How Reading Has Changed My Life
First of all, you have to know that I was once a “chaotic” person, I only do things that excite me, the one that gives me adrenaline and things that keep me amused. I keep avoiding things that uninteresting/unexciting for me. Love action movies, hate the slow burn, even when I watch The Matrix trilogy I skipped to the fighting part. I love how Mr. Anderson keeps beating Agent Smith(s) over and again but never interested in how the story goes or the “long talk” between characters, I just simply want to see some actions.
I don’t even have consistent routines or daily habits. I hate stability, when I feel that I’m doing routines, I try to dodge it by doing something else exciting. It makes me an adrenaline junkie I guess (?) and that’s how chaotic I was at that time.
Growing up in a hectic environment, parents always work from early in the morning till late night, from 8 AM to 9 PM sometimes until 10 they just come home when the business closing. There’s nothing or no one that teaches me or directs me to read something. I can’t even read Harry Potter and pass 20 pages. I fell asleep right away when I read the first 2–3 pages. Small font size, the silent vibes, it’s not something “exciting” for me. I tried Harry Potter because at that time their movie was freshly coming out and people keep saying that there are many things in the book that they didn’t tell in the movie. So I followed the hype and try to read it for once to see which part I missed in the movies. But yeah, I never find out which part that is until now **shrug**
From Junior, High School through University, and EVEN in my postgraduates, I skipped reading. Like literally, when I did my thesis for Recommender System I look for videos on Youtube or Coursera for the most part. So.. yeah… Don’t tell my professor that I did this **wink**
Since the last Harry Potter one (which I borrowed from my roommate) I have never touched or read any book at all, no interest in reading anything particular until the next 6 years into my working life.
There come the time when I was introduced to Medium, I don’t exactly remember when or how I ended up here, but here I am, subscribing to it for almost 3 years until now and still excited to come back over again. Without realizing it, reading Medium before work become my morning habit.
When I start reading posts in Medium, this platform always succeeds in making me dive into reading because all the “clickbait” thumbnails and titles invite me to click on them. Like, how can you not click something that says “SCRUM IS BAD, TIME TO MOVE ON”, “Why Agile Will Continue to Fail” or something that makes you question things such as “Stop Using Microservices. Build Monoliths Instead”. Before I even click them I would say things like “what the hell is it mean?? are you serious??” says my mind. To rest it, I should read it, right?
I read not because I wanted to learn something, but just to rest my mind and maybe argue a little bit with the writer if it says something offensive for me.
At this point in my life, without even realizing it, I created a habit to read something which I haven’t done it much in my entire life. As I said, before this, I prefer some videos on Youtube like “Rich People’s Morning Routine” or “How to make money with little programming” and such. But you know, actually this is a big change in my life, even though I didn’t realize it yet at that time.
Not long when I routinely dive into reading on medium, some questions keep popping up in my mind, are they writing this for real? I mean, does the author write this based on their opinion and generalization on the topics, or did they ever do some experiment to show their opinions are really proven?
The more I read posts, the more I realize that some of these posts are basically a solid opinion from someone, it may not be true or even applicable in another environment. Like how can you say that Agile didn’t work because of your own failures? or maybe there are some aspects in Agile that you forgot to implement and caused you to “feel” it doesn’t work and in the end, you generalizing it by saying Agile will fail in the future? and hey, of course, some of their arguments are valid, their experiences with it (maybe) are real, but again, it’s just opinion.
Without proper experiments and shreds of evidence, it may not be the same output with different circumstances.
I feel that I’m hungry for more “valid” information or references which I can’t find anywhere even on Youtube or Medium. Don’t get me wrong, I still read medium or watch some videos on Youtube, but I need something more “real” at least there are some pieces of evidence to back it up. That urge pushes me so hard to look for some valid references, which I had to really try to read… a book!
The major differences between a blog post and a book are very clear. In blog posts somehow people keep referencing another blog post or news article (which is also someone’s opinion), it doesn’t prove anything other than other people’s perspective, or I can say it’s very subjective. It’s different when you read a book, a good book shows you examples (so many of them sometimes it would make you feel overwhelmed) with valid resources: documented lab experiments, a journal, formal A/B testing, a global experiments done by scientists with clear parameters and use cases. All formal experiments with variance use cases only to prove the experiments they are doing are objective and minimize bias.
It validates you, also the other way, you feel validated and eager to trust the given result or story because it’s fair and it’s bias-free.
All those experiences bring me to the conclusion that reading is necessary if you want to grow emotionally or even technically. Years of experience and use cases are summarized in only a couple hundred pages, but you can finish it with only days or weeks. It’s worth our while!
Also, there are other things that reading, in general, has taught me :
- Keep me focused. Before this, I really had trouble focusing my mind on one thing, reading post or book keep me in the line and force me to focus
- Forcing me to start writing. Golden nuggets I found while reading excites me, sometimes I found them to be very useful and it’s a waste if I don’t write it down or keep it. I create my own Golden Nuggets list using Notion so I can access it anytime and anywhere
- Indirectly asking me to brainstorm. Sometimes there are some topics or chapters that I found intriguing, it made me ask my self is this applicable to my current social life or work life? If it is, how can I use it? How do I make the case with the same points?
- Indirect experiences. Some experiments keep being used over and again in books such as Milgram’s Experiment, I read it like in 2 books already using the same experiment but with different perspectives. Milgram’s experiment itself is a new “indirect experience” I get from reading it, even I never see the people in that experiment at least we can imagine how would it feel to be there
In my honest opinion, getting into reading is one of the best decision and habit I had in my life. I never thought in my life that I can also write this post if not because of my habit of reading and taking Golden Nuggets. This is a cornerstone for me in writing.
How about you? How far do you get into reading and what benefits do you get from it?
