Tag: Overextended

[bctt tweet=”I’ll use the heuristic of 65% reread and 35% new reads (time not number of books. )”]

I’ve over extended.

At the beginning of the year, I made it a goal to read 100 books for the calendar year.

I have to do a quick accounting of the books I have read this year. I think I am close to 80 with two months to go.

With the end of the year coming up, there is a ton of downtime with the holidays. I’ll hit 100 books without being pressured, in between dinners and travel.

That isn’t why I am over extended.

The reason I am over extended is that with just reading the books that get through my filters (I will explain in  another post, but I do not read any and everything), I still don’t have the time to dig into the books that really gave me pause.

My filters need to get stronger for me to get the most out of great books.

I’ve discovered some great ones over the last year though.

A few:

• Decisive
• Go Giver
• Antifragile
• Louder Than Words
• The Dip
• War of Art
• Freedom From The Known
• Rising Strong
• You Can’t Make Me Angry
• Prometheus Rising

Even though I have read them, there is more to get out of these books.

I treat each book the same, sit down, savor, and move to the next one.

The books on that list (there are more) not only give me the completion feeling, but change how I see the world.  Other books are interesting (I stop reading ones that don’t catch on with me, so they don’t count) but I get enough out of them in one reading to move on. They change smaller things, how I sleep or tweak a habit.

I need to spend more time with the home runs, and less time with the singles. Time is the only resource we don’t get back, and while a tweak helps after reading a book, spending that time on watershed moments that change my life work better.

Going forward, I will spend more time in the books like that, instead of newer text.  Instead of going for numbers, i’ll mine the quality. I’ll use the heuristic of 65% reread and 35% new reads (time not number of books. )

As I get more engaged, some wrinkles will develop, but for now, this simplicity works.

This also means, I shouldn’t hit my goal of the year – a nice demarcation line.

Note: Don’t get me wrong, every book I finished this year left me with something. I am a better person from reading them, but certain books are on another level.