doesn’t make sense, Truth is paradoxical. Two diametrically opposite things can be true at the same time when certain contextual situations are taken into account. And discovering the intricacies of that truth and the limits of your knowledge takes time and effort. And a lot of iterative thinking.
True confidence in your judgment can only arise with a deeper understanding of the subject. And a deeper understanding is the result of putting your existing beliefs to a litmus test of counter viewpoints.
A well-read confused soul is way worse than an idiot with a clarity of mind. Clarity incites action and increases confidence. Confusion annihilates both of them, akin to how Trump annihilates (or at least till now) the trade economy.
So, if reading is not complemented with quality thinking and anecdotal evidence, it can seriously impair your judgment and make the “average Indian drainage system” more organized and sophisticated than the gutter that pollutes your mind.
Quality Reading
Also, there is a difference between “merely reading” and “reading quality stuff”. This is something that has taken a lot of share of my mind over the years. I can say it with utmost clarity that reading quality stuff once can be way better than reading mediocre stuff. On the contrary, I believe reading mediocre stuff can make your brain rot. You can’t keep yourself physically fit while munching on McDonald’s regularly. Similarly, reading mediocre stuff can do similar things to your knowledge garden that stale burgers do to your belly.
But how does something qualify as “quality stuff” here? That is a hard question in my opinion. And one that cannot be clearly answered. But with time and experience and some intuition, one gets the idea to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Would reading a 100 average fiction books have an impact on the way you live your life? Would reading 100 similar self-help books also do that? We all know a reader who reads but you wish they hadn’t. Some people just read too much to make themselves way worse than they started off. Folks who read a lot of books to “practice self-love”, in my experience, have been the ones who give lessons in pain and stress to everyone around them. Reading just to feel better isn’t what I qualify as “Quality reading”. Quality books, in my opinion, are impactful. They leave a mark on you. They force you to think after a few pages. They yearn to be reflected regularly in life as they can be perceived from different viewpoints. They are discussed and debated and are timeless. As a rule of thumb: I look for stuff that has survived quite a few years, hopefully decades as there is no bigger test of timelessness of the wisdom than survival. It’s better to read one great book than read 100 mediocre ones.
Bruce Lee once said “ I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times”
The reading version of this quote would be like
“ I fear not the man who has read 10000 books once, but I fear the man who has read one book 10,000 times”
The above quote might be a bit far-fetched in my opinion. So I would like to make a modified version of this
“I fear not the man who has read 10,000 books once, I fear the man who has read 100 great books ten times”
The smartest people I have met “read often” but “don’t read too often”. They read when time calls for them to read. They read often but inquire more often. Those are the folks who are called into reading to satisfy an intellectual urge that feels like an itch that is hard to go away. They read a lot, but they inquire/introspect a lot more.