Get Everything Done

Avrum posted on the Scatter Map here:
http://markforster.squarespace.com/blog/2016/5/19/the-scatter-map.html

And on the map there is a sentence:

Fun things to do "I want to read Dante again and Shakespeare"

I would like to better manage my reading. I start many books without finishing them. And now I need to downsizing on the number I have. I notice on Youtube there are many videos of people tracking their reading. I would like to track how many books at a time I am reading, and which days I am reading each book. I have thought one of those pocket planners with a few lines for each day would be good.

I saw two Shakespeare plays over the summer. And I counted how many Shakespeare plays I have read or seen. There are 17. Unfortunately, I counted the remainder and there are 18 plays I haven't experienced yet!
I have met a few, only a few, who claim to have read all of the plays. One did it by reading a scene every day. I am not sure if many of them are worth the time.

If one has a goal to read all of Shakespeare's plays, is it a fun thing to do anymore? Seems more like a hobby.

Any suggestions?

I recently ran across mention of someone who copied the works of Shakespeare by hand. (I don’t remember who; it probably doesn’t matter.)

Mark Forster mentioned in testing one of his systems, he made sure it worked by seeing if it would help him read War and Peace. Found it mentioned regarding testing Superfocus v.3. http://markforster.squarespace.com/blog/2011/2/18/end-of-testing-superfocus-v-3.html

In a different post he mentioned only reading one book at a time. http://markforster.squarespace.com/blog/2016/1/26/my-book-challenge.html

In a different post from 2006 he talks about the equivalent of the 5T method for books: http://markforster.squarespace.com/blog/2006/11/3/how-to-finish-reading-all-the-books-you-start.html

Don R

I will read over these posts. Thanks.

Would reading Shakespeare's plays be an assignment or something you'd actually enjoy doing?

I gave myself my own assignment years ago where I read the play, watched one of the BBC recordings of the play, and then read a few critical essays from Granville-Barker or Shaw or Hazlitt. I also kept a little journal of my reading notes and observations. Believe it or not, this was fun for me, and I did it for a while but it really was too much overhead to do for every single play.

Re: tracking-- I made a spreadsheet that tracks how many pages a day I should read of a particular book if I want to finish it in 30 days. Some days I read more, some days I read less and it has taken me longer than a month on some books but it is a reasonable and trackable goal that keeps me on track. When finished I mark a book read and the date so I have a list of books that I read. I have been doing this for a few years now.

Surely it's the quality of experience you want from reading the book, rather than getting the book read?

I'm wondering if people would regard a "slow" task such as https://www.tate.org.uk/art/guide-slow-looking as productive? Perhaps there is confusion between pace of activity (tempo), appreciation of the task, and the number of things done.

For me it's consistency. The quality of experience is better if I build time to read at least one book every day, The spreadsheet helps remind me of that by showing how much time I should allocate in a day to read X number of pages.

The classic book on tactics for book reading and appreciation is:How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading by Mortimer J. Adler https://amzn.eu/d/0j6zgPk