The Importance of Reading Broadly
Let’s not pull any punches here – my name is Steven Clark, this is my prolific weblog… and I am an information addict. At any one time I am in the middle of reading (from end-to-end) at least three books, there are at least six books in this house which I intend to get to someday, and I have a large list of books that I absolutely must buy on Amazon the moment I can scrape together the ready cash.
At the moment I am a full time student in the second year of a Master of Business Administration (Journalism and Media Studies) degree. I have a Bachelor of Computing university degree. Nine years ago I had never turned a computer on in my life.
I read blog posts in my RSS reader every single day and those blog posts link off to other organisation’s websites where relevant cross-pollinated ideas have permeated across the World Wide Web. My digital reading regime usually incorporates at least 90 minutes over a given day – blog posts, recommended magazine / news articles / design critique / technical wherewithal; my analogue reading covers another hour on working weekdays and sometimes all day on weekends (or days when I’m not directly visiting the University for classes).
Supplemental to this list of reading are the video and audio podcasts that abound on the web. If you want to be smarter and more in tune with the world just start with WNYC’s RadioLab, the DO Lectures (some great 2008 speakers), the TED (ideas worth spreading) Conference, NPR Science Friday, Tank Riot, Math for Primates, Tack Sharp and the Moth Podcast. If you’re a web developer you probably have a few others under your belt but I won’t string out the non-techies in this post. So if you’re cruising to work… play a previously downloaded podcast and enjoy the ride.
My point is that rather than pumping iron or driving the car to the sounds of some zone-out band… I love to pump iron or drive the car listening to interesting information. Lots of broadly interesting information about whales, the universe, how the brain works, contemporary science experiments, technology, philosophy and as many novel and new ideas that I can rattle around in my brain. From memory I think it was Robert Sapolsky who wrote in his book Monkeyluv: and other essays on our lives as animals that it was a book where each essay was the result of an obsession to understand something… he would drive his wife crazy with each obsession then one day just move onto another question to be answered.
So research is less about being the type of person who has to be told to look for an answer… more about being a question in one’s self in search of an answer.
As for my Curriculum Vitae [PDF 775KB], it occurs to me that the broadness of my knowledge should be a paramount factor in why you should be interested in my services. What is worth more to your company – an MBA graduate who reads widely and is engaged in contemporary thought… or a contemporarily disengaged MBA mite solely-read from the factory of financial rhetorical textbookery… none the wiser about the world outside the institution… or about the way people tick.
The importance of reading broadly is that you may actually be able to articulate something of value… well, one would quietly suggest. So which MBA graduate do you want on your team? I’d choose the information addict anytime. If anything else, I can at least entertain you with facts about all those wonderful things you never thought about on your way to work.
March 5th, 2010 at 7:10 am
Steven, been a while
I definitely agree that having a wide range of interests and knowledge gives you advantage of others. I’m often amazed at some people I meet, that not only they’re the experts of their own fields, but they can just talk about any subject matter intelligently.
I used to read design only blogs, but these days, design blogs make up about 50% of the total. Maybe i need to write a link sharing post.
anyways, hope you’re doing well.
March 5th, 2010 at 7:33 am
Hey Jin, I’ve been back to 8164.org every now and then but just figured you had gotten really busy. The 50% design weighting sounds healthy… it allows for you to feed personal interest and I really think it prevents burn-out. I have almost stopped reading web design technical articles, for example, because so much of it was just a reflux of the last person’s post somewhere and I was rereading this stuff over and over – mainly opinions.
But now I am quite focused on management as well… although I really enjoy reading about design I’m not much of a designer – Photoshop is like a sandpit made out of sticky dots for me. I’ve been a little too busy to get much photography done in the last year, too.
Yeh I’d love to see a list of your recommended list, its hard to keep it down but there are probably a core group that you go back to over and over. I look forward to reading it.
BTW how long ago did you redesign?
March 5th, 2010 at 7:37 am
I happen to absolutely love your redesign, by the way. You’re very talented (understatement).
Its just very beautiful and I like the subtle warm tones with the excellent typography (something that I’m rubbish at myself but I’ve been know to try)…
Very nice indeed.
March 5th, 2010 at 7:47 am
Steven, I just launched the redesign this past weekend. The actual implementation didn’t take long at all. but i did spend a great deal thinking about the structure, the feeling i want to capture, the type of articles I’d like to write etc. that process started last December.
Hopefully I’ll be blogging more frequently now.
Thank you for the kind words.
March 5th, 2010 at 8:22 am
Looking forward to it. I must have done an OS reinstall since you were posting before because your redesign never popped up in my RSS reader… fixed now so I’ll keep an eye out.
Yes 90% thought and 10% implementation… that’s good design.