Reading: what kind of NA is that?

[Borisoff]

I need and want to read books and magazines. They come on monthly basis and during net surfing. When a new magazine arrives I put it into "IN". What is the next phisical action with it and to what category it should belong (now I have @Computer, @Office, @Home, @Call, @Agenda, @Outside)? And what is the best practise to have time for reading?

Regards,

Eugene.

 

[kewms]

I have a separate context for @Read/Review. Reading related to specific projects goes there and gets treated like any other NA.

General reading, like magazines, goes into a "stuff to read" file, separate from my inbox. When I have reading time, I pull something out of that file. If I don't finish it, it goes in my tickler file, usually for about a week in the future.

After doing this for a while, I have between 3 and 5 "active" magazines in my tickler file. As I finish them, I go back to my general reading file for more. Anything that has been in the general reading file for more than six months or so gets thrown away on the assumption that if it wasn't important enough to read before now, I'll never get to it.

I do most of my business reading at lunch, and most of my personal reading on weekends. Like most things, the key is to decide when you can do it, and then block that time off as an appointment with yourself.

Katherine

 

[Borisoff]

Katherine,

if the answer is scheduling of time then what do you think works better: scheduling "to Read" as all day event or time specific event?

Regards,

Eugene.

 

[kewms]

if the answer is scheduling of time then what do you think works better: scheduling "to Read" as all day event or time specific event?

Unless you have all day to read, it's a time specific event.

Katherine

 

[CosmoGTD]

I am a readaholic.
I have literally hundreds of books I would like to read. I would like to live nude in a cabin in the woods and read for 10 years. Someday?

Anyway, I have a digital and an analogue Read/Review hierarchy.
In the context list I have ~Read/Review, and a Read/Review file on my computer Desktop. I just dump the stuff in there.

In the real world, I have one shelf, that is ONE, and ONE ONLY shelf right beside my desk, labelled READ/REVIEW. Everything I want to read goes in there, everything books to mags, and once that is FULL, the other books go back to the bookshelf, or the older unread mags go bye-bye.

So the THING itself is its own reminder for me, when it comes to reading.

I don't really schedule the reading, or prioritize it too much.
I trust my judgement in the moment.
Reading is a reward for me.

 

[moises]

Reading is a reward for me.

It is for me too. But it took me a very long time to figure out that I would be a lot more effective if I used reading as a reward.

 

[Jamie Elis]

You are all so smart!

It is such a pleasure to read the thoughts of intelligent, insighful, reflective, and articulate people.

 

[TesTeq]

Why nude?

I would like to live nude in a cabin in the woods and read for 10 years. Someday?

Why nude? Is reading more efficient when the reader is nude?

 

[dbobfish]

Time spent getting dressed could be time spent reading!

 

[dbobfish]

That's one of the great things of coming here!

"It is such a pleasure to read the thoughts of intelligent, insighful, reflective, and articulate people."

Here here Jamie. This site should be at the top of anyones reading list!

Or would that be @Browsing or @Posting?

Some really useful insights though, I'm looking forward to really getting to grips with this system, and helping others out with similar valuable suggestions.

As for the reading - what am I doing so far?

I work in a library - my organisation in my work is meticulous, it has to be, it's a medical library and medical staff need to be able to access the information they need quickly and easily.

As for my personal organisation of reading material I keep coming across a pile of books at home and thinking 'ah heck yeah - I meant to read those, they're due back at the library soon!'

So I am trying to formulate something more concrete to manage and apply my reading. At the moment I have digital files on the PC and the pda, paper files in a 'read review' folder I carry with me most places, and books? Well, books kind of all over really! Yeah, I know, I work in a library and my own books are in a real mess! Good job I ain't a brain surgeon I guess!

Sorry - just realised - long post... I'm cutting in on your reading time!

 

[CosmoGTD]

Why nude? Is reading more efficient when the reader is nude?

Well, its partly a Henry David Thoreau "back to Nature" type of thing.

Also, I did not mention that I would prefer to "shack up" in this cabin with Angelina Jolie, as she has said she also "like books and reading".

 

[CosmoGTD]

Books-Audio-Visual

I myself own thousands of books, and have about 15 full large bookshelves. (hey, I have purged over 300 books this year, and am not buying any more...yeah right...)

Here is an amazingly simple method to try.
Take ONE longish shelf on a bookshelf right beside your desk at home.
Empty it.
Label it READ/REVIEW.

Then grab the books/mags you MOST WANT to read, and put them there.
Do a ROUGH priority, the ones you want to do first, on the far right, and then as you move to the left, of decreasing priority.

Right now, on this shelf, I have about 25 books, 2 mags racks, 1 rack of brochures, etc. The shelf is FULL, but NOT overflowing. That is not allowed.
The MOST desired reading is on the far right, going down a bit to the left. (its just a very rough priority).

ALL, and I mean all, my other books-mags are properly "filed" on the bookshelves by Subject category: philosophy, cognitive psychology, bio, health, science, physics, evolution, cognitive science, drama, art, lit, social science, finance, creativity, etc.
That took a lot of WORK to do, but its awesome to have. I can find books fast. Spend a long day, order pizza in, and create a Home Library.
(this applies to DVD's, as well)

There are MANY MANY books in my library that I have NOT read yet, and want to read. BUT, I can only put about 30 at a time in my READ/REVIEW shelf. When I finish a book, I FILE it again, and replace the space it took.
OR, if I want to read a new one, then I have to move an old one out of the READ/REVIEW shelf.

This is awesome for mag management as well.
Once the mags racks are full, its Read-File-Recycle, no exceptions.

So at any moment, I just look at the READ/REVIEW shelf, and I can see the top few books on the right, and I can PICK one. If had had ONE book I had to read, I would put it on the far right.
So this is easy, and it works great.

I also have a gigantic Digital Library, thanks to Project Gutenberg and others, which I could never read in my entire life. Here are thousands of free books.
http://www.gutenberg.org/cdproject/

Here is how I organize these to read. They are filed like a library, in my Digital Library. (one massive file on the laptop).

In Outlook, I have a list of books I want to read in ~READ/REVIEW.
I just DRAG a new book-article-file into the tasks, and the shortcut creates a link to the book, and makes it into a Task. Then I have put these books into a list, top down, and concentrate on reading the books from the top down, same as the shelf.

So basically, you could also just create a LIST of BOOKS to read, keep it in READ/REVIEW, and treat it like any other Next Action. You could even design a "reading plan" that could extend years ahead.
I prefer to "trust my gut" as things change fast. Right now, I am reading Digital Photography stuff, and there are some new CBT books coming out, which will take-over when I get them.

I can only read ONE book at a time, at this point. So that biological limit forces me to just read one book at a time!

In the future, once we can upload our brains onto biological supercomputers, then all bets are off.

One other thing.
I use the public library like crazy these days. I am lucky as I have access to the largest public library system in the country, with over 11 million items. I treat this as an extension of my own personal library, as I can order anything in seconds online now. Through inter-library loans and the university library, I literally have access to any book I want on earth, basically.
So, between the massive Digital Library on my laptop, and the public libraries through the computer, its all there.

As Carl Sagan said in COSMOS, with so many books to read, what matters is WHICH books you read, not how many.
I feel like I have literally all the worlds books-audio-visual at my fingertips.
Its like a million libraries of Alexandria at my fingertips.

My objective now is to move DIGITAL with all my books-media, so I can have it all on my laptop, and have the complete universe of books-media at my fingertips anywhere on earth, as part of Being Digital.
http://archives.obs-us.com/obs/english/books/nn/bdcont.htm
So I am buying only ebooks these days, as much as possible, and actually want to shrink my analogue Home Library over time.

Its a cool COSMOS we live in these days.

So I am trying to formulate something more concrete to manage and apply my reading. At the moment I have digital files on the PC and the pda, paper files in a 'read review' folder I carry with me most places, and books? Well, books kind of all over really! Yeah, I know, I work in a library and my own books are in a real mess! Good job I ain't a brain surgeon I guess!

 

[Desultory]

I also keep a reading shelf for books. I stuff magazines and papers into a small courier bag. When I go out, I add a book and catch up on my reading on the bus.

 

[Borisoff]

So reading could be a Next Action like: "Read Getting Things Done" @Read with maximum time that's available in the context,time,energy,priority model?

 

[Borisoff]

I'm telling about unwanted reading not the reading I like I have to read 100 pages of document I don't like but have to read. More then that I have a deadline for that reading that is April, 1st. Now I think I have three options:

1. Put this reading as a Next Action with as much as I can pages per day to read; read when I can but could end up with 100 pages still to read on the day before the deadline :smile:

2. Put this reading as a day specific event with 5 pages per day (100pages/22daystodeadline) to read and finish with 0 pages on the deadline. That's better for me :grin:

3. Make a timemap to allocate 2 hours per day for this Project and continue allocating till done. I think in this case I can even have some spare time before the deadline because I think I can read more then 5 pages in 2 hours :razz:

What do you think DA could recommend for that kind of NAs to keep this job an art of stress productivity?

Regards,

Eugene.

 

[kewms]

I would plan to read some amount every day until done. You could do this by either saying that you're going to read X pages per day, no matter how long it takes, or by saying that you're going to spend Y hours per day, no matter how much or how little you get done.

Which approach you take is really a matter of taste. What works for you? For me, allowing Y hours per day would probably work better, because that protects the time from other, perhaps more interesting, projects.

Katherine

 

[mramm]

The beauty of GTD is that you do not have to do what DA tells you to do. There is so many options for customizing your own system within the GTD framework.

GTD boils down to (FOR ME):
1. Write EVERYTHING down
2. Decide on concrete NA for everything that is written down (see step 1)
3. Track those NA through to completion

The system that you use, may not work for me, and vice versa.

Any of those three options is the perfect option...as long as you can get the 100 pages read by April 1.

In my system it would be:

@Work
READ-War and Peace
due April 1

That is just me.

Michael

 

[TesTeq]

Read a whole book - project or next action?

In my system it would be:

@Work
READ-War and Peace
due April 1

For many people reading a book is an overwhelmingly huge project that must be divided into smaller chunks (next actions) - for example "read Nth chapter".

 

[CosmoGTD]

I'm telling about unwanted reading not the reading I like I have to read 100 pages of document I don't like but have to read. More then that I have a deadline for that reading that is April, 1st.

ok, now you are speaking my language!
First off, anything I HAVE to do, I reframe it as I CHOOSE to do it. That helps to start. I could also choose NOT to do it, and then suffer the consequences, but I choose to do it, even if I don't like doing it that much.
I don't like doing my laundry or cleaning, but too bad, as I like clean underwear, so it doesn't matter if I like doing it or not.

But yeah, just treat it like Cranking Widgets.
If you had to put up 100 pieces of drywall by April 1st, that would be 4.35 pieces of drywall up per day.
So set up X numbers of pages a day, or 30 min a day, or whatever. Then personally I would either...
-schedule appts to do it in the Calendar
-make it a Day Specific task, to squeeze in when I had time.

But if its heavy tech reading, to me that needs an appointment, as you have to block out distractions. Its a meeting with your own Brain.

Now we get to the fun part of "how do you get yourself to DO the things you want to have done but don't 'feel like' doing?"

Funny you should ask that, I just started a thread all about that!
http://www.davidco.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5012

First off, we should try doing everything DA says to do, about properly defining the NA, project, and all that stuff, so we are "pulled" to the NA.
Also, I do not use the words, "I have to do X". There is no such thing. I could choose to not do anything, but I will suffer for that. So I choose to do everything, even if I "have" to do it. Saying I "have to" creates resistance, at least for me.
Maybe you could make yourself start to enjoy this reading. But if not...

Then, in my view, we have to PUSH ourselves to DO what we want to have done, but don't "'feel like' doing, or "have" to do.
At least that is what works for me.

Treat professional reading just like if you were cranking out widgets.
DA says to treat most everything like this, and I agree.
I even have a checklist for making love.

(that's a joke)

 

[Day Owl]

I also have a gigantic Digital Library, thanks to Project Gutenberg and others, which I could never read in my entire life. Here are thousands of free books.
http://www.gutenberg.org/cdproject/

CosmoGTD, you have ruined my future. With all the read and unread books still on my shelves, and now this link of which I was previously unaware, how in the world am I ever going to GanyTD?