5 ms·

Tsundoku

58 points by heelhook 7y ago

jagger27 7y ago
Guilty as charged. My stack is mostly out-of-date programming tomes that were worth reading when I bought them. I also have a collection of Audible audiobooks that I bought to spend my built up credits before cancelling.
- jhallenworld 7y ago
  Hah, this happened to me when I cancelled Audible. My solution was to use the remaining credits for the first four of the The Wheel of Time (14 novels long). But now I'm addicted and had to sign up for Audible again. Also the credits expire, even when you are signed up. (Also, as far as physical books, you should see my basement... Buying technical books was a business expense when I was self-employed).
  - loco5niner 7y ago
    > My solution was to use the remaining credits for the first four of the The Wheel of Time (14 novels long). Thanks for the inspiration. I've been putting this off because i didn't have a solution, but just pulled the trigger.
dunkelheit 7y ago
I do it with browser tabs.
- tyagis 7y ago
  ....oh lord! I am not the only one then!
  - thrownblown 7y ago
    and i wonder why my fan is going full blast all the time.
- reinkaos 7y ago
  Me too. Many times I have opened the same website twice but they are many tabs apart. Also if I check the first few tabs I make a trip down memory lane and see whatever I was researching 3 months ago.
- loco5niner 7y ago
  I used to. Now I have a bookmark folder named "Tsundoko" that all the tabs go into on a regular basis.
strifey 7y ago
I always have a pile of fiction near at hand, but I'm relatively good with getting through those. My non-fiction pile is the one that gathers the most dust...
Niccizero 7y ago
May also apply to videogames, comics, digital media, hobby/craft supplies, etc.
- levesque 7y ago
  It's weird that something that is meant to be entertainment can become a chore (videogames and hobbies for instance). Is it merely because we are tired or because there is another activity available that is so low energy that it becomes more desirable in comparison (e.g., watching Netflix, mindlessly browsing the internet)? Sometimes I wonder... if none of those activities were available in my house, what would I do instead?
  - munificent 7y ago
    This question is highly relevant to me. I recently got a small bonus at work with the interesting stipulation that I couldn't take it in cash. (Basically, they let you expense something on the company card for personal use.) I've been getting back into making music so I wanted to spend it on something fun related to that. And this triggered a surprisingly intense amount of anxiety where I found it really hard to decide what to get. After a lot of soul searching, the understanding I reached was: There are two flavors of happiness I'll call "joy" and "satisfaction". Joy is stuff where the act itself is intrinsically pleasurable. Taking a warm bath, eating a good dessert, a conversation with close friends. Pleasures to the senses that require no effort on your part. Satisfaction is stuff where having done the act feels good. Writing a short story. Cleaning the garage. You only get out of it what you put into it. If you've heard of "type 1 fun" and "type 2 fun", it's that same distinction. In practice, most hobbies blend the two. There's a sort of third in-between category for activities whose joy/satisfaction ratio is skill dependent. Sitting down at a piano when you don't how to play well is almost pure satisfaction. It's uncomfortable and repetitive. It doesn't sound great. Your fingers hurt. But you feel good about making progress practicing the skill. Sitting down to play piano when you have mastered it is very enjoyable. You get to perform and it feels good seeing your body create the delightful sounds you hear in your head. My experience is that the hobbies where people acquire the stuff but then don't use it are the ones that weight more towards satisfaction than joy, and in especially the ones that are skill-dependent. YouTube makes the latter particularly failure prone because there are infinite videos of people who have mastered skills that make the hobby look like pure joy. (For me, the realization was that since I wanted to maximize joy, I should get gear that built on my existing music skills instead of requiring me to learn more to get fun out of it. I got a little MIDI keyboard and a looper pedal since I already know how to make music on a computer and play a little guitar and those make that existing skill more rewarding.)
phenkdo 7y ago
I usually buy books all excited about a topic I love (history or behavioral economics etc.) but they just pile up. Work pressure and exhaustion during the week and family stuff on the weekend is overwhelming any reading time :(
- noob_dev 7y ago
  totally same. Have like books ranging from bartending to philosophy and never finishing it.
- jjuel 7y ago
  I am in the same boat, but have been making a conscious effort to get more reading in. Just squeezing time here and there. Waking up earlier in the morning, before bed when I had been winding down with YouTube videos or piddling on the internet, toliet trips. In the end it takes longer to finsh by reading fewer pages at a time, but it is working at actually reading more.
newnewpdro 7y ago
Somewhat related; when a friend bought his first home, he filled bookshelves in the living room with books that were popular in his circles as part of decorating and a means of social manipulation. He never had and likely never will read any of them, it was primarily an attempt to buy social favor with guests. He'd just say he had a poor memory for books he read long ago whenever someone tried discussing them at a house party. It was unnerving how effective this was.
- HarryHirsch 7y ago
  The old joke about Suhrkamp: if you buy ten meters of Suhrkamp and display them you are civilized. If you read them you are cultivated.
- pmiller2 7y ago
  Books do make great decorations. People have been doing the same thing for decades. “Don’t have sex with someone who doesn’t own any books” used to be somewhat common dating advice. With e-readers, it’s not as applicable, but the principle is still good.
  - newnewpdro 7y ago
    In some sense e-readers are an advantage, since it's less easily spoofed; instead you have to discuss the content of books with them, rather than be impressed by their collection of potentially unread paper lining the shelves.
    - cgriswald 7y ago
      Until they lie to you about their obsession with Middle Age poetry from the region surround the Black Sea.
- nn3 7y ago
  It used to be possible to buy just the back covers of the full encyclopedia Britannica. Just for that reason.
agentultra 7y ago
Owning more books than you'll read is good for you: https://bigthink.com/personal-growth/do-i-own-too-many-books https://bigthink.com/personal-growth/do-i-own-too-many-books You never know where reading will take you next.
- lb1lf 7y ago
  This. I try to maintain a TBR (to be read) shelf or two at home, comprising a few dozen titles, both fiction and prose. The reasoning is that I'd rather have a choice when picking up the next book, rather than just having to read the last one I bought; as you say, you never know where reading will take you next. Often, reading a book on a subject makes me want to check out a few of the works referenced, and before you know it, the TBR pile has increased in size...
- X6S1x6Okd1st 7y ago
  That isn't evidence, that's a theory.
frostyj 7y ago
Just checked my steam account...
bobske4 7y ago
Me and my wife does it because we value and want to reflect to our kids and others ...there's no English word descriptive enough here... but in Greek it's called paideia, German: bildung. Danish/Norwegian: dannelse. Closest word is probably education.. but it's too narrow.
- cgriswald 7y ago
  Lucky kids. One of the best things my mother ever did for me was always have a ton of books around. Fiction, non-fiction. Garbage. Masterpieces. Even the ones I wasn't allowed to read "until I was older." I also had a grandmother that worked at a bookstore for most of her life. I have, and love, a Kindle, but I can't imagine a life without books.
cgriswald 7y ago
I had a bedroom converted into a library when I bought my house. It's about half filled with books now. I've read about 95% of the fiction and about 15% of the non-fiction. I get a lot out of the library. It's a great place to work or study. It's both devoid of and filled with distraction. (I also had a bedroom converted to an office... which, except for the girlfriend's sewing table, is almost exclusively used for PC gaming...) Having all those unread books around means I'm never bored, and I'm always subtly being pushed to learn the things I want to learn.
jdtang13 7y ago
I don't really think this word is actually a thing that Japanese people really say. The Japanese wikipedia version of this article is also a stub, and there's only 550K results in Japanese google, which is pretty much identical to the amount if you search "Tsundoku" in English. If you search for the phrase in hiragana only, the results become even less at 75K.
- praptak 7y ago
  Since the phenomenon itself does definitely exist and there is no single word for it (that I know) I am all for using tsundoku for it :)
  - mdszy 7y ago
    Right down there in the other "Book Collecting" articles it literally says: > Bibliomania (tsundoku) There very clearly is a word for it. Bibliomania.
    - lopan 7y ago
      Oxford says bibliomania = passionate enthusiasm for collecting and possessing books. It doesn't say anything about whether you read them or not.
- tyurok 7y ago
  It's mostly used in the kanji version (積読 or 積ん読) (7m+ results).
- bitwize 7y ago
  I was willing to believe it was real because it reminded me of a word actually used by Japanese: tachiyomi, which means "standing reading". A.k.a. what manga fans do in the bookstore, reading manga right there in the aisles and attracting the ire of the bookstore owner.
jcmontx 7y ago
I am absolutely sure this was posted due to the IndieHackers newsletter
- heelhook 7y ago
  Yes. It was.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
praptak 7y ago
Hobbyists use GAS for a similar practice. It stands for Gear Acquisition Syndrome where you buy much more hobby-related gear that you can use. Photography, electronics and electronic music are some hobbies particularly known for this.
- cameronfraser 7y ago
  ugh just reminded me of all the money I dumped into modular synths
  - praptak 7y ago
    Wanna resell them? Just kidding, I won't buy anything until I can actually learn to play keyboard :)
mdszy 7y ago
I too find a six-sentence long wikipedia article to be "hacker" "news".
pottertheotter 7y ago
This is me and HN. I save so many articles to Pocket but only are ever fully read.
jjuel 7y ago
As much as I like to buy books I have realized it is much more economical to just check it out from the library.

58 points by heelhook 7y ago

Guilty as charged. My stack is mostly out-of-date programming tomes that were worth reading when I bought them. I also have a collection of Audible audiobooks that I bought to spend my built up credits before cancelling.

jhallenworld 7y ago
Hah, this happened to me when I cancelled Audible. My solution was to use the remaining credits for the first four of the The Wheel of Time (14 novels long). But now I'm addicted and had to sign up for Audible again. Also the credits expire, even when you are signed up. (Also, as far as physical books, you should see my basement... Buying technical books was a business expense when I was self-employed).
- loco5niner 7y ago
  > My solution was to use the remaining credits for the first four of the The Wheel of Time (14 novels long). Thanks for the inspiration. I've been putting this off because i didn't have a solution, but just pulled the trigger.

dunkelheit 7y ago

I do it with browser tabs.

tyagis 7y ago
....oh lord! I am not the only one then!
- thrownblown 7y ago
  and i wonder why my fan is going full blast all the time.
reinkaos 7y ago
Me too. Many times I have opened the same website twice but they are many tabs apart. Also if I check the first few tabs I make a trip down memory lane and see whatever I was researching 3 months ago.
loco5niner 7y ago
I used to. Now I have a bookmark folder named "Tsundoko" that all the tabs go into on a regular basis.

strifey 7y ago

I always have a pile of fiction near at hand, but I'm relatively good with getting through those. My non-fiction pile is the one that gathers the most dust...

Niccizero 7y ago

May also apply to videogames, comics, digital media, hobby/craft supplies, etc.

levesque 7y ago
It's weird that something that is meant to be entertainment can become a chore (videogames and hobbies for instance). Is it merely because we are tired or because there is another activity available that is so low energy that it becomes more desirable in comparison (e.g., watching Netflix, mindlessly browsing the internet)? Sometimes I wonder... if none of those activities were available in my house, what would I do instead?
- munificent 7y ago
  This question is highly relevant to me. I recently got a small bonus at work with the interesting stipulation that I couldn't take it in cash. (Basically, they let you expense something on the company card for personal use.) I've been getting back into making music so I wanted to spend it on something fun related to that. And this triggered a surprisingly intense amount of anxiety where I found it really hard to decide what to get. After a lot of soul searching, the understanding I reached was: There are two flavors of happiness I'll call "joy" and "satisfaction". Joy is stuff where the act itself is intrinsically pleasurable. Taking a warm bath, eating a good dessert, a conversation with close friends. Pleasures to the senses that require no effort on your part. Satisfaction is stuff where having done the act feels good. Writing a short story. Cleaning the garage. You only get out of it what you put into it. If you've heard of "type 1 fun" and "type 2 fun", it's that same distinction. In practice, most hobbies blend the two. There's a sort of third in-between category for activities whose joy/satisfaction ratio is skill dependent. Sitting down at a piano when you don't how to play well is almost pure satisfaction. It's uncomfortable and repetitive. It doesn't sound great. Your fingers hurt. But you feel good about making progress practicing the skill. Sitting down to play piano when you have mastered it is very enjoyable. You get to perform and it feels good seeing your body create the delightful sounds you hear in your head. My experience is that the hobbies where people acquire the stuff but then don't use it are the ones that weight more towards satisfaction than joy, and in especially the ones that are skill-dependent. YouTube makes the latter particularly failure prone because there are infinite videos of people who have mastered skills that make the hobby look like pure joy. (For me, the realization was that since I wanted to maximize joy, I should get gear that built on my existing music skills instead of requiring me to learn more to get fun out of it. I got a little MIDI keyboard and a looper pedal since I already know how to make music on a computer and play a little guitar and those make that existing skill more rewarding.)

phenkdo 7y ago

I usually buy books all excited about a topic I love (history or behavioral economics etc.) but they just pile up. Work pressure and exhaustion during the week and family stuff on the weekend is overwhelming any reading time :(

noob_dev 7y ago
totally same. Have like books ranging from bartending to philosophy and never finishing it.
jjuel 7y ago
I am in the same boat, but have been making a conscious effort to get more reading in. Just squeezing time here and there. Waking up earlier in the morning, before bed when I had been winding down with YouTube videos or piddling on the internet, toliet trips. In the end it takes longer to finsh by reading fewer pages at a time, but it is working at actually reading more.

newnewpdro 7y ago

Somewhat related; when a friend bought his first home, he filled bookshelves in the living room with books that were popular in his circles as part of decorating and a means of social manipulation. He never had and likely never will read any of them, it was primarily an attempt to buy social favor with guests. He'd just say he had a poor memory for books he read long ago whenever someone tried discussing them at a house party. It was unnerving how effective this was.

HarryHirsch 7y ago
The old joke about Suhrkamp: if you buy ten meters of Suhrkamp and display them you are civilized. If you read them you are cultivated.
pmiller2 7y ago
Books do make great decorations. People have been doing the same thing for decades. “Don’t have sex with someone who doesn’t own any books” used to be somewhat common dating advice. With e-readers, it’s not as applicable, but the principle is still good.
- newnewpdro 7y ago
  In some sense e-readers are an advantage, since it's less easily spoofed; instead you have to discuss the content of books with them, rather than be impressed by their collection of potentially unread paper lining the shelves.
  - cgriswald 7y ago
    Until they lie to you about their obsession with Middle Age poetry from the region surround the Black Sea.
nn3 7y ago
It used to be possible to buy just the back covers of the full encyclopedia Britannica. Just for that reason.

agentultra 7y ago

Owning more books than you'll read is good for you: https://bigthink.com/personal-growth/do-i-own-too-many-books https://bigthink.com/personal-growth/do-i-own-too-many-books You never know where reading will take you next.

lb1lf 7y ago
This. I try to maintain a TBR (to be read) shelf or two at home, comprising a few dozen titles, both fiction and prose. The reasoning is that I'd rather have a choice when picking up the next book, rather than just having to read the last one I bought; as you say, you never know where reading will take you next. Often, reading a book on a subject makes me want to check out a few of the works referenced, and before you know it, the TBR pile has increased in size...
X6S1x6Okd1st 7y ago
That isn't evidence, that's a theory.

frostyj 7y ago

Just checked my steam account...

bobske4 7y ago

Me and my wife does it because we value and want to reflect to our kids and others ...there's no English word descriptive enough here... but in Greek it's called paideia, German: bildung. Danish/Norwegian: dannelse. Closest word is probably education.. but it's too narrow.

cgriswald 7y ago
Lucky kids. One of the best things my mother ever did for me was always have a ton of books around. Fiction, non-fiction. Garbage. Masterpieces. Even the ones I wasn't allowed to read "until I was older." I also had a grandmother that worked at a bookstore for most of her life. I have, and love, a Kindle, but I can't imagine a life without books.

cgriswald 7y ago

I had a bedroom converted into a library when I bought my house. It's about half filled with books now. I've read about 95% of the fiction and about 15% of the non-fiction. I get a lot out of the library. It's a great place to work or study. It's both devoid of and filled with distraction. (I also had a bedroom converted to an office... which, except for the girlfriend's sewing table, is almost exclusively used for PC gaming...) Having all those unread books around means I'm never bored, and I'm always subtly being pushed to learn the things I want to learn.

jdtang13 7y ago

I don't really think this word is actually a thing that Japanese people really say. The Japanese wikipedia version of this article is also a stub, and there's only 550K results in Japanese google, which is pretty much identical to the amount if you search "Tsundoku" in English. If you search for the phrase in hiragana only, the results become even less at 75K.

praptak 7y ago
Since the phenomenon itself does definitely exist and there is no single word for it (that I know) I am all for using tsundoku for it :)
- mdszy 7y ago
  Right down there in the other "Book Collecting" articles it literally says: > Bibliomania (tsundoku) There very clearly is a word for it. Bibliomania.
  - lopan 7y ago
    Oxford says bibliomania = passionate enthusiasm for collecting and possessing books. It doesn't say anything about whether you read them or not.
tyurok 7y ago
It's mostly used in the kanji version (積読 or 積ん読) (7m+ results).
bitwize 7y ago
I was willing to believe it was real because it reminded me of a word actually used by Japanese: tachiyomi, which means "standing reading". A.k.a. what manga fans do in the bookstore, reading manga right there in the aisles and attracting the ire of the bookstore owner.

jcmontx 7y ago

I am absolutely sure this was posted due to the IndieHackers newsletter

heelhook 7y ago
Yes. It was.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

praptak 7y ago

Hobbyists use GAS for a similar practice. It stands for Gear Acquisition Syndrome where you buy much more hobby-related gear that you can use. Photography, electronics and electronic music are some hobbies particularly known for this.

cameronfraser 7y ago
ugh just reminded me of all the money I dumped into modular synths
- praptak 7y ago
  Wanna resell them? Just kidding, I won't buy anything until I can actually learn to play keyboard :)

mdszy 7y ago

I too find a six-sentence long wikipedia article to be "hacker" "news".

pottertheotter 7y ago

This is me and HN. I save so many articles to Pocket but only are ever fully read.

jjuel 7y ago

As much as I like to buy books I have realized it is much more economical to just check it out from the library.