A Recipe for Reading Success

I am having a nice weekend. I feel like I am being personally productive.

I've worked extra hours for most days of the last two weeks. I'm on a custom team and we have our core product, and I was asked whether I could complete a couple development items for the core product's quarterly release. I've done it before and I did it again gladly. However, the work should only be done in over time, because custom team already has their hours dedicated to a client. I also have taken on two side projects. One which I think I might have to defer, and one that I'm really excited and happy about, and makes my day job easier and more fulfilling. It is nice the initiatives I feel I can tackle once I'm confident in what I'm doing.

I like to read a lot about current events. I don't usually mean the news, though I have followed that thing that just happened quite a bit. Mostly I enjoy reading interesting or informative posts at a variety of blogs or news blogs. To prevent myself from nickle and diming my time away through the week, I now concentrate my great consumption of textual media to the weekend. The earlier in the weekend, the better, before I drag it out like a weekend-long birthday party where the only reason people don't leave is because I swallow the only key that would let them out of the basement. There are usually about 600 items, most of them a paragraph long, but quite a few a couple pages. Some people go to the trouble of writing full-blown essay length posts, and I usually go to the trouble of ignoring them and hoping I'm not greatly deprived by abstaining from their thought candies. And that's a problem.

I read things under the misguided hope that I will get to rot my brain on these thought candies. That they'll leave impressions like gaping cavities in my once confident understanding of what is and show me what actually is. However, with about 600 items, and many of them very brief and shallow, I end up getting easily saturated by simple, light treats and end up unable to digest or even attempt the large, worthwhile, rich and large bon bons which promise the best experiences. I spoil my appetite. So, I defer. I defer these delicacies until Later, where Later is a mythical time oft spoken of by We Who Lack Time (but we know we'll find it again some day). Of course, that's a crock. What ends up happening is that it ends up at the bottom of the food pile and stagnates and rots there for weeks and, like sweet food-ons that you might delay on eating for a more convenient moment, it gets thrown out after a month.

However, I have revolutionised the way I do my reading now, As Seen On TV. When I read this string of candied beads, I have been doing it in LIFO when I should have been doing it in FIFO! And, there's a real difference as to why. (LIFO is Last In-First Out, where you read the newest stuff first; FIFO is First In-First Out, where you read the oldest stuff first; it's fundamental queuing theory!) When I read the newest things first, I will effectively always have spoiled my appetite by the time I get to the cake from weeks gone by, and I will probably have added additional cakes from this week as my sweet tooth became overwhelmed and my senses dulled, my brain numbed, my mind wandering. So, now my articles are sorted by Oldest First. This way, last weeks cake is still fresh in front of me when I am hungriest! A lot more cake assuredly gets devoured now (unlike before, where I left it all to go stale). After after the cakes, I still have room for all the light, fluffy icing that constitute the majority of the 600 articles. I am full of win and winful mind pastries. Yum!

Now that I'm actually reading more of the French desserts, I ended up spending a bit more time today reading than in previous weekends. About 6 hours. I accredit that in part to having a backup of stale cake to read under my new method; something which should be avoided in future weekends by at least an hour. I'll always leave something over for next week; a lot of the creamily-filled chocolate surprise-thoughts won't appear until I've gorged on quite a few wafers first, and I won't be able to fit it all. But at least they'll be the first ones I'll encounter when my appetite is built back up. Yum!