Bits v Books

I’ve committed to reading more and got myself the kindle app on my iPhone to do it.

(Pic: My reading hideout – the garden shed. Feet: author’s own).

I figure I’m always wasting time on my phone, so why not waste time reading books?

It seems to be working. And I love being able to always have my book with me.

I tend to write a lot of notes when I’m reading. I can’t just let the content flow in, my mind jumps to other thoughts. Kindle’d ability to highlight passages, I initially thought, is amazing, as I can just highlight, move on, and then come back later to re-digest the highlight and make my connections.

Thing is – I don’t. I never go back and read my notes. They’re not for capturing information in the notepad, they’re for making neuronal connections in my mind. The act of writing connects things in my head that simply highlighting doesn’t.

Sunny Brown talks about the power of doodling in her excellent TED talk, and touches on why picking up a pen and taking a note might be more powerful than simply highlighting a passage:

There are four ways that learners intake information so that they can make decisions. They are visual, auditory, reading and writing and kinesthetic. Now in order for us to really chew on information and do something with it, we have to engage at least two of those modalities, or we have to engage one of those modalities coupled with an emotional experience. The incredible contribution of the doodle is that it engages all four learning modalities simultaneously with the possibility of an emotional experience. That is a pretty solid contribution for a behavior equated with doing nothing.

No matter how digital we become, we are physical beasts, and digital will only ever augment the underlying biological and physiological truths of being human. Even cybernetics aims to build upon the years of evolution, not wholly replace it.

So I’ll have a pencil and paper with me for some time to come yet.

Although, I wrote this as a sidebar to reading this morning. So perhaps, just perhaps, I’m already becoming less paper-based?