LET ME SAVOR THE MOMENT a bit. What moment? Come on, you know. It's the moment of reaching the "100th post milestone" that, by the way if you haven't already known from the name of this blog, I had set for myself at the onset of this post. Shamelessly, and whatever-bad-habit-ly of mine, life as such has obviously taken me more than 100 days to get to this point -- to be precise, it's been about 1,300 days since I had set out to start this blog in 2015.
In other words, I am showing how a classic error that cognitive and social psychologists would call a "planning fallacy" operates in reality (check out a Freakonomics Radio episode for a crash course on the topic).
I have alluded to this fallacy a few times in my earlier posts; in short, proposed by the two great psychologists (and my heroes, if you don't already know) Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, is a phenomenon in which our own predictions about how much time that will be needed to complete a future task often, if not always, display too much of an optimism bias. What this planning fallacy causes is the underestimation of the amount of time needed to complete such task.
Come to think about it, I have never, in my life, finished any task on the day that I thought I would. Ever. For This blog, I didn't think that it would be so hard to write something every day -- just a post a day. How hard would that be? But it's turned out to be very difficult to keep up with writing, even just a blog a day, amidst other things in life of which I also have to take care. There're other tasks and other deadlines.
There're times of tremendous emotional baggage that get in the way of writing. And there are, of course, occasional laziness. There're physical fatigue. And there are weddings to attend. How hard is it to write something every day? Very hard, indeed: There're ad hoc work to take priority -- you get the point. The lesson here is, whenever you're planing a task, make sure that your actual deadline is at least a few weeks beyond your "optimistic deadline" you'd like to unrealistically set for yourself.
O.k., enough about my inability to do things. Let's get to what I would like to write about. For the past 5 years, I have been reading more than 300 books (yep, I don't have much of a life). Reading is something that I utterly enjoy, especially when I bike, drive, or do other mechanical things. I have to thank my own discovery of e-books and audiobooks. It's been a hassle to carry books with me wherever I go.
I travel abroad a lot, and the joy of reading physical books is usually blocked by my unwillingness to carry them in my already-pretty-heavy bag. Books are burdensome. So, e-books are great. I could read them on my phone, laptop, tablet, etc. I could search, copy, cite, and so on, also, very easily. It's difficult at first but after a while, as I've evolved evolutionarily, I have embraced the technology. Now, it's hard for me to go back to physical books, ever again.
I haven't bought any books, too, since 2013. Every day, also, I travel from home to work and back; during which, apparently, there is a plenty of "lost time" during my travel. This lost time is a traffic engineering term referring to he time during which no vehicles are able to pass through an intersection despite the traffic signal displaying a go signal. Same here, I could be reading a book while driving but that wouldn't make it safe for me, would it?
What can you really do when you're driving, or on a metro or a bus? So, ever since I've discovered audiobooks, I've begun to utilize those loss time and turn them into learning time and productive time. On average, an audiobook is about 8- hour-long, which I could finish listening to it in about 4 days -- say, I spend about 2 hours a day traveling to work; hence, I only need 4 days x 2 hours to finish a book. That's something I consider miraculous.
In essence, I have read more books in the past 5 year then in my entire life! My former student and now a careful thinker colleague from Poland, Robert, has suggested the topic for this post (thanks, Robert!) I'll put these books in a few categories -- each category contains more than 4 books (as the more doesn't mean the better -- it just means indecisiveness).
I also take into account my very own "peak-end rule heuristics" and "thinking fallacy" or the idea that I tend to remember more of the books that I have recently read rather than what I read a while ago (check out an episode of NPR The Hidden Brain podcast for a sweet discussion with the psychologist -- the great man himself). So, keeping that in mind, I'll try to come up with the best possible list.
I have mentioned most of these books in my earlier posts in one form or the other. See if you can spot them.
On how to think: [gallery ids="4861,4774,4875,4906" type="rectangular"] On how to be a better social being: [gallery ids="4876,4888,4891,4878" type="rectangular"] On how to see the world as it actually is: [gallery ids="4860,4874,4893,4910" type="rectangular"] On spirituality (and how to keep calm and carry on): [gallery ids="4881,4882,4883,4677" type="rectangular"] On how to be better at writing: [gallery ids="4884,4885,4886,4887" type="rectangular"] On moderate-to-extreme self improvement: [gallery ids="4890,4889,4892,4923" type="rectangular"] On something surprisingly awesome: [gallery ids="4894,4897,4907,4925" type="rectangular"] On creativity: [gallery ids="4898,4899,4900,4901" type="rectangular"] Classics that I revisited and utterly enjoyed: [gallery ids="4902,4903,4904,4905" type="rectangular"] On history, biography, and stories that matter: [gallery ids="4911,4912,4908,4877" type="rectangular"] My personal favorites which are sort of uncategorizable: [gallery ids="4909,4896,4879,4918" type="rectangular"] Alright, there you have it.
These are the books that have, in some ways, changed my life. I have just realized that these are only 44 out of some 300 books that I have read (and listen, as in audiobooks) over the past 5 years. The rest are also great, but these are the creme de la creme. I perhaps still need to look for more books to read and listen too -- it's so addictive. If someone asks me how I'd define myself, I probably wouldn't say that I'm an architect or an anthropologist.
I'd proudly call myself a "reader."
How to Deal with Unpleasant Events