013 On Reading Books And Specialization

Reading books has surprisingly recently become one of my many favorite things to do.

I read: to fill up my curiosity about the world and everything in it;

to be able to look at the world with a completely new set of eyes;

and to learn.

Being able to learn so much about people and things, and really anything just by reading is such an incredible power to have. I love to utilize that power.

But I wasn't always a reader, in fact I never really liked it for as long as I can remember. But now I love reading everyday. 

Here is an article on my blog about that shift in perspective and further on the subject of why I love to read.

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This Amazing Things & Ideas list!

• One "amazing" quote by someone else: 
  "Specialization is for insects. I don't believe in this model of trying to focus your life down one thing. You've got one life just do everything you want." ― Naval Ravikant

• Audiobook I've been listening to this week: 
  The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda's Road to 9/11 
  A Pulitzer-award winning book, describes all the events leading to 9/11 from the perspective of the people responsible for the 9/11 attacks themselves. 
  "Brilliantly conceived and written, The Looming Tower draws all elements of the story into a galvanizing narrative that adds immeasurably to our understanding of how we arrived at September 11, 2001. The richness of its new information, and the depth of its perceptions, can help us deal more wisely and effectively with the continuing terrorist threat." - from book description

• A Ted Talk worth watching:
  Steven Johnson: How humanity doubled life expectancy in a century 
  Here's a thought experiment from the talk designed to cut off our instinctive short term thinking and getting out of the daily news cycle:
  In a hypothetical situation imagine this: if there was just one newspaper published only every 100 years, what would the headline of last century's issue state till date; that is the time frame between 1920 and today? 
  "Apollo 11 astronauts landed on the moon!", or "We built the Internet!" or something among those lines?
  Steven Johnson puts forth another strong perspective though . He argues that the headline of the newspaper would be set on a single number. The life expectancy. How far we've reached (and how much longer we've started living) in a single century's time. We've doubled that number in just a century! 
  You can watch the whole talk here.

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All articles on arjunkhemani.com this week:

• 091 Why I read

• 090 Knowledge and TMI

• 089 The flow state zone and running

• 088 Running out of time?

• 087 The brain doesn’t multi-task well

• 086 Why I’m learning a different language

• 085 A kid’s perspective on diversity and inclusion

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Thanks for reading!
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