By many peoples’ standards, I don’t actually actually own a lot of books. But, of the books I do own, I’ve probably read only about 70% of them. And of that 70%, I can’t even admit to reading each book in its entirety. This is intentional. I like cultivating a “home library,” which I believe must include an inventory of unread books awaiting future serendipitous re-discovery. I’m not alone in this. In Reading Well, Simon Sarris describes a similar personal philosophy:

You should buy books on a whim, whenever possible, enough that you start to forget about them. You shouldn’t know the whole contents of your own shelves. If you create a home library it should act as one: It is there for you to discover and rediscover, to get lost in.

For me, it’s a library, but for music.

I was thinking today about how I feel like I’m in a rut with my music library. I’ve spent an hour or two every day for weeks now cultivating my collection of music that has followed me for decades.

And I’m tired. All that weeding is hard work, even if it’s “just” carefully adding ID3 tags and the highest album art you can possibly find for each piece of music you have.

But the payoff is that I have an amazing garden, a well curated selection of tunes that provide answers to many of the questions I ask that can’t be specifically answered by books.

I also enjoy the Whim concept that Sean describes here. As I’m finding my attention being drawn away from the music (or, if I find my attention is drawn back into the music in a non-harmonious way), I pull it from the garden.

After all: if an album was meant to fit into my life somehow, it’ll find its way back in there.

Being a beginner can be hard at any age, but it gets harder as you get older. Children’s brains and bodies are built for doing, failing, and doing again. We applaud virtually anything they do, because they are trying.

With adults, it’s more complicated. The phrase “adult beginner” has an air of gentle pity. It reeks of obligatory retraining seminars and uncomfortable chairs. It implies the learning of something that you should have perhaps already learned.

I’ve been trying to learn soldering, kung fu, and basic home repair this year. Learning kicks ass, and we should all stop being hard on each other for trying.

Good decision makers understand a simple truth: you can’t make good decisions without good thinking and good thinking requires time.

Good decisions make the future easier, giving you more time and less stress.