Simplifying the Reading Backlog
Posted on June 29, 2011 by LJ Earnest
Categories: Simplification
Wednesdays are simplicity days at SimpleProductivity blog.
It wasn’t too long ago that an article I was reading from Zen Habits walloped me up side the head. Leo put it quite simply:
We hold onto books we’ve already read, as trophies of our reading accomplishments. We hold onto books we might read in the future (but probably won’t), with the optimism that our future selves are going to be more amazing readers than we’ve ever been in the past.
from “Decluttering as Zen Meditation”
I have books.
Everywhere.
In fact, when faced with a problem or wanting to learn about something, my first reaction is to buy a book.
I have made some progress. I was able to get rid of two full size bookcases worth of books in the past five years. But my reading corner is still packed with books.
So I’m going to publicly announce how I’m going to simplify the reading backlog.
Letting Go
- I will go through all the bookshelves.
- If I haven’t read the book, I will assess whether I will realistically read it in the next year. If not, it will go.
- If I have read the book, I will ask myself why I am keeping it. If I have read it more than once and I love the book, I will keep it, otherwise it has to go.
- If a book is a “reference” book I will ask myself if I truly use it. If not, it will go.
Cease And Desist
For one year from today, or until the backlog is gone,
- I will not buy books at the bookstore.
- I will not buy used books.
- I will not accept books from anyone.
- I will not download Kindle books, even if they are free.
- I will stop downloading ebooks that appear interesting.
- I will not check out books at the library.
My hope is that these methods will allow me to get my reading backlog down to zero, and to make myself be honest about my purchases and what I hope to gain from them.
I will commit to giving updates on this project as the year progresses.
Photo by zimpenfish
+Excerpt
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Comments (9)
Thank goodness for libraries! Of course, some books are worth owning for reference or for reading multiple times; otherwise, I recommend putting one’s tax money to use and visiting the local public library.
Definitely. Our library even has e-books that can be checked out.
A great place to take care of your books is paperback swap.com. You can post your unwanted books and mail them off to people who request them. There is even a free iphone app for this. After you finish your inventory of reading, you will have all kinds of credits with paperback swap that you can use for getting all of next years books for free!
Love this idea! Does anyone else use this?
Good luck! Leo’s post was right on for me too – I’m still carrying around books that I bought to read back in the late ’90′s (if you love books, never, ever work in a book store…). I haven’t been able to bring myself to go quite as far as you are yet with reducing the backlog, but I’m getting closer. Looking forward to hearing how it’s working for you!
I am already finding that I want to buy/download new books. Non-fiction is just not as appealing to me, and I am dangerously close to not having any fiction! I guess I should use the fiction as a reward for getting through the non-fiction.
Thank you for this post! Just the motivation I needed to STOP downloading all these books on my Kindle! I must have 100 unread! Going to try the one year hiatus & see how it goes. Thanks again!
It is *SO* easy to overload on the Kindle because I don’t see the books! They aren’t lurking on shelves waiting to fall on me. This is by far my hardest part of the challenge. Remember, if you finish (or abandon) all books within a year, I believe you can consider the experiment a success and start downloading/borrowing again.
[...] being a great place to get books for my family (I’m on a book hiatus right now – see Simplifying the Reading Backlog), I can get many other different types of media and information. (See my Lifehack article [...]