Month #6: Reading three articles every day

A Year of Monthly Challenges

I read a lot of articles this month. I read opinion pieces, current events articles, and even some entries from science journals. I read 93 articles, but I don’t feel much more knowledgeable. Sure, I picked up some interesting tidbits, but most of my reading felt pretty surface-level. Looking back at the entries, I can’t even remember reading a lot of these.

Why? My approach to this challenge was too scattered. I read a little bit about a lot of things, but I didn’t end up digging very deeply into any of them.

One day I read these three articles:

• “Two Ways VCs Can Curb Sexual Harassment Starting Right Now”
• “Stunning revival of the humble shipping container”
• “Monaco’s $2.3bn project to expand into Mediterranean Sea”

All interesting topics, but mostly unrelated.

I learn best when I follow my curiosity — like looking up a song lyric and suddenly realizing it’s been an hour and I’m paging through Wikipedia articles about ancient Viking leaders. It’s a great feeling to get lost like that.

This month, two factors precluded me from that kind of learning; The first was how I sourced the articles and the second was the way I set up the challenge itself.

Every day I sourced new articles from friends, social media, and regular news sites. Whenever something caught my eye, I added it to my Reading List in Safari. When I had time to read the articles, I would treat the Reading List like a checklist, going through one at a time and removing them from the list when I’d finished. This felt like a chore. I jumped from one thing to the next because I wanted to get through the list.

Designing the challenge around a number of articles meant that I often looked for shorter ones when I didn’t feel like reading. Sometimes I didn’t get to it until late at night, at which point I rushed through so that I could get to sleep. I was more focused on completing the challenge than fulfilling its actual purpose.

In the end, I didn’t provide myself a framework that was conducive to real, natural learning or curiosity. If I were to do it again, I’d set a time-based goal that would allow me to spend time reading longer-form articles, even if I didn’t finish an entire one in a day.

Month #7: Meditate for 20 minutes every day

I’m super fidgety and struggle with focus. This month, I’m going to try meditating for 20 minutes every day. I don’t know anything about meditation, so I plan on using guided meditation apps or videos. Let me know if you have any tips!

Next blog entry to be posted on May 1st.