Reading, a cause of anxiety

2017 has been very generous for me. I got done with physically attending French classes. Obviously there’s more to French and this is where the real learning starts.

However, getting done with the classes freed up a lot of time for me which I decided to commit towards reading books. Within six months I savaged around 21 book, mostly non-fiction. I used to read earlier too, though this time it’s been more of active reading than passive.  I took a lot of notes in Trello and remember a lot more from the books than when I read books earlier. If you’re looking on how to remember more while reading, Shane Parrish has an amazing blog post on it – https://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2017/10/how-to-remember-what-you-read/

Not all titles from the 21 I read were worth it. Here’s the list of books I read and recommend:

1. Re-read Thinking fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. I discovered this book back in 2015 I believe and read it but I wasn’t in the right state of mind to grasp its awesomeness back then.
2. If you liked Thinking fast and Slow you’ll love reading “The art of thinking clearly”. In this book the author lists over 90 thinking errors. Identifying the error in thinking is half the battle. It’s of course impossible to avoid all thinking errors. I plan to re-read a few chapters here and then and have purchased the kindle version for it.
3. Work Rules. I love the fact that this stresses how important people are to a company. If you’re an entrepreneur you should definitely pick this up.
4. Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. Way too many people around me recommended this book and I absolutely loved spending time with this one. I couldn’t read it one go and had to let the ideas marinate a little. This book possibly took the longest to be read.
5. Power of Habits. You don’t have to read the entire book but it has some compelling ideas on why having good habits is important. When you’re growing up, you often hear from your parents to not spend time doing unproductive things. I always dismissed those advice. This book puts a lot of things into perspective.
6. Originals by Adam Grant.
7. Rise and fall of nation. This one again took a lot of time reading and give you a nice brief on which decisions affected to the rise and fall of nations. My best take away from the book was that how sudden changes in policies can slow down an economy as businesses will halt investments if there are too many restrictions. Policy changes have to be done gradually. I wish Modiji would read this book.
8. Tools of Titans. This was gifted to me by Samal and I read it in 2016. But I keep coming back to this book. It’s filled with way too many good thoughts and Ideas. I plan to read Tribe of Nations by Tim Ferris this year.
9. Hit Refresh by Satya Nadella. I recently picked this up from Anand’s desk and before I know it, I’ve read through it. I love reading how Satya’s putting empathy ahead of anything to bring Microsoft of new generation. I’ve noticed this in the products that Microsoft brings out these days and is among one of the companies I’d like to work for.

Some fiction I read:

1. To kill a mockingbird.
2. The Kite runner.

There were many books I bought but haven’t gotten around reading them yet.

In 2018, I plan to read more than 21 books. I’m sure more of it would be fiction than non-fiction. For some reason whenever I read fiction it’s difficult to continue reading more than 20-30 pages at a time. Last year I read about three fiction and plan to read more than five in 2018. I’ll try to read sci-fi to see if that makes any difference. If you have any suggestion on sci-fi titles I SHOULD read, please hit me up.

The reason I want to read more though is for the fact that the more I read, the more I feel stupid. There’s so much knowledge available out there and there’s so little I know despite having spent more than three decades on this planet. Reading more just increases my paranoia. It shouldn’t feel like this.

Reading more should increase one’s thinking capabilities but in reality is a source of my anxiety these days.