Tsundoku and Good Habits

Note: This article was written on April 1, 2020. No, it wasn’t an April Fool’s joke.

Confession: I have tsundoku problem.

According to Wikipedia, the bastion of weird information on the Internet, tsundoku is a bit of Japanese slang, a portmanteau formed from the Japanese words “tsude-oku” (meaning “to pile things up to use later”) and dokusho (meaning “reading books.”) Essentially, it describes the phenomenon of piling up reading material to read for later, only to not use it.

So again, I reiterate, I have a tsundoku problem. I have a number of books I really want to read that are just piling on. Some days, Kembrew McLeod’s Owning Culture: Authorship, Ownership, and Intellectual Property seems like the right book to read. It was an excellent book that has helped shape my views on intellectual property. Similarly, Robert Greene’s The 48 Laws of Power is chock full of sage advice and fun historical stories. For pleasure, I’ve also been reading the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs and H. P. Lovecraft. Becoming a man of culture requires me to read some of the greats.

But alas, I never seem to find time in the day for these books. It’s been occupied, I’m afraid. And it’s not work that has covered this. I sympathize with those who desire to cultivate their intellect like I’m attempting to do, only for work to wear them down so much that, by the time they get home, they only have the energy to watch some brainless late-night television. I see this every day with my poor father (who I would say is an amazing man and role model!).

But no, I don’t have a lot of busy work. Like many people in the age of the Wuhan Coronavirus, I’m unemployed. And I suspect I’m not alone. There are a lot of people who are unemployed or underemployed or just not participating in the job market. And there are probably a lot of people who just come home from their normal job who aren’t as tired as my father yet still spend their time watching television.

So what gives? Where’s the time going? An alternative explanation must be found.

I propose as a candidate my short attention span. I’m easily distracted by momentary pleasure. It’s something I struggle with. I’ve spent countless hours just going on the same handful of websites over and over, waiting with baited breath for the next update on social media. How much time did I spend doing that? How much time do you spend doing that? I’d imagine it’s more than you think.

These are bad habits. They are bad, in part, because it’s generally not a good idea to just spend your time on social media. Seriously, it’s a huge time sink, and it’s actually bad for your mental health. Especially if you’re a teenager. But they’re also bad because they make you less productive. Think about it this way: time is a scarce resource. You can never get back those lost minutes. If you are too busy waiting for someone to respond to you on Twitter, if you are too busy trying to satisfy that social media craving, how much time are you not spending doing what you actually want to do?

When I was younger, my mother placed a number of restrictions on my behavior. I was only allowed to play video games, surf the Internet, or watch television an hour a day. Naturally, I resented this as a child. I always assumed that she did that just because she was trying to get me to focus on completing school and graduating from college. But I didn’t always want to do that. Why would I? To me, college was just something that would give me a piece of paper that would tell my future employers “I’m employable!” And getting a job was not a top priority for me because I didn’t feel I needed one. That’s one of the downsides of not being made to work in high school, I suppose.

(Parents out there: make sure you get your kids used to the job market and dealing with money, or they’ll be forced to learn the hard way, if at all. That goes double if your child has a social disability like I do.)

Come college, I suddenly was living on my own. Free from the restrictions of my parents, I began skipping classes to watch YouTube videos all day. As you could imagine, my parents were furious. Several talks and some soul searching later, and I found myself wanting to complete college. I was going to become a writer and a professor, I decided. I would make a difference that way.

But a curious thing happened. Even when I decided I wanted to complete school, the bad habits I had accumulated still persisted. I still surfed the Internet when I should’ve been studying. I hung out in food courts when I should have been saving my money. I was talking with online friends when I should have been finishing my essays. I had built up bad habits, and these bad habits were preventing me from doing what I honestly wanted.

It’s all too easy to build up bad habits, especially in this day and age. Modern technology conditions us to expect everything we want now, so we find it harder and harder to do the things that take time and energy. Tasks that require diligence become almost impossible when we’re in this mindset.

Some people believe that being able to do what you want without restraint is a good thing. But I haven’t found this to be true in my life or in anybody else’s.

We must be honest with ourselves about our bad habits and strive to have good habits. This is very difficult, but if you’re having trouble, I think I can help. I know a technique that can help you get rid of bad habits. I remember reading it in one of the books I have lying around somewhere. You start by thinking of your main goal you want to accomplish. Then, write a list of actions you need to do to reach that goal. That’s one column. Then, in another column, write a list of bad habits you have. You should have something that looks like this.

Goal: Becoming a man of culture	Bad Habits
Finding books	Going on Social Media
Organizing books	Eating unnecessary snacks
Reading the book	Watching dumb YouTube videos

Then, you use one of the actions in the first column to cross out the bad habits in the second column. Like so:

Goal: Becoming a man of culture	Bad Habits
Finding books	Going on Social Media
Organizing books	Eating unnecessary snacks
Reading the book	Watching dumb YouTube videos

Keep this list by you often. Then, from now on, whenever you would indulge in one of the bad habits in the second column, do one of the activities in the first. If you can substitute your bad habits with activities that help you achieve whatever your goal is, you’ll find yourself much more productive and happy.

Now, if you excuse me, I have to take care of my tsundoku problem. I’m on the third part of “The Call of Cthulhu,” and I don’t want to put it off for another moment.