One Hundred Books

I’ve recently completed a goal I set for myself about four years ago: to read one hundred books on topics related to my profession: design and usability, social media, mobile, web analytics, marketing, leadership, project management, strategy, economics, and various other topics.   They’re annotated on my personal web site, as my intention was to study these topics closely rather than read at leisure.

I’ve mixed feelings on the completion of this goal: I read a lot of very good books and a few fairly bad ones, and spent a great deal of time meditating on some of the perspectives I’ve encountered.    In a way, it feels a lot like graduating from an academic program, with a wan sense of pride in the accomplishment but knowing that it’s all been preparation for something I can’t quite conceive.   I waver between the sense of having accomplished something quite significant, and the sense that I have wasted quite a lot of time.

Perhaps that’s just melodrama grown of intellectual exhaustion – it really has been a long slog, and along the way I’ve amassed a reading list of additional topics I’d like to study that were not closely enough related to my primary goal to invest the time.   The more you learn, the more you realize there is still to be learned, and perhaps that’s the reason for the melancholy state in which I find myself at this moment.

At yet, I remain faithful to the pursuit of knowledge – anything you learn, even if it is of no immediate practical use, enriches your intellect and renders you capable of understanding things that leave others dumbfounded.   Thought it is with some sense of irony that the knowledge I have gained leaves me dumbstruck at the complete lack of its evidence in the world, such as it is.

All of this is likely a very odd way of bragging about an accomplishment, yet rather than feeling like I have climbed a hill, I instead feel as if I have climbed to the place I imagined to be the top of a hill only to find myself at the foot of a mountain.   It’s a very strange thing and I’m not sure if I quite like it .