Last week I spent about an hour working up a spreadsheet to calculate some obscure price vs benefit analysis for a product I buy. Their pricing structure was technically broken, I realized—at least, the way they explained it. I waded gleefully through numbers and equations and dollar signs and came up with a much better attack for them—much simpler for their clients. Of course no one asked me to do it, but when Megan gets something in her head…

Marty looked on in fascination, as I proudly displayed my beautiful spreadsheet—and explained the results. “You should really go back to playing D&D,” he told me. “That’s exactly what makes someone a great D&D player, doing stuff like that.”

I responded by default: “But I don’t like it!” And then I corrected, and explained the following: I like D&D a lot. I like the story part. I like that math part. It’s only when they are put together that I’m not crazy about them.

Thus began a bizarre revelation.

A few months ago in the process of developing one of my many cashflow models, I got in the habit of writing financial stories for Marty and I. They would start in the present and go on for the next several weeks, detailing how much money we had in our accounts now, what invoices I expected to be paid soon, what projects I could pull in to pay bills that would be due later on. I covered alternate scenarios and Plan Bs (and Cs and Ds) and the result was just like a mathematical word problem—but backwards. It was a mathematical word solution.

I loved doing this. I did it for a long time and although it was time consuming, it allowed me to think very clearly and concretely about my finances, which have always seemed a little too complicated for me. (I have a better system now, but at the time, this was quite slick and really doing the job it was meant to do!) In this particular case, Math + English = Fabulousness. There is no doubt in my mind that my thought process functioned particularly smoothly in this way, and still does.

Now, I quit playing D&D because although I loved the math, and I loved the stories… I didn’t like parsing them together. And when I was in school—get this—I hated word problems in math class. I always had trouble wrapping my head around all but the simplest ones, and I could never figure out why they were so hard. I’m a reading-and-writing wiz, and I love algebra, but I can’t do word problems? Argh!

I made my peace with it, of course, but thinking back on it now there is a very strange set of facts. The resulting realization here is that I love words, and I love maths, and I love writing about math (when it suits my purpose). But for some reason I dislike and cannot stomach reading someone else’s writing about math. For some reason, it’s tedious for me to interpret or convert in my head. It’s difficult to parse. I get turned around, somehow. And so, I don’t like it. This is why I don’t play D&D anymore (though maybe I should write it, ha ha).

This blew my mind. What could it mean? In another life, I will be a brain scientist. Surely it’s significant in some way that I love to create words+maths but dislike taking them in. One tiny Math-English Receptor Wrinkle in my brain says, No way, no how! MUTINY!

I’m okay with it, and all. But isn’t it awesomely cool to wonder about?

I have a confession to make.

I’m a (super) lazy reader.

I have always read very quickly and easily—reading is fun. Reading is a relaxing, soothing activity. It’s like trying to absorb information while sleeping; it’s effortless. This made especial sense when all I read was fiction growing up (sci-fi, fantasy, dragons, witches, magic horses, you got it) but it continued to be the case when I started to educate myself about people, sex, business and the universe. Reading was “work”, but it was still just as easy.

At a certain point my desire for information began to outstrip my reading speed. I tried not to crave information, but it’s so hard! Listen to me whine. I spent more of my time reading, but the books tended to pile up anyway. I stopped buying everything on my list. I started choosing material more carefully, researching reviews, picking up the ones I knew would be really perfect and letting the rest go. This was a great approach, but it has one flaw: What do I do when the really perfect books breed and multiply?

That’s exactly what happened. I couldn’t choose anymore. There were just too many! How much time was I really going to spend reading?

I decided to learn to read faster. I took a photoreading course (after coming across Steve Pavlina’s posts) and was very pleased! I’d never done any sort of speed reading and I loved how fast I could get through nonfiction, even long before having mastered any of the unconscious processing techniques. But there was one problem, and it’s the problem I’m working to solve now: I’m a lazy reader!

For all its awesomeness, photoreading takes effort. Maybe more accomplished photoreaders than I don’t notice the effort, but many of the photoreaders I’ve met came from hating to read. I came from loving to read, and the idea of taking a relaxing activity and turning it into homework is something I can’t help but balk at. Of course, I still read all my fiction the “usual” way—fiction is less suited to photoreading anyhow—but I’m finding it difficult to adjust and use photoreading as my automatic solution, every time. Part of my brain is a little offended that I’m taking this awesome, relaxing work and making it… work.

What the hell? my brain says, indignant. Who do you think you are?

I’ve been mulling this over for a few weeks, and I’ve thought of a few probable solutions. I still photoread quite well (if not perfectly), so all I need to iron out is my motivation.

I speculated recently about starting a super-fast readers club, so that anticipating conversation about many different books in short spans of time would give me a “reason” to read them fast and be ready to discuss. (I’m letting that percolate. Something might come of it. Right now, I’m taking advantage of the Alternative Alternative MBA, and that’s a great “reason”—though maybe we should have another discussion, sometime, about why I feel I need more of a “reason” than just wanting to read the damn book!)

I’m thinking about coming at new books from a direction Seth suggested a few months ago: Use information to do something, not just learn something. This is great because photoreading involves setting a purpose for yourself, information you’re looking for, questions you want to have answered and identifying the most useful parts of the book—and the next step, after finding what you want, is to use it to make something happen. Well, of course! If I start to associate reading with an active approach (instead of with relaxing and getting all the information I want without expending any effort), I may find that my motivation as regards reading changes a lot.

This is all just speculation so far, but you’ll know what it means when I start making posts about books and actions together in the same space, instead of just gushing about my recent reading crush. It’s time for this to happen. I have a hell of a lot of books to get through, but feel free to translate: I have a hell of a lot of change to make.

Megan’s Self-Learnification Extravaganza shall commence shortly. Please take off your seat belts and wander around the cabin, adjusting seat backs at random. It’s going to be a bracing flight!

(There’s more information in notes on the photo in Flickr. Click safely!)

I feel like the luckiest kid in the world. I’m obsessed with reading material and I have access to reading material. I’m not in the best of financial situations, but I am still able to further my own development by buying great books—about business, about people, about the world. And I have a little bit of cash left over to spend picking up fiction I once loved on eBay. (Isn’t it crazy and wonderful that I can say, “Man, I want to reread those Spenser novels, but I don’t want to spend a ton of money getting each one shipped individually. I wonder if someone’s selling some old copies all together…” and actually find them? At a ridiculously awesome price?)

I can imagine being in worse positions. If I had absolutely no funds available for book buying, there’s the internet, there are a bunch of great libraries around Austin, I have friends who are happy to lend me books. Of course, this way I get to dog-ear and mark up my copies to make them lessons, make them mine, and learn more from them (something that’s proven invaluable over many years). I have a hard time imagining not being interested in new information, or just not enjoying reading. I tend to think I do well at imagining myself in someone else’s shoes, but that’s somewhere that’s very hard for me to go.

As a consequence of recent events, I say I’m solid on reading material for the next six months. A few more !MBA / business books are on the way, and the Spenser lot should hold me for fiction for a little while. (Those are short, sweet, and SUPER awesome.) But I’ve already got a good thirty books in three piles sitting next to me, and I’m planning my information attack for the next few weeks. I am stoked!

In addition to all that, I’m playing with Delicious Library and I joined Goodreads (we’ll see how that goes). Feel free to friend me if you use it too—possible book discussion venue!

I hope you’re having as great a day as I am!

If you can’t hear the crazed gleeful gurgling, you’re just going to have to imagine it.

Last week I ordered an insane number of books. (People who sent me Amazon gift certificates for Christmas: YOU WIN. People who are noodling over what to send me: That would be your subtle hint…) I’m long overdue for some gorgeous hardcore reading, and I have not a few fantastic reasons to ramp up my educational focus. Also? Desperate informational hunger. Rawr.

Most of them shipped yesterday, and many are supposed to arrive today. Every time I look at the receipts in my inbox I just die of excitement and suspense. I clearly have no patience when it comes to reading material. Forget that I have plenty to read here already. I crave my new books with the heat of a thousand suns. I’m already on the cusp of my reading binge (I recently finished Stardance and Extras and Starseed, and I’m working on Snow Crash and See You at the Top and Kevin Kelly’s New Rules) but the more I have in the pile, the faster I’ll read them. Or maybe I’m just a sucker for a good book. Or ten.

My favorite reason to read at the moment: A slew of clever Sethheads are working on an Alternative Alternative MBA—whatever the name turns out to be—and I’m expecting it to be a gloriously wild ride. Here’s a list of the books we’re speculating on. If you originally applied for Seth’s !MBA (or were even just thinking about it) you can and should come join us. No reason like the present to get motivated and productive and supremely self-educated, I say!

Now to find some way to distract myself until I hear the UPS truck…