Your TBR Is Holding You Hostage

There’s an aspect of reading almost no one talks about on the internet: seasonality.

I see a lot of book recommendations out there, flooding my feed with books you must read before you die! Or books that will change your world! But here’s the problem: though these recommendations all came from a good place, they’re not one-size-fits-all reading experiences. And if we don’t clearly define why we’re reading what we’re reading, then the recommendations will simply pile into a guilt-inducing TBR.

And this "why" is something only you can answer. We’re all in different seasons of our lives, and each phase will lead us to find different books to read, people to talk to, and projects to work on. Maybe this is why I’m reluctant to give out book recommendations, because what I’m reading now is deeply tied to my career, relationships and challenges that I’m working through. So, to assume that everyone should read and enjoy what I’m reading is not only unfair, but a giant waste of time for my readers in some cases.

Also, vowing to read through all the books on your TBR ignores a key feature of lifelong learning: the material you read will evolve as you evolve. The TBR that you’ve built only made sense for a narrow period of your life, and there’s a good chance that now it’s holding you back instead of inspiring you to read more.

For example, back when I finished my literature degree, I stopped reading literature for a while and found a lot more joy in reading up on the history of English grammar. A few months after that, when I started writing this newsletter full-time, I binged a bunch of craft books to make sure that my prose wouldn’t put you to sleep. And just a few months ago, when I started training seriously at a local dojo, books about Karate started populating my TBR.

These tiny course-corrections might feel like you’ve betrayed your past self: I swore an oath to finish Hegel’s Phenomenology two years ago! What’s wrong with me? But after teaching this stuff online for 8 years now, I always end up with the same conclusion: if you force yourself into a book that’s not right for you now, you won’t retain much of your reading. A book is like dry yeast. You can’t just force it into a dough and expect it to balloon into a loaf of bread, and sometimes we need the right mind-space, life events or inspiration to activate what the book has to teach us.

Back in high school, I had this stupid idea to read through all the business classics before ever starting a business. Even though I’ve ploughed through Think and Grow Rich and The Psychology of Money, those books meant absolutely nothing to a 14-year-old. There was no frame of reference, and the concepts had zero application. But nowadays, I love listening to business books when I’m working out at the gym because I can apply everything I’ve learned when I get back to the office. I’m no longer collecting concepts like stamps, and learning becomes a lot deeper when you can see how theory performs out in the real world.

But, you might be thinking, what about a history or a philosophy book that doesn’t have many real-world applications? Fortunately, the same principle of seasonality applies. We have to accept that we are curious about different things at different points in our lives. You might decide to binge an entire history of feudal Japan and re-read all of George Orwell’s essays in April. And spend a whole week watching documentaries about Winston Churchill and films by Wes Anderson in May. Don’t limit yourself, because school’s already over and you’re not constrained to a linear, A-Z approach to learning.

Learn to embrace what captures your curiosity. Trust that all these fragmented interests will one day come together into a worldview that’s way beyond any single subject. This worldview will start to bleed into how you speak, how you approach tricky conversations with your friends and how you think through major life choices. And when you have enough of these reference points from different curiosities, this whole Smorgasbord will help you tap into that mystical quality that goes beyond any page of any one book: wisdom.

So, let’s end this column with a final assurance: abandon your TBR when you feel like the books on there no longer speak to you. Because chances are, they’re holding you back from following your ever-evolving curiosity. Also, trust that if a book or topic is right for you, it’ll eventually find its way back to you when the season is right.

Until next week

Robin