Bear with me: stop trying!

Trying to become disciplined takes a lot of energy. There’s an easier way. Create an environment in which reading theory is the easier option. Set things up so that reading theory is the easiest thing to do.

Do you prefer physical or digital or a mixture? [Store] reading materials close to the place where you’re going to be able to pick them up and get stuck in with the time available and in that setting.

So you might have a physical copy of Capital in a quiet place with a chair but no TV and poor WiFi connection. Reading the book becomes the easier, preferable option to trying to browse the internet. If you can’t do this, create it. Set your phone, if possible, to go on Aeroplane mode at a certain time of day. Or do it manually – you won’t miss anything; it’ll all be there when you log back on. Or leave your phone somewhere else, where you’d have to move to get it.

If you use a computer, save pdfs on your desktop. Save links to websites on your desktop. You could arrange them in columns, with short pieces on the left and long pieces on the right. Then if you have ten mins, open a source on the left. If you have more time, open one on the right.

Bookmark websites. Add them to your shortcut bar. ‘Add to home screen’ on your phone and move some of these around in your screen so it’s as easy to click a work of theory on Prolewiki as it is to open your messages.

If you browse e.g. Marxists.org, you’ll find loads of texts of different lengths. It’s okay just to browse. Keep a note of shorter works and bookmark/save them as suggested above. You might read a short letter on the bus or the toilet or while waiting for the kettle to boil. You won’t get through e.g. Capital in that time and you’re likely to get frustrated if you try. Short works that are easy to read in chunks include letters, interviews, FAQ format.

Discipline is useful but it’s overrated and we tend to see it upside down. Self-discipline comes from being disciplined practice. It’s a lot harder to discipline ourselves in order to become disciplined. It also becomes a lot easier to be disciplined as you become more familiar with the subject. Familiar topics, even if technical, can be read as easily as fiction; it doesn’t need discipline if you can find a way to make it so easy that you become increasingly familiar without letting yourself realise that you’re 👻reading theory🎃.

Also, a leaf out of self-determination theory: you will grasp conceptual ideas a lot quicker and be far more motivated if you choose the material. There are reading lists. But if this feels like someone else is deciding what you’re supposed to read, you probably won’t do it if you struggle with paying attention as described, and it will be harder than it needs to be. So find out what you’re interested in and read Marxist authors talking about that topic. Q: what are you interested in?

If something doesn’t grab your attention, move on and come back to it later. The more familiar a topic is, the more motivated you’ll be to engage with it. It’s okay to read a little here and a little there. It’s also okay to start anywhere in the book that looks interesting. One day you should finish the important texts. It doesn’t have to be today or next week.

One trick is trying to read one word a day. It’s a very low target. But you’ll find that if you go to the effort of reading that one word, you’ll read another and another. You might only read a paragraph in the end. But enough days like that and you’ve read what you set out to read. (This also works with writing, btw.)

I rarely: read cover-to-cover; start at the beginning; or finish one book before I start another. I start wherever looks most interesting or is most related to something that I know well. I have multiple texts on the go at once. If I get bored, I pick up something else. I often have a theme [in] mind and read the relevant parts in multiple texts about that theme and ignore the rest.

I can be ‘disciplined’ when I need to be, but if I don’t need to be, I don’t force it. The advantage is that because I read in the way that I do, I’ve often already dipped into a text before I sit down to finish it. This means I’m familiar with most of the major texts even if I haven’t read them in full before. This makes things a lot easier when I need to finish a particular text.

I often find that [some] theory is too complicated or theoretical. It’s hard to keep going when texts are difficult. If a text is particularly difficult: (1) skip that section until you come to an easier one – you can go back to the more difficult parts later, when you know more about what’s being said; or (2) let your subconscious do the hard work for you – stop reading, leave it for an hour or a day or a week, etc, then read it again and you’ll see that your mind had started to make sense of the text.

You could also focus on finishing chapters/sections rather than whole books, as a more realistic target to start with.

Essentially, the more you engage, the easier it all becomes. So the trick is to do anything that helps you to engage and keeps you engaged. If you need it, I’m giving you permission: make it easy, it doesn’t have to be a chore.