Expansion reading

I'm a slow reader.

It's frustrating. I've taken speed-reading courses, deliberately practiced, and more. Didn't help much.

But I still read a ton. And I've noticed what I read fits into two categories:

Stuff that's easy to read. And stuff that's hard.

The former is the kind of light-beer reading in massive stacks near the front of a main-stream bookstore. Or in online articles, they tend to pop up to the top of Cheddit or Flakebook or Slacker News. They're easy to read for several reasons. But sometimes, it's just because they don't make you think too much.

And then you have the other category... Reading that REALLY challenges you. This comes in many forms.

It can be a blog post you start reading... and a couple paragraphs in, you realize grokking it will take more mental work than you thought.

It can be something where you almost, but don't quite, know everything you need to understand it. You'd actually have to pause, study what you're missing, and come back to it, to really understand.

It can be a book with unfamiliar ideas.

(That's a great thing to learn to recognize: when an idea is unfamiliar. It doesn't mean it's bad; it doesn't mean it's good. It just means it's unfamiliar.)

Regardless, the common thread is that it takes intention, mental effort, and focus to get through. I can't multitask when I'm reading this kind of stuff. Reading through it all, and fully understanding what the text has to teach...

It takes everything I've got. Because frankly, it's forcing me to rewire mental pathways.

I have a name for this. I call it "expansion reading". Because it expands *how I think* in a *lasting way*.

When you build a habit of seeking out reading material like this, and doing so regularly... It's magic. You start clearly seeing solutions to problems that always stumped you before.

Whatever you code, or topics you're interested in... find something to read that you'll have to really work at. Make it a habit, and - no kidding - it'll change your life.