Community Comment: Part 16
The comments I provided in reaction to a community discussion thread:
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6883455289505521664?commentUrn=urn%3Ali%3Acomment%3A%28activity%3A6883455289505521664%2C6883466108553244672%29&replyUrn=urn%3Ali%3Acomment%3A%28activity%3A6883455289505521664%2C6883474864909377536%29
Founder of Taproot Foundation and Imperative: Need your advice, please. I buy and get a lot of books as gifts – which I love. My new home office and frankly our house is starting to be overflowing with them. I did a purge last year but there are still piles of books. I hate clutter – it makes me anxious. But I also don’t love digital books. How do you manage your books? Any tricks?
Global Top 100 Influencer in Strategy and Analytics, and Talent & HR Strategy Transformation Leader at IBM:
I hear you!! We’re book rats, and I’ll give you a kidney but not my books. So, living in a New York City apartment compounds my problems. We have bookcases in every room to help..but it’s an ongoing battle.
Regardless of source (gifts, etc.), I try and purge everything that doesn’t fit in the following categories. I also do read a lot online with the Scribd app which helps me manage immediate access to something I want to read without clutter.
I classify my books as:
1. KEEP – because they are sentimental in value, some really old…books I owned as a child, others rare and valuable, some obscure. Too many of my books, alas, fall into this flexible, elastic category.
2. REREAD – books I read often and dip into, just for fun…books and characters I love like people.
3. ASPIRE – books I want to read ..these are stored on my bedside table. So by default; I cannot have more than 10-12 of these at a time. I have 10 right now.
4. REFER – needed reference purposes. This is the most useless category in my opinion as all of these references can be accessed online, and these books are read rarely. Other family members are attached to some of these books; so they stay.
Founder of Taproot Foundation and Imperative: Great categories! Very practical!
Gfesser: You've come up with some nice classifiers, essentially the same as mine! Two additional ideas to consider. (1) My books in the "keep" category are in storage. Since these aren't books I plan to re-read or reference, I get these out of the way. (2) My books in the "aspire" category (which I call the "currently reading" category) are broken down into four subcategories, using baseball nomenclature (and a little German) for my blog readers: "At Bat (Schnell)", "At Bat (Langsam)", "On Deck", and "In the Hole." As I mention in the quarterly reading list updates on my blog, I update these lists throughout each three month time period in an agile way, providing a bit of accountability while at the same time demonstrating that priorities often change.
Global Top 100 Influencer in Strategy and Analytics, and Talent & HR Strategy Transformation Leader at IBM:
Erik Gfesser, love this. Shall look for your blog.
I also have to confess to an unwarranted and egregious sentiment of “visual satisfaction” from my “keep” category. This is one reason that prevents me from storing them. For example – I was able to find a copy of “The Malachite Casket”, an obscure collection of Russian folktales, which I read as a child in India. I also have the moldy and tattered original, that my sisters and I read. Having these two copies of the same book around, where my kids and I can see them, gives me joy. And alas, contributes severely to my dilemma.
Founder of Taproot Foundation and Imperative: Erik Gfesser you had me at ‘baseball’