Member-only story
Rediscovering Long-Form Media
I had a problem. I kept buying books but I never read them. The Japanese coined a term to describe this malady — tsundoku, a portmanteau of sunde-oku (積んでおく, to pile things up ready for later and leave) and dokusho (読書, reading books) [thanks, Wiki!].
When buying the books, I obviously had the greatest intentions to read them, yet found myself endlessly reading (ok, mostly ‘doomscrolling’) through the latest in geopolitical, investment, or healthcare news under the justification of studying today to ‘predict’ tomorrow.
In parallel, I’d been prone to go down the YouTube rabbit hole so deep that it would be nigh impossible to retrace the steps that led me from my initial topic to what I had just watched. It sure was interesting, though!
Both of these habits gave me the illusion of being very well informed on a variety of topics but it took only a few scratches on the surface to realise that there was little to no depth to this. I was more of a parrot than an critical thinker, addicted to the seeds of dopamine that each new article or clip released.
Slowly, through both my analog Saturdays and my long solo walks in the various parks across Singapore, I rediscovered the joys and benefits of reading and of listening uninterrupted by denying myself the opportunity to switch contexts.
