What should I read?

This is part of a series of posts about operational performance, customer success, and decision-making, as well as more general topics about work and life. Some of these are published earlier elsewhere, and the newsletter #zenofbusiness is designed to bring these together for you.

Today's column is an updated version of a post that was first published in 2013 on my personal blog. This time, the trigger was the weekend classes I conduct at Indian Institute of Management Nagpur , where some students asked me the age-old question yet again in between the sessions: what should they read? What advice can I give tomorrow's business leaders about managing their reading habits?

#reading #readingbooks #readinglist

In a world drowning in data and information, it is natural to feel lost, and the question seems to have universal and timeless appeal. It is with this that I got reminded of my earlier thoughts on the subject. Today being World Food Day helped a little, too.

We all know that reading is an essential part of life, both professional as well as personal. The debates about printed media versus digital articles, or paperbacks versus e-readers, longform posts vs listicles, seem moot. In fact, when I say "reading", I can expand that to mean any sort of "input" here in the broader sense. What is certain is that reading is essential, just like breathing.

On second thought, though, it seems that reading is more like eating. A good reading habit, therefore, should follow the framework of a healthy and balanced diet, and the answer to the question "what should I read?" should model itself on the answer to the question "what should I eat?". Once you board this train of thought with me, you will find that it is a fun journey to follow through.

USDA and NHS suggest five food groups for a balanced diet, which are starchy carbs, protein, healthy fats, fruit & veg, and dairy. Each food group serves a specific purpose in the balanced diet, according to this framework. Carbs are the main source of energy for the body. Protein provides us with key amino acids, which are the building blocks of the body. Healthy fats protect our organs, absorb vitamins, and help us to grow. Fruits & vegetables are high in fibre and packed full of vitamins and minerals, which help build immunity. Dairy is a source of protein, vitamins, and minerals. For simplicity, let us consider vitamins and minerals as the fourth group in place of the last two groups above.

Carbs - history and biographies

You need to include in your reading things that are a source of energy for you. This could be different for different people, but in general I find that good historical accounts of events, biographies of historical figures, business leaders, great sportspeople, and stories of famous people from earlier times or modern, fit this bill well.

I do not have a lot of specific suggestions on which historical events or personalities one should read about, since different people relate differently to times, places and personalities. But from history, bios of people like Alexander of Macedonia and Napoleon have been inspiring to most people. From modern times, autobiographies of tennis legend Andre Agassi and leaders like Michelle Obama are well written. For an epoch, a lot of us like to read about WWII. Some would like to read about the struggles for independence and nation-building of their countries. Anything that is from this genre that clicks with you.

For me, the 2000 book "E=mc2" by science author David Bodanis is a prototype, as it covers brief sketches of several scientists and historical figures, narration of many near-impossible events around WWII, and explains the advent of some of the most radical developments in scientific thought in the last century or so in a lucid manner.

Reading or listening on podcasts about the odds that these people faced, the hardships and adversities they overcame, and the battles they won, leaves a lasting impression and provides the energy you need, especially when the chips and down and when you need that energy the most. Think about people and events that you relate to, people and things you think are worth reading about, and that becomes your first group of reading suggestions.

Protein - skill-building and technical topics

Protein helps you grow, and the books that usually do that for us are those that add skills. These are books on topics in which you would like to grow professionally and have interest in. These could be technical, semi-technical, or sometimes popular writings.

"Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman (2011) is a genre-defining example here. Earlier, Eliyahu Golratt wrote "Goal" (1984) and "It's Not Luck" (1994), two business novels which are together another excellent example of something that will build mental skills for you.

The catch is, however, that the topic and area needs to be of interest to you. The protein has to be processed, and converted to amino acid for you to really grow. Think about what you really enjoy reading, and see what takeaways you can get out of it. This does not need to be nonfiction always, but is usually so.

Healthy fats - literature and philosophy

This group usually has some of the fictional genres. You can't have too many of fats, but you need them to build a storage of strength and resilience, and for movement and for your body to work. This is really the deeper, foundational material, and it is different for different people. For me, personally, books on philosophy, metaphysics, science, and mythology fall in this category. Not the "chicken soup" variety, with the Ferrari-owning Monks and Morrises of the world, and the Alchemists who tell you exactly what you want to hear. But more of the earlier ones, right from Socrates to all sorts of modern and post-modern ones would do.

I am talking about ancient scripts here, like the Hindu Epics of Ramayana and Mahabharata, the Bible, the Book of Five Rings, Laozi's Te Tao Ching, Buddha's teachings, and so on. Seminal works, like those of Plato, Descartes, the later day Spinoza, Hegel, Hume, Friedrich Nitzsche, Immanuel Kant, Albert Camus, even Richard Dawkins, if your bent of mind is that, or saints like Rumi, Dnyaneshwar, closer home J. Krishnamurti - these are the types of readings that remain with you forever.

One strong recommendation in this section is the seminal work "Man Against Myth" by Barrows Dunham (1947), a book that demolishes 'a series of deeply entrenched social myths', such as the 'Rich are fit and the poor unfit'; 'You cannot mix Art and Politics'; and 'You cannot be free and safe'; and gives you a powerful world-view.

I would also include literature in this group, as it always helps me to survive the winter. High fantasy of Tolkien, magical realism of Salman Rushdie, speculative fiction of Frank Hubert (the "Dune" trilogy) are genres that span this group. Books in this category usually last long with you, and you tend to revisit them several times. Lin Yutangs's "The Importance of Living" (1937) is a rare combination of fun, literature, and philosophy.

One of the reasons I wrote the book with essays and stories from Hindu mythological tales last year is to have something that will appeal to this need for a certain type of people. It is a 600-page compendium, a reference material that can dipped into when needed, and read at leisure. It is called "Names, Places, Events, Things: Ruminations and Essays on Hindu Mythological Tales".

Vitamins & minerals - humor and satire

Vitamins give you immunity. The genre of books that provides emotional immunity to face life's difficult situations is humor. An afternoon spent with Woodhouse, or Saki, or Douglas Adams, or even with the Calvin & Hobbes comics is an afternoon spent well.

The importance of wit and humor in your reading habits cannot be understated. Literary humor can take several forms, including irony ("Wizard of Oz") and hyperbole (Mark Twain). The most common form is, of course, satire, with luminaries right from Aristophanes ("Clouds") to Voltaire ("Candide") to modern-day satirists who are too numerous to name. Reading humor gives that extra immunity and allows you to look at the situation in a lighter and more objective vein.

So that is it. That is the framework for having a balanced diet of reading. Tell me what you think of it. Hopefully you will find it useful for selecting the next thing on your reading list.

In the end, it is not enough to just read books. You need to digest them. Some books you will digest quickly. Some will take time. Some you will probably have to chew many, many times over. Only then, and sometimes each time you chew them, you probably find a new meaning, a new flavor, a new taste. That is when the book starts getting interesting. Your interactions with the books start getting interesting. And that's when books start becoming your friends, as they say.

Take care,

Dr. Shreekant Vijaykar

16th October 2022, World Food Day

#reading #generalmanagement #operations #habits #buildingskills

P.S. You will notice that there are some genres that are conspicuous by their absence. This is by design. One of them is the so-called #1 bestsellers. I have omitted discussing these for two reasons: (1) almost every new book is touted as the #1 bestseller somewhere and it rather difficult to say which one is the real deal, and (2) just like QSR (quick service restaurant) food, something that sells in volumes does not necessarily mean that it is good for you. Like Murakami says, if you read what everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking. What's the fun in that?