Kindle and Audible easily consume more of my screen time than any other apps. Between history, philosophy, literature, and biographies, I’m almost always reading or listening to something.
Do I feel bad about it?
Not at all.
I constantly read, observe, and contemplate the world around me. I came across a line years ago that said a person should spend at least thirty minutes each day in deep thought. I have no idea whether there was any science behind it, but it lodged itself somewhere in my mind. I’ve tried to live by that idea ever since.
I feel a day without learning something is a day wasted. Learning isn’t confined to books. Sometimes it’s found in a conversation, a mistake, a quiet observation, or a question that refuses to leave you alone. Curiosity has been one of the few constants in my life.
Years ago, during a mission, one of my soldiers looked at me and said, “Sarge, you think too much.”
A little while later, after we’d worked through a problem that wasn’t obvious to everyone else, the same soldier shook his head and asked, “How in the hell did you figure that out?”
We shared a cigarette in the few minutes we had before the next phase of the mission.
I never answered his question. The answer wasn’t genius or instinct. It was years of reading, observing, and thinking before the moment ever arrived. Most solutions are discovered long before we realize we’ll need them.
So no, I don’t feel guilty about spending time on Kindle or Audible. If anything, I wish I had more hours in the day. There’s always another book waiting to teach me something I didn’t know yesterday—or remind me of something I had forgotten.
Memoirs of Madness 