Shoutlouder

surfing's not just for fun!

// July 4th, 2008 // Self-Development

One of the things I’ve always struggled with from a self-development point of view is the ability to read books. I’ve got stacks of them in the house – carefully arranged so that the good quality books are downstairs on view in the living room, the semi-reasonable books are upstairs in my office (so still available – but out of sight) along with all my stufy help stuff like concordances and commentaries. And then the rubbish stuff in the skip… So if you went through the keyhole in my house you’d think – flip this guy likes to read! But the truth is I just like to buy books and then leave them on shelves to make it look like I like to read!

For ages this bothered me and I tried to develop a better reading habit… only to get half way through a book, lose interest and then forget about it for another 6 months until I started to feel guilty for not reading enough and go through the whole cycle again.

That is until it dawned on me how much I read, watch and listen via the web… I’m reading blogs by pastors and marketing analysts, I’m keeping up with the news thanks to the old beeb, I’m devouring message after message from the greats like Phil Pringle and Rick Warren thanks to their podcasts…

Truth is – I could try and kill myself trying to read 3 books a month – but I’m not a reader – well not of the traditional kind – I’m a skimmer, a gleaner, a listener, a watcher… I like to skim over interest articles, pick up quick fire tips from some ‘How to’ or ‘Top 10′ list on a random blog, I like to listen to Phil Pringle inspiring me to faith on the podcast I downloaded as I train at the Gym, I like to watch the news and discover what odditys are happening in the world…

Learning – flip yes I’m learning – I’ve probably learn’t far more via the random surfings of a nerd than I could have ever learn’t try to be a book worm that I was never born to be. Even the Bible comes via Bible Gateway as I prepare messages…

If you’re not a book worm then for goodness sake stop letting it pull you down and start to realise you just learn’t more than you’ve learn’t all year from reading books by being a surfer like me and reading this blog! Congratulations and welcome to life resource that is the internet!