HACKER Q&A
📣 notkid

How do you plan and track the books you want to read?


Hey,

I think I have a problem. My want-to-read list on Goodreads currently has more than 2100 books. I probably have more than 50 online classes that I want to take.

I constantly find new things that I want to learn about. I have multiple lists on Goodreads with titles of "Urgent reads" and "The most urgent reads". Things get reprioritized so often that I don't actually end up reading or learning much.

I recently started building syllabuses around different topics for myself to put together relevant things together and then I try to force myself to focus on a single syllabus at a time.

I am experimenting with another system for books. I have a table of books, where when I get excited about a book, I upvote a book. Only after a book is upvoted more than 3 times, I download a sample of the book (if available on Kindle). Only after I read a book, I buy the book. This helped a little, but not enough. Now, I have 10 books that I started reading.

I am curious about how others approach this. What is your framework? How do you self-discipline? Are there any good tools?


  👤 jjgreen Accepted Answer ✓
Buy the books, have a big threatening pile of them glaring at you all the day; from time to time pick one out to read. This is the principle of the antilibrary which Nassim Taleb attributes to Umberto Eco

https://fs.blog/2013/06/the-antilibrary/


👤 jborichevskiy
Some interesting thoughts here:

Rational Reading: Thoughts On Prioritizing Books

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Kmch6T2YscMyLFJD9/rational-r...


👤 mkbkn
It's FOMO. Delete/un-enroll/unsubscribe from all the current "want'to'be" list. Then just go by your day and pick up things you realise you should learn. Buy a physical book on that topic and read.

Uninstall all reading apps on your phone. Less is sanity.

Make notes. Upload into Anki. Write a blog on what you learned today.


👤 jgstyle
I use the app "Things 3" and set deadlines, works pretty Goode... only downside: Its only available in the Apple ecosystem and its not free.

Btw.: its also my preferred Task manager


👤 verdverm
by shelf and nightstand

it's nice to read from paper after looking at screens most of the day