Verified by 
We are surrounded by information. There are more books in print than could ever be read in one lifetime.
And if that idea isn’t overwhelming enough, then consider the practically infinite onslaught of news articles, social media, music, television, listicles, lectures, podcasts, museums, movies, blogs, and everything else vying for our attention. This excessive quantity leads to a problem of quality, as not all of this information is created equal.
The truth is that some information impacts us more than others. We can all think back and reflect on the books that have hit home for us the most. Standing in contrast are the myriad books we’ve read and forgotten, putting them back on the shelf and never returning to the message of their pages.
We ought to be consuming material that is worthwhile and eschewing material that isn't. We ought to be picking up books that will stick with us, that will make a difference in who we are. Our time and resources are limited. We have to be selective in deciding what we should dedicate those resources toward.
It is a moral obligation to guard our reading time jealously.
Think about what a book is. A book represents a person’s life work. Everything they have studied and experienced and lived through goes into that book—all the lessons they’ve learned and facts they’ve acquired and insights they’ve earned. To read a book is to learn those lessons, acquire those facts, and earn those insights for yourself.
Now consider an entire shelf of books. That’s dozens of lifetimes of wisdom and knowledge. An entire bookcase—so many more lifetimes. Now, what does that make a library? An institution constructed to house the experiences and lessons of the collective knowledge of so many individuals. This prospect should be overwhelming. How tremendously worthwhile would it be to engage with all of that material?
But that’s not a possibility for us. There is just too much material.
The fact is that for most of us it’s hard enough to get through our reading lists, modest as they might be. But an inability to get through a reading list isn’t a reflection on the person. It’s a reflection on our time. It is precious. Perhaps a single dedicated and ambitious person could get through fifty books in a year. But how often do other things get in the way? Often. It’s imperative that we make those books count, whether two or two hundred of them.
So let’s say the best case scenario is that you get through fifty books per year, starting age twenty going until eighty. That’s three thousand books. A lot of books, right?
The Harvard library system is the largest private library system in the world. When I worked there, I used to spend my afternoons just wandering its corridors, seeing where they would lead. More often than not, I would be the only person in the wing, alone with all of that knowledge to myself. The library system holds over eighteen million volumes in total. Bookcase to bookcase, the Harvard library system stretches over 52 miles. You would have to complete two marathons to circumnavigate it. Imagine how long it would take to read everything. And that’s just one library!
But how long would it take to read everything in that library?
Here’s the calculation: A bookcase has about, let’s say, sixty books on one shelf. Let’s also say a bookcase is six shelves high. That’s three hundred and sixty books to a bookcase. The average row in the Harvard library system is comprised of eight cases, four on each side. That’s just under three thousand books per row in the Harvard library.
I did the math, but I’ll spare you the details: If you get through one whole row in a lifetime, that’s about one hundredth of a mile. In order to read the entire Harvard library collection you would need 52,000 lifetimes.
But you and I, we only have the one lifetime—a single row.
So, what are you going to put on your shelves?
