I have been reading a lot lately, but it feels like inertial reading. I am only reading whatever text gets placed in front of me, and my daily energy gets used up by all that content. There is consumption, but no output. I think reading should lead to some kind of gain, and what I gain from reading should push me toward making something of my own.

I have read many technical books, learned quite a bit of history, and looked through some books on finance. I even found books that teach wilderness survival and books about reading stock K-line charts. But in reality, I have built very few programs outside of work. I still do not understand the history of my own hometown very well. I still cannot really make sense of finance. I do not know whether my stock trades are rational, and most of the time I lose money.

Getting information is easy, and it feels satisfying, but it has not actually helped me that much. I still have many things left undone. Taking in information can become a way of pretending to work, a way of comforting myself with the idea that I have not stopped moving.

What would help more is doing things with my hands: continuing to build software, writing a book about the history of my hometown, writing a financial report based on my own calculations and judgment. Then one of two things will happen. Either I will discover that I am not actually that interested, or I will find that I truly care about it and am willing to spend more time studying it seriously. Either way, that is worth doing. What is not worth much is blindly drilling into surface-level knowledge.

Do you know which kind of person you are?