Books
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Finish More Books: How to Unlock the Power of Patient Reading
Until recently, reading anything felt straight-up strainful. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to read. I kept buying more books, my TBR had grown like bamboo on fertilizer, and, as a writer and philosophy student, reading is part of my job. And yet, reading patiently — let alone finishing books — had become as tough as opening a pickle […]
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Don’t Remember What You Read (In Praise of Forgetfulness)
Advice on how to remember everything you read is plastered all over the internet. And to me — someone who juggles writing with studying languages and philosophy — this used to sound like the key to the promised land. Here was the antidote to living in a world of information overload. At last, I could escape the torturing anxiety […]
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Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman: Top 5 Lessons
One of the things I love most about this book is the author’s personal history. You see, long before publishing Four Thousand Weeks, Oliver Burkeman wrote a weekly column on productivity. He’s a productivity geek. A guru. He knows every trick in the book — and added a few chapters. Did it make him happier, though? Complete, […]
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3 Deep Lessons from Greenlights (and Why You Should Get the Audiobook)
Ironically, I’ve never been a huge fan of Matthew McConaughey. The only noteworthy thing I used to know about him was the insane number of “Murphs” he dropped in Interstellar. But then, I picked up his memoir Greenlights on a whim. (It was a long train ride, and I needed some soothing words in my […]
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3 Key Lessons From Rest by Alex Pang
Sometimes you’re lucky enough to read a book when you really need it. For me, Rest by Alex Pang was such a book. See, at the time, I was spinning too many plates. Heavy plates. On the one hand, I did a full-time master’s program where I was head over heels in projects and courses. […]
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Deep Reading: The Skill to Absorb Everything You Read
Deep reading helped me level up my reading practice in every possible way: I become totally absorbed in books. Everything I read is more memorable. Books are more attractive to me than social media. Ironically, I discovered it after a long and painful reading drought that was caused by… reading too much. See, I stopped […]
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How to Worry Less About Money: 5 Lessons from the Book
Normally, I really hate books about money. Sure, they teach you how to invest, how to go by with less, how to save for retirement, and all that. But here’s the problem: These are band-aid solutions. They might butter up your financial situation, but neglect far more critical, underlying questions: How much money do I […]
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Why You Probably Shouldn’t Read ‘A Little Life’ by Hanya Yanagihara
It’s been more than a week since I finished Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life. But the characters are still with me. I think about them when I make coffee, stroll through the woods, or meet a friend for dinner. And I’m not sure if that’s a good thing. Because A Little Life is inarguably the […]
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Why Reading ‘The 48 Laws of Power’ Is a Huge Waste of Time
Goodreads rating: 4.15 Stars. Over 1.2 million copies sold in the US alone. Recommended by Will Smith, Kanye West, and Michael Jackson. I desperately searched for a silver lining in The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene. Unfortunately, though, I hated every second of reading this treasure map to hell. I can’t tell you […]
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4 Addictive Books for Short Attention Spans
Whenever I feel my attention span dwindling, I turn to these four books. They’re highly condensed, edited to the maximum, and hook your attention on every page. Plus, they’re made up of stand-alone chapters so you can flip them open and start wherever you like. These quietly addictive books are ideal if you want to […]