Usually, you just need to do 3 things:

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Five years ago, when I first started taking my self-education seriously, my idea of how one acquires expertise was overly simplistic.

I thought all you had to do was read a lot of books on a subject and the rest took care of itself.

But, after years of doing exactly that, I had less to show for it than I would’ve liked.

I often failed to answer such questions as “what was the book about” or “what did you think of it?” without fumbling for words and feeling like I had never actually read the book, but only dreamt of doing so. I was often embarrassingly inarticulate about history, literature, learning, or any of the subjects I was studying.

Therefore, I changed my approach to reading. I started focusing more on depth and less on breadth. More on quality and less on quantity.

After all, that’s how experts learn their subjects.

Scholars, writers, journalists, teachers, and anyone considered a master of a subject do far more than simply read the material.

They engage with texts in sophisticated ways:

• They think deeply and critically about the books.

• They put multiple authors into conversation.

• They draw connections between ideas and arguments.

• They compare.

• They synthesize.

In essence, experts make the reading material their own through a personal process of reflection, note-taking, and creation/application.

Today, I’m sharing 8 reading tactics you can use to create, or enhance, your own personal deep reading process to attack the books on your mastery subject reading plan—a process you’ll use in your MSRP like a miner uses their pickaxe in a goldmine, ensuring you uncover as much wisdom and knowledge as possible from the books.

These best practices, often inspired by techniques grad students use to study for comps exams, should help you self-study your MSRP in a way that makes understanding, retention, and expertise inevitable—expertise that people can sense in your writing and feel when you speak.

A Quick Note on How to Use These Tactics (& Avoiding Reading Perfectionism)

If I had no conscience and was simply trying to persuade you to read my guide, I’d say something along the lines of: “Without these reading tactics, you’ll just wander hopelessly around your reading plan looking at cool things, but rarely collecting, or retaining, any gold.”

But that’d be bullshit.

Even the regular application of focused attention to the books on your mastery subject will have a tremendously positive effect on your mind, worldview, creativity, and self-confidence:

• You will acquire knowledge.

• Your worldview will change.

• You will absorb effective ways of structuring arguments and stories.

• You will learn words and terms.

• You will have achieved something to be proud of.

I say all this because I used to suffer from reading perfectionism, and I do not want you to experience the reading slumps such perfectionism creates.

So, please do not let this guide, or any other about reading strategies, make you think that reading the words on the page, without sophisticated note-taking or reviewing systems, is worthless.

It’s not worthless at all! “Just reading” is how I started this journey of self-education. It’s how everyone starts. Just getting in the arena and having some fun exploring the books is something to celebrate—most people aren’t even doing that.

However, since I’m writing to autodidacts who take their self-education seriously, I want to share methods that’ll help you get the most out of your reading experience.

There’s no need to apply all these best practices.

Pick a few that best fit your learning style (and time constraints) will do wonders for retention and subject mastery. You can always add more later in your self-education journey.

And so, here are 8 reading tactics to get more expertise out of your MSRP project.

1. Briefly review each book upon completion

I’ve come to find that I don’t really know what I think about a book until I’ve written a few paragraphs about it.

Reviewing a book turns my half-baked, abstract feelings into rational, concrete opinions.

In other words, before I’ve written a short review, I’m afraid of someone asking me “what did you think of the book?”. After writing one, I’m hopeful someone does.

Reviewing a book after finishing it is a great habit for any book you read. But it’s especially important for books on your MSRP.

Book reviewing is like refining oil. It turns crude notions into clean insights you can use to fuel the intellectual processes that people expect an expert to be capable of doing—like comparing arguments or synthesizing three interpretations.

How do you write a book review?

A book review, provided it’s used for self-education rather than public entertainment, should reflect your specific learning goals.

For example, if you’re self-studying classic novels to learn the craft of fiction, you might want to focus your reviews on some aspect of craft behind the story.

On the other hand, if you’re studying class novels for wisdom, you might answer the question, “What was the author trying to tell me about life?” In other words: “What was the novel about?”

As you can see, a review is a rather subjective endeavor. At its core, it’s about clearly expressing (and discovering) your thoughts about the book or an aspect of it that most intrigued you—the argument, a key theme, the evidence, the core concepts, a character, a methodology, and so on.

That said, people sometimes feel resistance to writing reviews because they don’t know how to approach the task. There’s too much freedom, and this can make it seem scary. So, it can help to templatize your review process by introducing some creative constraints.

Here are 3 questions to answer in a book review:

• What is the book about? Summarize the main theme (fiction) or core argument (non-fiction).

• What did you think of the book? What aspects did you like or dislike? What parts were most compelling? What troubled you? How did it make you feel? I like to focus on discussing 1-3 aspects that really stuck out to me. For a US history book, for example, maybe there’s one specific chapter that changed the way you perceive an event. Go with your intuition here. Write about what interests you.

• Why does the book matter? Why is it significant? How will it impact your life, your field of study, society, or the world?

I like to keep my book reviews short—about 200 words. Anything more and it feels like an overwhelming project. Sometimes, of course, I’ll go over the 200-word mark. But aiming low makes it less intimidating.

Feel free to create your own template for reviews.

2. Create (or apply) as you read—have an MSRP project

In his lecture, The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson gave valuable reading advice:

“One must be an inventor to read well.”

He was advocating for a type of reading that extends beyond passive absorption of material—what he called creative reading. Emerson, so averse to conformity, wanted scholars not just to retain information, but to use the material to create something new and original.

When I think of the experts in the world—ones that have a deep understanding of some subject—they are always doing this.

For instance, academic scholars don’t just study—they research, write, create, experiment, and teach.

Since this is a subject you’re aspiring to master, it’s worth connecting your MSRP to a project that forces you to use the knowledge you acquire.

Tying your reading to something you’re building has 4 big advantages:

1. You’re more motivated to read: When you are working on a project and you can see the payoff of your reading in your essay, your video, your business growth, or the faces of the students you teach, you will feel compelled to return to the books, to keep digging!

2. You run into knowledge gaps/misunderstandings: As you create, you run into roadblocks like not knowing how to explain a certain concept or pull off a technique. This forces you to return to the material to fix the knowledge gap and holds you accountable.

3. You remember more of what you read: When I think of my own reading, it’s the books I turn into an article, behavior, or conversation that I retain most effectively.

4. Expertise comes from creation/application: Studying an MSRP is going to make you smart, but why keep that intelligence to yourself when you could use it to teach others or improve the world, not to mention get recognized as an expert.

So, this begs the question: what type of project should I do?

Ideas for intellectual projects that go along with your MSRP studies:

• An in-person or online reading group, where you lead discussions about the books you’re reading. Acting as a teacher is the best way to force yourself to deeply know the contents of the book.

• A writing project: It could be a book, a newsletter, or a blog. Write about the books. Answer questions in your field of study. Teach others as you self-learn. Nothing has made me a better student of autodidactism than writing this newsletter about it.

• A YouTube channel: Create video breakdowns of big ideas, book reviews, and video essays on your mastery subject.

• Anything you’re building: If you’re self-studying computer science, maybe that’s a software application business. Self-studying parenting? Build a relationship with your children. Reading about an art form? Have a work-in-progress where you apply your learnings.

Whatever takes you from just absorbing material to also processing, analyzing, connecting, comparing, and creating. That’s a worthwhile project that’ll amplify the expertise you get from your MSRP and provide real-world proof of how much you’re learning—super motivating.

The final 6 tactics are for the paid subscribers who generously fund the Knowledge Lust project. Please consider taking out a paid subscription if you want to read them, support my work, and receive access to all my guides on self-directed study, reading, and autodidactism.

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When the self-educated writer Louis L’Amour identified the American West as a subject he wanted to focus on in his writing, he doubled down.

He committed to “reading approximately thirty books a year on the West in many aspects”.

The young writer went on to become one of the greatest Western writers of all time, respected for his deep understanding of what it was like to be a pioneer on the frontier of the American West.

That kind of dedication to a single subject impressed me.

More than that, it inspired me to bring more focus to my own reading life, which, until lately, had always been rather broad.

Like Louis, I wanted to gain expertise in the subjects I’d identified as my Mastery Subjects—subjects that, if studied deeply over the long term, would result in skills and knowledge that help me achieve big life goals and make an impact in the world.

I didn’t want to feel like a dilettante. I wanted to feel like someone who knew their subject deeply and took seriously the lifelong project of learning it.

So, about a year ago, I committed to spending more of my self-study time reading books about Autodidactism, in its many aspects—from the philosophy of education and the science of learning to the study habits of history’s greatest thinkers.

But, I didn’t want to go about this mission of expertise haphazardly.

I wanted a plan—something motivating and exciting.

So what did I do?

I created a Mastery Subject Reading Plan—a pathway to expertise in your mastery subjects, paved in books (and lots of them), heavily inspired by the reading plans grad students create to pass their comp exams.

You can view my autodidactism reading plan here.

At the point of writing this, I’m only 23 books into my reading plan.

Still, I’ve already noticed it helping me become a more creative and informed thinker and writer for my publication, Knowledge Lust.

Therefore, I want to help other curious autodidacts gain the same confidence and competence in their subjects, whether it’s political philosophy, French literature, botany, or digital marketing.

What you’ll learn in the 3-part ultimate guide

This ultimate guide will teach you how to build and use a Mastery Subject Reading Plan (MSRP) to acquire expertise in your Mastery Subject(s), outside of school.

It’s broken into three parts:

Part 1: (this issue)

• The inspiration for this reading plan (self-studying like a grad student)

• Who should use a Mastery Subject Reading Plan (MSRP)?

• The definition of an MSRP (and how it compares to a regular reading plan)

• 7 benefits of building and using an MSRP (especially if becoming a T-shaped person is an aspiration)

Part 2: (next week)

• 6 steps to create your own Mastery Subject Reading Plan, based on how I created mine for Autodidactism and how other autodidacts and graduate students create their reading plans.

Part 3: (in two weeks)

• 8 study techniques for using the reading plan to become an expert, because deep subject mastery requires more than just reading down a list of books.

This is a long, actionable guide.

I want you to end up with an MSRP of your own, as well as an effective system for working through the books listed on the plan and retaining them.

More than that, I want you to leave with the belief that just because you aren’t studying in a formal program doesn’t mean you can’t become a recognized expert in your areas of interest.

Alright, enough intro.

Let’s get into it.

Self-studying a subject like a grad student (the influence of the plan’s design)

Louis L’Amour inspired me to focus on self-studying one subject more deeply.

But it was primarily graduate programs in the humanities and social sciences that inspired me to use a reading plan as the method for doing so.

I never attended graduate school, but I’ve read a lot about how they structure their curricula. And there’s always been one aspect of graduate-level study that has most fascinated me.

It’s called the comprehensive exam reading list:

A long list of books, often hundreds, that graduate students are expected to understand in order to pass their comp exams and earn recognition as newly minted experts in their specific discipline.

I’ve read so many blog posts about how to build these lists and prepare for the exam. And so often the writer is a student complaining about preparing for these comp exams, so it’s a bit hilarious that I’m building a similar reading plan to do on my own. But I guess that’s another benefit of self-education—it rarely feels like homework.

My decision to create this plan was also influenced by the ambitious reading plans of lifelong learners and thinkers I admire, such as ’s attempt to read a biography on every president, or ’s quest to read all the Pulitzer-prize-winning books (he also read a biography on every president.

Who should use a Mastery Subject Reading Plan?

There are many reasons for embarking on such a herculean program of self-study, without the promise of a university credential:

• You aspire to contribute to a field of study through your research, creations, and writing, but feel you need a strong base understanding of key ideas, books, and concepts to draw from.

• You wish to write more original, nuanced pieces about your subject, whether that’s Victorian literature, plant biology, history, politics, religion, business, love, or some interdisciplinary subject like autodidactism.

• You want to master your profession or art form and gain expertise that’ll help you stand out among your peers.

• You want to enrich a hobby, and are aware that mastery over the subject will enable you to get more joy and meaning from it.

• You’re a curious, ambitious thinker who, after years of random reading, wants to bring some depth and focus to your self-education.

• You want to test a discipline and identify areas of interest that you could pursue in a formal program.

Who Shouldn’t Use an MSRP? If you are just starting in your self-education, it’s advisable to go through a sampling period where you try out different subjects until you find one worth pursuing for the long haul.

What is a Mastery Subject Reading Plan (MSRP)?

If a regular reading plan is a list of books that simply helps you organize your reading life, then your MSRP is a special type of reading plan.

It’s an intensive reading plan that helps you achieve a specific intellectual goal:

Develop deep, usable expertise in one specific subject you’ve identified as high-priority, doing so primarily through books and reading habits that reliably turn book knowledge into expertise.

Unlike most reading plans, the MSRP is not just a list of books.

At the top of the plan, you’ll also define your reasons for pursuing mastery in this subject.

And you’ll also lay out the techniques you’ll use to read the books in a way that leads to expertise, defining methods like reviewing books, note-taking, or writing essays—more on these tactics in part 3.

How an MSRP is organized

The best reading plans contain anywhere from 50-200 books.

They are also broken into categories by topic, time period, author, or some other division (more on this in part 2).

Breaking it up this way allows you to read topically through the list. That way, you’re mastering one subtopic at a time—which can be highly motivating—before moving onto the next topic.

If your Mastery Subject was early US History, your MSRP might include books in the following categories:

• Biographies of US presidents and key figures

• Histories of the Civil War

• Histories of the Revolutionary Era

• Books on the US government

• Influential works of American literature, politics, and philosophy

• And so on…

Your MSRP should be a working document you’re constantly updating as you come across new titles in your field of study.

And it should be something you’re constantly referencing as you create self-education plans or try to decide which book to read next.

Pro Tip: While my MSRP is primarily books, I also include articles, scholarly journal entries, and essays into the plan. Sometimes I’ll throw a lecture series in there too, underneath a topic. For example, I included Yale’s free Modern Poetry course under the poetry section of my 20th-Century American Literature MSRP.

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7 Benefits of a Mastery Subject Reading Plan

An MSRP can enhance your reading life, help you achieve mastery in your chosen field, and transform you into someone who knows their shit, but that’s not all it can do. Read on for 7 reasons to build an MSRP.

You build expertise and develop self-confidence

Reading all those books not only equips you with knowledge and cognitive skills that make it easier to achieve eminence in your field or craft.

It also fills you with self-confidence.

When you’ve worked your way through a tough reading plan on your subject, you aren’t afraid to go on a podcast to discuss your subject. You aren’t nervous to sit down and write an essay about some area of your discipline. You’ve done the studying and now have a million interesting things to say.

This self-confidence also shows up in areas of your life that have nothing to do with your subject or intellectual endeavor.

You’ll be someone who has put in work to accomplish a hard intellectual goal. And that achievement will make you believe that you can achieve other hard goals.

Abraham Lincoln wasn’t born believing he would be president. He taught himself the law and became a lawyer. The steely inner confidence led him to take on harder political goals, and eventually, he would believe himself capable of becoming president.

You read more books (experience more motivation to read)

When a book is a building block of usable expertise, it’s hard to feel anything but energized when you see it sitting there on your bedside table.

They say, “Hey, if you read me, you’ll be a bit closer to mastering that subject.”

Therefore, they’re far less likely to lose out to television or doom-scrolling in the evening.

You get more insight out of each book

As you read more books on your subject, you’ll often find that the next book is more enjoyable than the last.

That’s because the former books you’ve read on the subject have equipped you with background information. This contextual knowledge sharpens your intellect, enabling you to mine each new book more deeply for insight.

Steph Harvey and Anne Goudvis describe the effect in their article:

“Think of it as a tapestry of understanding: the more threads of knowledge a student has, the easier it is for them to weave new information into this tapestry. This is especially important in complex subjects where prior knowledge plays a crucial role in understanding new concepts.”

Your contextual knowledge of the subject also allows you to draw interesting connections between different books, concepts, and thinkers, helping you become conversant in entire conversations (or debates) taking place in your field.

It’s easy to pick your next read

An MSRP is super helpful for short-term choices about what to read next.

You can just review your MSRP, find a category that resonates, and then pick a book that excites you.

The reading plan is also helpful as a reference when you’re building topical reading projects or DIY courses.

For example, this month I wanted to self-study The Role of the Humanities in Self-Education. But I needed to find books. Fortunately, I had already found several while creating my Autodidactism reading list, so this process was streamlined.

You’re doing background research for potential books and articles you’ll write

If you’re considering writing a book one day on this subject, you’ll have a head start in the research if you’ve already been working through your MSRP for several years.

You’ll have plenty of background knowledge that will help you write the book.

Plus, with a map of your field, you’ll be better at identifying new areas for further research related to this specific book project.

But reading books on your MSRP won’t just make you a more informed writer. It’ll also make you a more skilled one.

By reading books written by key thinkers in your field of study, you’ll absorb some of their techniques, lingo, and writing styles, making you a more effective writer about your subject.

It’s a constant source of inspiration for your creations and actions

If you’re a content creator, writer, or practitioner using the knowledge you gain from your reading, then your MSRP will be a constant source of inspiration for new topics to cover, new techniques to try out, and new role models to emulate.

For example, I have a newsletter about autodidactism, so whenever I read a book on the MSRP, I’m filled with ideas for new newsletters I want to write. Just the other day, a book on my MSRP inspired me to write this article about creativity.

But this benefit isn’t just for creatives.

A new father might create an MSRP titled “Leadership and Fatherhood” in an effort to be the best father possible. Each book, whether it’s a work of philosophy on leadership or a practical guide to fatherhood, will inspire him with new ideas to try out—new ways of bonding, solving conflicts, and so on.

The reading plan, when you apply your creativity and powers of reflection to it, is generative. It results in new creations and behaviors that help you make a difference in the world.

You stay off your phone

When I have a reading plan I’m committed to, I’m less likely to doom-scroll or choose my phone as my source of entertainment. There are just too many exciting books waiting for me!

As Cal Newport repeatedly tells me in his weekly podcast, an interesting, deep life is the best way to keep you off your phone.

An interesting life pulls you away from the device.

And what better way to make life more interesting than a reading challenge to master a subject that’ll help you make a change in your life and the world?

Next Week: How to Build Your Mastery Subject Reading Plan (pt 2/3)

I hope I’ve convinced you about the value of building a mastery subject reading plan to gain expertise in a subject you want to be known for.

• Here is part 2: How to Build an MSRP (6 Steps)

• Here is part 3: 8 Reading Tactics to Apply to Your MSRP (read for expertise)

Happy studying!

If so, you’re probably reading a lot of books about this field, craft, or profession.

And that’s great!

Maybe you even created a long-term reading plan to master your subject, like I did for Autodidactism, the subject of this newsletter.

But if reading books and taking notes is all you’re doing, you’re probably gaining less expertise from each book than you could be…

I remember reading a lot of books on the American Revolution in my early twenties. Now, years later, I have little to show for it.

Sure, I’ve retained some key points about the period and a reverence for a few of the founding fathers.

But if I were to enter into a discussion about the period with someone who knows their stuff, I would be exposed as the dilettante I am.

Now that I know what it takes to develop deep, usable knowledge of a subject (Autodidactism), I know the reason I was failing to turn my reading habit into lasting expertise.

There was 1 key thing I wasn’t doing.

Read more

US history one week, Russian literature the next, political philosophy after that.

And while it was great for satisfying my wide-ranging curiosity and building range, I wasn’t building any usable expertise in a subject—this was a deeply uncomfortable and demotivating realization.

These days, I’m a lot mo…

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Not because it was cruel.

Not because it was confusing.

But for the simple reason that it brought into combat two of my most strongly held beliefs about self-education.

A little background…

In my recent article on building a philosophy of life, I shared Jack London’s reading advice for becoming a more original and interesting thinker and writer.

Two pieces of that advice were:

1. Choose books according to your curiosity

2. Read the great books

A few days after posting, I reviewed the comments.

I saw that a careful reader named had asked me if I detected a potential contradiction in those two pieces of advice.

“What a good question,” I thought, and started typing out a response.

But quickly, before making any headway whatsoever, I gave up, and thanked the heavens I was a writer and not a teacher.

Realizing this was a more serious intellectual exercise than I was prepared to tackle (I had been writing all morning), I decided to come back later when I had more energy.

Despite a bit of agonizing over the question during the interim, I’m happy to report I did not suffer a psychic break, nor did I strip off my clothes and run naked through the local town hall screaming “Nothing we believe is true!”

And when I sat down to finally write my response, I had a profoundly creative experience.

The mental friction spurred me to deep and nuanced thought

In trying to reconcile those two principles, I was spurred to a higher realm of contemplation, a realm that was hot and uncomfortable at times, but ultimately conducive to the generation of more nuanced, and perhaps accurate, ideas about reading and self-education.

I’ll let you be the judge (honestly, the ideas could still use some more work):

After responding, I was wiped.

It was like I had done heavy squats with my mind. But I also felt lighter, like something had been made clear. Like the struggle had paid off.

The commenter and writer, David Stoker, had a name for what I had gone through.

He called it productive tension.

And I like that a lot, so I’m rolling with it, if that’s okay with you, David.

How thinkers use productive tension to generate better ideas

I’m not alone in benefiting from this productive tension.

In an interview on Dave Perell’s podcast, Alex Hormozi, perhaps the most thoughtful business YouTuber I’ve encountered, said that when he writes his books, his most nuanced ideas typically arise when he’s forced to consider two seemingly incompatible claims, both of which he believes to be true.

“That’s the fun part, when I encounter some apparent conflict between two ideas that I know are both true but seem to be conflicting. That’s where like, where’s the nuance here, under what context, where is through line for this that can create some framework that actually applies to everything.” - Alex Hormozi

Opposites don’t just attract. Together, they can make something entirely new, perhaps something even better — clearer, deeper, more interesting.

Notice how this process affects your thinking

For example, take the following contradictory claims about how to make new friends:

1. Go out there and be yourself.

2. Be outgoing.

There’s a potential contradiction here.

What if the person is by nature shy. If they acted outgoing at an event, they’d be breaking rule number 1, perhaps causing others to perceive them as faking it.

Now, how would you reconcile these two claims?

What advice would you give to this shy person in the face of such conflicting advice?

Are you thinking?

Good.

Regardless of your thoughts on friendship making, I’m only giving this example to show that this process of reconciling two contradictory statements does wonders to inspire creative thought.

The tradition of debate and its creative effects

This is why debate’s are such a beautiful exercise, both for the viewers and the participants.

Two informed people challenge and test each other’s beliefs. And this results in a deeper, more nuanced understanding of the issue at hand.

This depth of understanding is unlikely to have been achieved had the conversation been between two people who wholeheartedly agreed.

A good-spirited debate is the socratic dialectic working as it should, creating clarity, depth, and originality.

What does this have to do with self-education?

I want to show you how you can prompt this creative, analytical thinking in your studies, so you can form more original and sophisticated perspectives on the material you’re studying, and on the world at large.

This should, over time, help you create a highly unique philosophy of life that fuels your creative endeavors or just makes you a more interesting person, creative, and thinker.

The tip:

It’s not buying two TVs and blasting Fox from one and CNN from the other.

It involves my favorite source of learning: books.

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Dialectical reading: read two books that take opposite (or close to opposite) views on the same subject

In disagreement lies nuance.

By reading two books that argue different sides, you’ll come away with a far more enlightened view on the topic than the person who reads two or three books that argue from the same side.

For example, if you were self-studying economics, you might read:

• Free to Choose by Milton Friedman (for free-market capitalism)

• Capital in the 21st Century by Thomas Piketty (concerns over free-market’s wealth inequality)

If you did this, and read both books with a charitable mindset and the goal to understand, not criticize, you’d walk away with a perspective on free market capitalism that would be intriguing and persuasive.

“To agree without understanding is inane. To disagree without understanding is impudent.” - Mortimer Adler, How to Read a Book

This book pairing strategy, by the way, is what I like to call dialectical reading, after Socrates’ preferred method of philosophical exploration.

What you’re doing is putting the two authors into conversation with one another, with you as the creative mediator and interpreter.

It’s a smaller form of syntopical reading, which has you reading multiple books, often from different perspectives, on the same topic.

What if I still disagree with one of the books?

After reading both books, you may still find one side completely ludicrous.

That’s okay!

The point of this reading technique isn’t to make you agree with both sides.

It’s to spur yourself to original, critical thought. You’ll have done the hard work, and if you do end up remaining on the same side, you’ll have a more clear understanding of why you’re doing so.

Knowing the other side’s argument, you’ll also be better at defending your own stance in debate, writing, and dinner-table conversation.

But just don’t take my word for it.

Take John Stuart Mill’s:

“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion” - John Stuart Mill

How this realization is changing my approach to book selection

In my self-education plan for 2025, I chose 10 books on contemporary issues. It’s a good start, but now I see a bit of a problem.

Yes, I have liberal and conservative points of view represented, as well as a few, hopefully, relatively unbiased texts.

But I don’t have any textual pairings of conflicting views on single topics.

For example, I have The Marxification of Education, which is a critique on progressive education practices, saying Marxist ideology has infiltrated American education.

But I don’t have any book defending those practices. It might be worth it to add Pedagogy of the Oppressed to my list, as well as a few contemporary articles that challenge the James Lindsay’s argument.

I doubt either will turn me away from believing in the renaissance humanist, liberal arts approach to education, especially when the articles of the persuasive are hitting my inbox.

But we’ll see how my views are tempered, changed, or hardened. Either way, my mind will be challenged and sharpened in the process, and my understanding of the issue will be far more clear and intelligible than if I were to read just one book.

I also have a few books on how social media is harming society and mental health.

Perhaps I should add one in there that speaks to its benefits, if only to calm my sadness at the loss of attention spans as cited in The Average College Student Today.

Why does this matter?

Why should you challenge yourself to deeper understanding, more sophisticated opinions, and broader ideas?

I’ll answer that by explaining why I consider it worthwhile.

First, whether you’re reading books that disagree with one another or reconciling your own seemingly incompatible beliefs, that’s exercise for the mind. I believe it’s challenging, and thus growing, my analytical and creative abilities.

Second, I also have a desire to know the truth, and the truth usually contains nuance. It’s rarely clearcut. When I have informed principles, a set of accurate ideas about how the world works, I am more likely to make choices that help me lead a good life.

Third, I want my ideas and opinions to be original, informed, and sophisticated, rather than half-baked or one-sided. This makes me a better writer.

Lastly, and this one is the most important, I want to be able to lure my dinner guests into debates on topics I’ve read a lot about and then, knowledgeable of both sides, eviscerate them and send them out my door in utter humiliation while I sip my red wine and cackle maniacally.

How will you seize the intellectual and creative benefits of productive tension?

What topic is currently most interesting to you?

What two books could you read to ignite creative thought and form a more well-rounded and nuanced perspective?

Also, are there any beliefs you hold about the world that seem in conflict? Consider trying to work them out and clarify your beliefs.

Have you already done this in the past? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

That’s all for today, autodidacts.

Thanks for reading! I hope this exercise helps you cultivate a richer contemplative life.