On reading
I think reading is one of the best things we can do with our time. Things that beat reading or are at a similar level: going on long hikes, writing, having deep conversations with friends, working on a project / product that excites you and truly lights you up with joy and unbounded energy (passion), restful sleep and meditation. If a human being spends all of his/her waking hours engaging in some sort of linear combination of the activities listed above, I guarantee that the human being in question will lead a happy, balanced and fulfilling life.
Notice how the only entertainment we need is: Reading, Exercise and our own thoughts (meditation). Thereās no need for YouTube videos from WSJ, Pewdipie or Veritasium. No need for āmovies/tv-seriesā on Apple TV or Netflix. While some of us might āclaimā we get āhappinessā from watching a certain TV serial on Amazon Prime or watching videos of popular Bollywood songs, theyāre all hoaxes. Songs can be enjoyed without an accompanying video and the TV series are addictions. If you really want to watch something, shell out the bucks, buy a ticket to go to a movie hall, and watch a movie with a strong message. Your monthly budget will act as a natural cap to the amount of visual content you consume.
The things I mentioned above are the modern drugs of the 21st century. Back in the 20th century when drugs were much more physical and misguided humans would use actual substances. Society labelled these people as ādrug-addictsā and they were relegated to live in the slums. They lacked vitality, dependent on a substance and just depressing humans to be around. They wouldnāt have survived in the jungles of Western Africa (read Yuval Haririās book Sapeins to learn about how we Homo Sapeins conquered this planet) and natural selection would have made sure that they wouldnāt be able to produce offspring. Now in the 21st century, we all have access to this seemingly innocuous (digital) cocaine, and we need to make a deeply conscious choice to make sure we arenāt drug addicts. Who wants to throw their lives away? Being glued to a screen because you donāt realise that itās a drug is an extremely sad way to live life. We werenāt born to lie down on our beds (horizontally) and watch nonsense content on YouTube for 3-5 hours at a stretch (1am-6am).
A good way to think about this is if we were condemned to spend the rest of our lives on Airplanes, with a 3 hour window to access the internet of sorts (yes, I understand this isnāt practical but please try to understand the motivation behind the statement) weād be much better off. Because we donāt have access to the Internet, weād actually get bored and connect with the human beings sitting beside us. What a world that would be... Absolutely amazing.
Anyways I tend to go off on tangents and I want to put all that aside. I started to write this piece because I believe I need a system to read better.
Reading is a funny thing. You read a book but you donāt remember each and every word from the book. You donāt exactly recall each scene the way itās described. So out of the 10,000 words youāve read you canāt recall any of it verbatim, however you get a broad picture of the book. You can paraphrase the storyline and describe what you read from your memory (short-term of-course). Currently, Iām on a flight from Bangalore to Bhubaneswar and I was reading the book: The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari. Iāve read the first 4 Chapters. Funnily enough, the book only had 11 chapters and the number of pages in the first 4 chapters is barely half of the number of pages in the 9th Chapter alone. Go figure-
Anyways, Iām using a physical book, because Iām fed up with reading books on my iPad. Iām underlining sentences and thoughts that resonate with me, but I donāt remember any of my underlined sentences verbatim in spite of the fact that Iāve underlined all of these sentences in the past hour. But that said, if I decide to strike up a conversation with the gentleman seated beside me, I can give him a pretty detailed summary of the first 4 chapters. If Iām asked to do the same a week later with no access to the book for the week, I still will be able to do so, but I might be as detailed as I would be now.
The point is, when one reads a book one wants to make notes on the margins, one wants to remember key sentences and one wants to write brief notes to themselves. All of this can be achieved via a Notes app, however you lose the context of the paragraph, the chapter and the surrounding text.
I want to build or find a solution that allows me to take notes in-context and surface them easily. I want an app that can give me peace of mind that whatever Iām reading, Iām not forgetting. I want to have the peace of mind that if I open up the book on this new app (say Y) then if I skim through my notes or read a brief summary of the book, Iāll remember everything I read.
I want this app to act like a mind palace or virtual world, or a series of breadcrumbs akin to the Hansel and Gretel story. I want the app to save the breadcrumbs I record as I go through the book / blog / textbook etc. and I want them to such that if I decide I want to find my way back to the witches hut a month or half a year from now, I can just follow the trail of my breadcrumbs and reach.