How to Think Like a Man
To be fair, I’ve read A LOT of embarrassing books on the train.
I have an 83 minute train ride every morning and every night. Although I don’t get much time to read, I often carry a book just in case I have a free moment.
In the morning, my routine is pretty rigid. During the first stage (Cannondale to South Norwalk – 20 minutes) I eat breakfast, drink coffee, and read the Wall Street Journal. I even have a standard method of reading the paper:
- Page 1
- Media & Marketing section
- Editorials and opinion
- The rest of section A
- A quick skim of Money & Investing
- A quick skim of Personal Journal
Yes, I just felt it necessary to tell you the order in which I consume my morning newspaper. Titillating.
Anyway, once I hit South Norwalk, I pop open the laptop and spend the next hour working and planning my day. This usually involves Toodledo and some combination of powerpoint, excel and email. This precious time allows me to keep up with the ridiculously smart people that surround me at work.
The only deviation from this routine was April-June, when Charlie decided that nights were best suited for gurgling and screaming. I would drink a double latte and immediately fall into a deep REM sleep for the rest of the ride.
On the way home, my routine is less predictable. 75% of the time, I’m buried in Excel or Powerpoint that I couldn’t get to during the day. But that last 25% can get interesting.
There are plenty of things to read, usually analyst reports from Sanford Bernstein, Twitter streams, blogs on Google Reader, or forwards from my friend John Wenner. I also carry around paperbacks.
I read some pretty weird shit. I’m not shy about it, but I recognize that my tastes can fall a few standard deviations away from normal. For instance, I love Anne Rice novels about witches and vampires. The covers of these books are not subtle, which means that my fellow commuters probably think I’m a freak.
I’ve also been reading about Buddhist meditation and how to get out of the psychological tendency to assume I’m defective. Check out the book cover below. The color is bad enough, but then there are those two hands embracing a flower. “Embracing Your Life With The Heart of a Buddha.” People must have assumed I was a crazy sado-masochistic freak in need of a little connection with my inner child. (It gets even more awkward when, from the middle seat, I close my eyes and try to meditate…
Some of the covers of science fiction books can be awkward. Not sure how else to put it. My wife laughed at me, out loud, every time I pulled out this book. (For the record, that picture depicts a non-human entity, so it’s ok if I think she’s hot.)
My latest obsession is with GTD. If you’ve talked to me in the last 30 days, you’re painfully aware of this. Unfortunately, that book’s cover isn’t great for my image either. My wife laughs at me every time I open it up. David Allen looks like a geeky tool, but the man is a genius.
Despite all these examples of questionable literary tastes, I have to say that none compare to what I saw today. It may be hard to see in the pic below, but this woman is reading a book called “How to Think Like A Man.” Perfect.
