I wish I had your problem; mine is to find books I want to read. I very often re-read ones that are already on my shelves, for lack of anything new. However, this suggests a possible approach to your issue: When buying a book, check whether you are actually and genuinely excited to read it, so that you will open it the minute it arrives from Amazon. If not—put it in a “maybe later” pile. If it’s more a case of “sure, sounds good” or, even worse, “I want to signal having read that”, then give it a miss.
If you need to read stuff for work or for Serious Social Purposes like a book club, then treat it like work—set aside a certain time of day or week, and during that time, read.
I’m not particularly excited to read, say, an intermediate textbook on medical statistics. In spite of this, I’m confident that the world will make more sense after I read it, and I’d like that outcome. This describes my attitude to a significant proportion of the books I intend to read.
This and other interactions have caused me to re-evaluate just how ascetic my reading habits are.
I wish I had your problem; mine is to find books I want to read. I very often re-read ones that are already on my shelves, for lack of anything new. However, this suggests a possible approach to your issue: When buying a book, check whether you are actually and genuinely excited to read it, so that you will open it the minute it arrives from Amazon. If not—put it in a “maybe later” pile. If it’s more a case of “sure, sounds good” or, even worse, “I want to signal having read that”, then give it a miss.
If you need to read stuff for work or for Serious Social Purposes like a book club, then treat it like work—set aside a certain time of day or week, and during that time, read.
I’m not particularly excited to read, say, an intermediate textbook on medical statistics. In spite of this, I’m confident that the world will make more sense after I read it, and I’d like that outcome. This describes my attitude to a significant proportion of the books I intend to read.
This and other interactions have caused me to re-evaluate just how ascetic my reading habits are.