Reading

“Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.”

Anna Quindlen

I am going to be doing a lot of reading in the next couple of years or so (probably swiftly followed by a lot of writing). 

To prepare for submitting a formal application to undertake a PhD I need to marshal some coherent thoughts and ideas about the topic I plan to study. I also need to underpin my thoughts and ideas with references from published literature and that’s where the reading comes in.

As a child I loved nothing better than to lose myself in the pages of a novel and, if I am given the chance, I will still fly to distant imaginary lands with my nose in a book. I’m lucky. I read quite quickly and can tune out the external world reasonably easily: although there is a down side to this skill as a numerous missed bus/tube/train stops attest and even one almost missed flight.

Things we read that pull us in do so because the messages, the story, chimes with our personal values and that triggers the release of dopamine in our brains and we become absorbed. The mammalian response to dopamine is quite astonishing. Laboratory experiments have shown that mice will turn down food and water and go for a dopamine hit instead no matter how hungry or thirsty they are. In evolutionary terms dopamine serves an important purpose. By ensuring our interest in things that matter to us, dopamine helps us learn new things and therefore become better equipped to cope with changes or challenges in our environment. Unfortunately dopamine is not necessarily produced in a very discerning way…….so we stay up later than we should counting the pages to the next chapter or watch a favourite film to the end on the telly even though we have a DVD copy in the cupboard.

My time for reading is more limited as a grown up: but at least I no longer have to pretend I have gone to sleep and, determined to finish the last chapter, risk confiscation of my precious book if discovered with a surreptitious torch under the duvet. What I will have to learn is a way to make the best use of the time I have, neither getting distracted by fascinating tangents nor bogged down in verbose prose that adds nothing to my theory.

Fortunately I’ve an ‘app for that’ – kind of. One of my highest priority driving personal values is Minessence: ‘to miniaturise and simplify complex ideas into concrete and practical applications for the purpose of creatively enhancing society’. What that means in everyday terms is that I have a very useful knack. Oftentimes I can see through waffle or confusion, cut to the quick of the matter and come up with simple ways to move forwards: I reckon that’s handy capability for someone embarking on a doctorate.

So as an avid reader I know it will be a combination of dopamine - because values and stories fascinate me - and discipline – because I want to make a positive contribution - that will sustain me through my studies and hopefully, deploying my Minessence value to maximum effect, will ultimately get me home.