Lately, I’ve been thinking about why I read. What do I get out of it, and how can I do it better?

Ironically, I’ve been reading “Creativity, Inc.” In it, Ed Catmull, the founder and co-CEO of Pixar, shares stories and principles from his lifelong pursuit of creating the perfect company for creative minds.

In today’s post, I’ll touch on one of the many topics he covers and how we can use this concept to be more intentional and improve our reading skills.

Ed Catmull, on top of providing a wealth of leadership wisdom, discusses a particular concept that I find fascinating.

Pixar’s concept of “Learning to See” is a system that teaches young artists to unlearn their preconceptions so they become free to observe the world objectively. For example, in an exercise on “Learning to See,” animation artists are asked to draw a chair. If they just start drawing based on their preconceptions, the result is often a chair out of proportion and not aligned with its surroundings. Instead, artists are trained to observe things for what they are and to question everything in front of them, re-learning how to draw from scratch.

The concept is not limited to drawing or animation; it can be applied to all aspects of life. By unseeing and unlearning our preconceptions, we can observe the world from a clean perspective and navigate through it more emphatically and wisely.

“Learning to See” reminds me of my recent thoughts about the purpose of reading.

Shifting from Attentional to Perceptional Reading

If you want to achieve a great deal, you can’t just pick up one book after the other and wait for epiphanies to dawn on you.

Shifting your perception means changing the way you look at things – from paying attention to actually seeing what’s happening around you.

You have to question what you are reading to be able to embody what it’s trying to tell you.

If we were all good at implementing the advice we read about in books, we’d all be superhumans. Of course, the difficult part is to understand what is not written on the pages and to incorporate that into your life. Zooming out, just like the Pixar artists are taught.

For me, reading long-form content, often books, helps me get closer to achieving this. As I can spend weeks to months finishing a book (because I always read 2-3 books at a time), my subconscious is working to understand the meaning and connect the ideas and concepts to other stuff I consume or experience.

What also helps tremendously is using writing to reflect and learn, which I try to do with this blog. I can recommend Writing To Learn if you’re interested in knowing more about the benefits of this.

With time, the ideas I learn from books mature and become interconnected.

Sometimes, I unintentionally and mindlessly skim topics, picking up a few ideas here or there. However, reflecting on the “Learning to See” concept has reminded me of the value of reading intentionally. By challenging our biases and expanding our knowledge, we can become more informed and empathetic co-citizens.

Resources

• The concept reminds me of David Wallace Foster’s famous This Is Water speech. Wallace believes that our default mode of thinking is self-centered, leading to a lack of empathy and failure to understand others’ realities. To find fulfillment, he suggests we cultivate intentional and empathetic thinking.