The good news is that I did post every day this week. Sure, there were some hard days. Days I wanted to just hang up my cleats and call it a day. Still, I wrote the damn post and published it.
I was a little more intentional with my photography this week. I made it a point to take more pictures, have more pictures to choose from at the end of the day. Some good, most bad. Ce La Vie. Million words and a million pictures. What’s the ratio on films until you get good? That’s a good question.
The bad news. So last night I ran into this Warren Buffet quote again in this Medium article.
“Read 500 pages like this every day. That’s how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest. All of you can do it, but I guarantee, not many of you will...” - Warren Buffett
I’m one of those that don’t.
The article talks about reading 200 books a year. Two Hundred. Holy cow. That’s a lot of books. I go back and think about my reading just this year. I don’t think I’ve finished a book this year.
This article has a bunch of useful tips. There are the normal ones, carry a book everywhere, make reading intentional, etc. The one thing the author mentioned was decluttering your iPhone. I use Kindle on my iPhone. Still, up to a month, ago I had Instagram on there, Facebook, and Twitter. Last night I took off Twitter. Then cleaned up my home screen. It was getting a bit cluttered.
Of course, this leads me down a bit of a rabbit hole. I went and Googled “200 Books A Year” and apparently this is a thing. There are people, like Rosie Leizrowice out there that read two hundred books a year.
This isn’t the first time I’ve run into this, of course, there’s Stephen King's number which I think is up there in the seventies. Then, there’s Jamie Todd Rubin - whose kept track of everything he’s read since the early 90’s. Ryan Holiday’s newsletter, which I get and his posts on reading are pretty inspirational.
One thing I gleaned from Rosie is her article is that you don’t have to read just one book. You can read several, a paperback or hardcover here, an Audible there, and something on your Kindle. I kind of like that, because somewhere in my mind there’s this monolithic thinking of having to read just one book at a time. I don’t know where that idea comes from, but I didn’t realize it was there.
So last night I looked at my Kindle and saw a book I’ve been meaning to read for a while, opened it up, and started reading. Then, this morning, while going somewhere, I re-started listening to a book while I drove.
One of the other things I did, downloaded this weekend reader for screenplays. Of course, I’m counting those as well. Or at least mention them in whatever list I’m compiling.
Reading is my weakest point right now. I just don’t do enough of it or often enough. I spend too much time on social media. Its funny, but I don’t watch a lot of TV or movies for that matter.
So let me break this down, right now I’m committed to writing a post a day, plus take a picture, I need re-learn to write, shoot, direct, and post produce a movie, try to win a fitness bet with my son, complete a hundred and one things to do in a thousand day list, produce a couple of short films, on top of my obligations as a husband, father, son, brother, salesman, youth minister, fast and pray for a wounded church, try to keep Texas Red, and now I’m considering reading, not just a book a week, or whatever, no two hundred books in a year.
Yeah, why not?
Update: Jamie Todd Rubin has a two-part post on the Mathematics of Reading which is a good response on the whole 200 Books a Year. Interesting.