Treat your to-read pile like a river, not a bucket

This struck a chord with me. Part of the very reason this blog exists at all is because I have a constant list of things I’d like to read and feeling unproductive that I postpone attending to so many of them.

this means treating your “to read” pile like a river (a stream that flows past you, and from which you pluck a few choice items, here and there) instead of a bucket (which demands that you empty it). After all, you presumably don’t feel overwhelmed by all the unread books in the British Library – and not because there aren’t an overwhelming number of them, but because it never occurred to you that it might be your job to get through them all.

Oliver Burkeman