The End(s) of Reading

To begin, we start with the end.

To understand and explore how we can improve the reading process, it's helpful to start from the end.

Once we know the reasons we are reading, we can go back and evaluate our reading methods, improving on the things that are lacking and then change everything else.

Ignoring the obvious reason that you might be reading for fun & pleasure, here are some other reasons you might be reading:

• To understand how something works

• To acquire knowledge

• To get better at doing stuff (conversations, building cars, boxing people in fist fights, getting really strong, etc.)

On a more basic level, we want to (a) gain understanding of something and (b) use that understanding in the real world.

So we can think of reading as a production process:

books → basic understanding → holistic understanding → action

Note: I don't know how I feel about this model yet... There's a good chance I'll change it but it'll do as a placeholder for now.

With this model of reading as a production process, we can then ask some useful questions:

• How can, on a basic level, understand what I read?

• How can I integrate that understanding with the rest of my knowledge?

• How can I transform that knowledge into action?

In the following sections, we'll think through how we can better do this.