Reading Habits

Dan Shipper wrote a post on managing his reading habits. It’s very interesting to see his approach.

He used Evernote and some other tools to keep track of what he read and what to read next. I also talked to a few other people on how they kept track and retained what they learned.

Like Dan, I also recorded everything that I read in the last couple of years. From 2011-2013, I put the books I read in a spreadsheet.

Every year I would migrate the titles I didn’t get to, to the current year. Although the data set was not large (only over three years), I could see a pattern in the way I read.

I had a tendency to read through one author and related genre in clusters. I was way more fiction-oriented than non-fiction. These were not news to me, but I liked the anecdotal evidences to validate my hunch.

However, there was a limitation to this format. From looking at the spreadsheets, it helped me remember what I had read. The problem was, the specifics of the books sometimes became a blur.

Dan took notes on an A4 paper. My friend Patrick Haller wrote a blog post for every book he’s read (and he reads a lot!)

I took notes and made highlights on the tablet but never gotten to the habits of exporting them. To my knowledge there wasn’t really a easy way to do this through technology. I wonder if I should be keeping a book journal?

In the end, I loved reading. It was a sanctuary and a chance to get lost in a new world.