

How to Be Original - loquace
http://30sleeps.com/blog/2008/03/09/original-ideas/

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kingkongrevenge
> [Reading:] The more ideas you consume, the more you have to cook with.

"Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative
pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls
into lazy habits of thinking." \--Albert Einstein

~~~
jraines
Sure, there's probably a point of diminishing returns. But at what age and
volume of reading is it reached? Probably varies by person and profession.
Mark Cuban seems to attribute a lot of his early success to voracious reading
habits (trade pubs and technical manuals, though. Probably not what Einstein
was referring to).

~~~
kingkongrevenge
> what [...] volume of reading is [diminishing returns] reached?

I think the volume is pretty damn low if you limit your intake to dense, high
quality sources. The key word here is _actionable_. How often do you come
across something that actually changes your plans or the way you're doing
things? It's really very rare, in any field. It certainly doesn't require a
daily investment, and probably not even a weekly investment.

A few time I've either been traveling or in crunch mode for a few weeks and
been unable to waste time perusing the journals and feeds I usually do. When I
finally had a chance to catch up, I found that I could rapidly skim the pile
of stuff I would have wasted many hours reading and pick out all the salient
information in under an hour.

It's also important to remember we live in the google age and finding
information is easy. There's a tendency to suck down information thinking it
might be handy later, but a JIT approach to reading and research is probably a
lot more efficient. When what to do isn't obvious you can find what's been
written fast. Remember that you probably have access through your library to
lexis-nexis and other databases that allow you to search pretty much
everything that gets published.

People like to procrastinate by reading blogs and "news items" and pretend
they're actually doing useful research. In terms of real applicability they'd
usually do just as well reading Seventeen Magazine. I'm as guilty as anyone,
of course.

