Another timely one from you! I've been reading on Niklas Luhmann's Zettelkasten note-taking system, in an attempt to develop a personal research system that allows me to read more leisurely, sans the anxiety of feeling like I have to turn everything I consume into some sort of essay 😅
Also: "it seems part of a broader cultural trend to restrict and even pathologize fairly common human experiences into discrete identity categories…" MHMM YES
omg—I love the Zettelkasten approach, that's probably the cult-like productivity tactic I believe in the most! I'm so curious what you've been reading and how you're finding it
I read Sönke Ahrens's How to Take Smart Notes just before doing my history MA, and it helped so much with saving interesting little ideas and finding essay topics within my notes…(maybe a good future post topic?)
That's so funny. What I've been reading is Ahrens' book 😂 finished it very recently! I've also been watching YouTube videos on Obsidian and have spent some time tailoring a system for myself. Still building my notes bank so to speak, so haven't experienced the Zettelkasten benefits just yet!
That being said, yes, would love to hear how you personally used it!! How you made surprising connections, stumbled across interesting topics as a result, etc 💗
To say I loved this essay is an understatement. This spoke to me on so many levels. I have been sitting on a draft of a post I wrote a while back all about my love for all forms of research and how each day I wish my life was full of it. The words “research as leisure activity” sums up my life’s biggest goal. To spend as much time of my limited time on this earth (4,000 weeks average lifespan) doing research as a leisure activity. Research and leisure are two of my most important values, combine them together and I am at my happiest. Sorry if this doesn’t make sense, I’m writing this at the end of a long day. I love downloading PDFs as well!
Olga, thank you so much!! I very much agree…the leisure time to be motivated by fleeting interests and deep passions…the peaceful energy of exploring new ideas and slowly accumulating context and knowledge…and all of this feeding into the creation of new works or new articulations of an idea…I really think it's one of the best (and often cheapest!) ways to spend time
I would love to read your post if/when you do write it! I'm so interested in how people carve out their own research practices, and how it shapes the other work they do
I agree about the life goals! There's never enough time to learn a little more. What does that mean? How does this fit with that? What are the different opinions? Let me see your citations!!
Research as a leisure activity feels like one of those things that you've known all your life but never had a name for. Not everyone will love the comparison, but the idea has a lot in common with the “hacker” mentality. Before it was given a bad name by cyber-criminals and bro-y tech bros, being a hacker had the same sense of play, curiosity, and freedom. Thanks for the inspiration.
I agree completely with the “hacker” comparison—I’m thinking especially of Paul Graham’s 2003 essay “Hackers and Painters” where he draws out that quality of curiosity, learning through making, and non-institutional modes of knowledge and expertise https://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html
Now that I’m revisiting it, I just realized he had a substantial portion in the beginning critiquing the academic model of publishing. I think he’s too critical of paper publishing perhaps, but the 2 pitfalls he outlines are very useful to keep in mind for all kinds of intellectual/creative work!
“It's easy to drift away from building beautiful things toward building ugly things that make more suitable subjects for research papers.
Unfortunately, beautiful things don't always make the best subjects for papers. Number one, research must be original—and as anyone who has written a PhD dissertation knows, the way to be sure that you're exploring virgin territory is to stake out a piece of ground that no one wants. Number two, research must be substantial—and awkward systems yield meatier papers, because you can write about the obstacles you have to overcome in order to get things done. Nothing yields meaty problems like starting with the wrong assumptions. “
This article is just... wow...it's really put into words one of my biggest hobbies that I classified as reading when it's not just reading. it's meditation and thought. If I could live my life by the ethos expressed in this essay I'd have lived a happy life. Thanks for writing this. Can't wait to look more into your archive (this was my first intro to your work :) )
Jessica, this comment was so beautiful!!! loved how you described it as "meditation and thought"—reading/researching as a way of sharpening and refining one's ideas. I'm so happy you enjoyed this 💌
Wow. This article hits so many beats describing where I am in my life right now. It's absolutely encouraging to have a concrete reference that defines the line between seemingly disparate dots. When (professional) transitions are long, every note of affirmation becomes a lifeline. Thank you
I’m so glad this spoke to you, and I really loved what you said about how “every note of affirmation becomes a lifeline.” I am similarly embarking on a lot of new/exciting/scary projects right now, and I take SO much solace in the things I come across which are encouraging, inviting, and activating…it’s so important to have faith in our efforts!!
I loved this essay - it gave me all the sparkly feels! I added a few of my fave quotes to my are.na channel on digital gardens, kaleidoscopes and learning. My own curiosities led me to swap your use of the word 'telescoping' with 'kaleidoscoping' - some thoughts here: https://www.are.na/block/28391560
omg thank you for sharing your Are.na and your own reflections on this—I love the use of "kaleidoscoping" here too…just going to quote your explanation for anyone else in the comments section!!
'Instead of 'telescoping', how about 'kaleidoscope-ing' here, i.e. "To move in shifting (and often attractive or colourful) patterns"…Adding shapes, spotting connections, meanings shifting as patterning and re-patterning continues through shapes being organised and connected in different ways. Like that sparkly feeling you get exploring your curiosities and having realisations.'
yes! I really think there's something intrinsically pleasurable and deeply HUMAN about simply learning and exercising our minds…our brains want to associate information, draw connections, make new inferences…
I feel so validated by someone with a working knowledge of research writing about research as a leisure activity because that’s what I’ve found myself doing a lot of this year! I’ve been inspired by other young women essayists and “leisurely researchers” (like Tiffany Ferguson and Mina Le on YouTube and the women who run the Binchtopia podcast) and wanted to experiment with my own writing and try to back it up with academic research ...
I’ve discouraged myself at times, fearing that my research isn’t rigorous or disciplined enough, but there’s just so much fun in learning nonetheless. My most researched piece is “Eco disaster but make it eco chic.”
I’m looking forward to checking out all these links and artists you include :)
Mina Le and the Binchtopia women are really good examples of this! I think the way fans (tbh myself included) respond to them is also quite interesting…people are EXCITED by a deep dive, people are enthusiastic when a deeply passionate person shares what they've learned about a particular idiosyncratic interest
I would love to read the results of any leisurely research you do! I also think that finding the right level of rigor/research/seriousness is a skill that grows over time…you end up finding the research style that is appropriate for your writing style
Today is my first day of retirement and this landed in my Inbox serendipitously. I’ve been a librarian and school district library director as well as an academic-trained public school teacher. I have little to no idea what I’ll be doing next but seeing this gave me permission to use my love of information and seeking and learning and my more formal training to keep exploring interests.
Congratulations on retirement!! I hope it's a really rewarding and renewing time. I really love speaking to librarians/archivists about their personal projects—very excited that you'll have MUCH more time to explore them now!
hahah I’m glad it resonates! and I similarly approach so much learning like a dilettante…but I do think that approach can generate interesting associations and cross-disciplinary ideas to dig into!
Love this essay! Our Substack, The Novel Tea, probably falls into this space - we write about books and literary criticism, but we have no formal education or training in literature & humanities - but I never thought about it this way! 'Research as leisure activity' is an excellent angle, and one that I'm now inspired to think about in new ways
thank you for reading and it's also lovely to hear that you both write about similar things! I have SOME formal training in the humanities (history MA) but basically zero in literature 🥲 (somehow didn't even manage to take a literature class in undergrad…)
so I feel a deep affinity with people who similarly have no training BUT love this thing—books, reading, close reading, literature, literary culture—so deeply!
I'm late to this, but I wanted to say that I shared a couple of the components of your definition of research with my librarian colleagues, and one of them said we should make a big poster and post it on the front of the building. Questions, evidence, disciplinarity, community--all so vitally important. But I especially like your championing of research as activity that "lay" people can/do/should engage in, because I think at the core of librarianship, and at the basis of "the liberal arts" (broadly conceived, and for lack of a better term), is the goal of fostering and facilitating the kind of curiosity that's at the center of a pleasurable individual existence and a robust civic sphere. You've hit on a key aspect of the pedagogy involved in this too; I have the probably naive dream of helping every patron find that tiny thing they're fascinated enough and facilitating their autodidactic deep-dives, because I think those can be the threads that lead to the sociopolitical bedrock underlying, you know, everything. Never going to happen, but it's at least a way of keeping my eye on the ball and a little bit of hope while trying to exist in the deeply distressing information ecosystem we find ourselves in. All of which is to say, this is much appreciated.
I'm now late to replying to your comment, but thank you!!! I really feel strongly about research and intellectual work, broadly speaking, as a kind of practice that everyone should feel capable of accessing…whether they're professionally/vocationally identified as researchers or not.
I really loved how you described the goal of librarianship: "fostering and facilitating the kind of curiosity that's at the center of a pleasurable individual existence and a robust civic sphere." I do really think that access to information—but also access to mentorship, community, and other resources to work with that information—makes our individual lives more meaningful. And it also has so many benefits to our social and civic lives.
This is a lovely comment and I'll be thinking about it for some time—thank you so much.
I loved this piece. Thank you. You might be interested in my brother Reid Byers's deeply researched labor of love, The Private Library, which he worked on for the better part of two decades and published in 2021 with Oak Knoll ( a press specializing in books about books and related subjects). It's a book about the physical space of people's libraries, and it's really found an audience. It was reviewed very favorably in TLS by A. N. WIlson, and made the Washington Post's list of "50 Notable Works of Non-Fiction." It's now in its third printing. The thing is, this is purely research for the love of the topic and for the love of research itself. Reid is not a professional researcher; he is retired from IBM. He has a history of deep dives and of teaching himself on various topics. For awhile, he became obsessed with harpsichords, and taught himself enough about them to publish an article in Continuo, a prominent early music magazine. I think he's a remarkable instance of what you're writing about here.
This is a truly delightful example, thank you!! I'm reading this article about it now https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/24/realestate/why-do-people-keep-books.html and I have to say, I'm envious that your brother has a dedicated library in his home! It's very cool to see how a personal project (building a home library) quickly became a research project and then a book for others to enjoy
Last week, I rented a place through AirBnB and was delightfully surprised to find that one wall of my bedroom was nothing but shelves, books and a few nicely placed interesting pieces of what-nots. It was the best part of the entire, lovely space!
An academic colleague recently asked me what I wanted to do with my future. I paused for a moment..."Well," I said. "Just what I'm doing now. I've never been happier in my life!"
The context, I left my faculty position at the beginning of the pandemic. I got COVID and Long COVID. Digging out has been at the heart of my research and then my writing at Substack beginning in 2022. I'm free of the bureaucracy, free of someone else's schedule and rules. I'm constantly energized by the thrill of discovery. I love knowing that my work is helping others.
What is the best job in the world? Doing what you love.
love what you said about being "constantly energized by the thrill of discovery"—that very active, energetic feeling is what makes life most vivid! I hope your recovery from long COVID is going well, and that you'll continue to have that excitement and happiness in the months/years ahead!
Another timely one from you! I've been reading on Niklas Luhmann's Zettelkasten note-taking system, in an attempt to develop a personal research system that allows me to read more leisurely, sans the anxiety of feeling like I have to turn everything I consume into some sort of essay 😅
Also: "it seems part of a broader cultural trend to restrict and even pathologize fairly common human experiences into discrete identity categories…" MHMM YES
omg—I love the Zettelkasten approach, that's probably the cult-like productivity tactic I believe in the most! I'm so curious what you've been reading and how you're finding it
I read Sönke Ahrens's How to Take Smart Notes just before doing my history MA, and it helped so much with saving interesting little ideas and finding essay topics within my notes…(maybe a good future post topic?)
That's so funny. What I've been reading is Ahrens' book 😂 finished it very recently! I've also been watching YouTube videos on Obsidian and have spent some time tailoring a system for myself. Still building my notes bank so to speak, so haven't experienced the Zettelkasten benefits just yet!
That being said, yes, would love to hear how you personally used it!! How you made surprising connections, stumbled across interesting topics as a result, etc 💗
To say I loved this essay is an understatement. This spoke to me on so many levels. I have been sitting on a draft of a post I wrote a while back all about my love for all forms of research and how each day I wish my life was full of it. The words “research as leisure activity” sums up my life’s biggest goal. To spend as much time of my limited time on this earth (4,000 weeks average lifespan) doing research as a leisure activity. Research and leisure are two of my most important values, combine them together and I am at my happiest. Sorry if this doesn’t make sense, I’m writing this at the end of a long day. I love downloading PDFs as well!
Olga, thank you so much!! I very much agree…the leisure time to be motivated by fleeting interests and deep passions…the peaceful energy of exploring new ideas and slowly accumulating context and knowledge…and all of this feeding into the creation of new works or new articulations of an idea…I really think it's one of the best (and often cheapest!) ways to spend time
I would love to read your post if/when you do write it! I'm so interested in how people carve out their own research practices, and how it shapes the other work they do
I agree about the life goals! There's never enough time to learn a little more. What does that mean? How does this fit with that? What are the different opinions? Let me see your citations!!
Research as a leisure activity feels like one of those things that you've known all your life but never had a name for. Not everyone will love the comparison, but the idea has a lot in common with the “hacker” mentality. Before it was given a bad name by cyber-criminals and bro-y tech bros, being a hacker had the same sense of play, curiosity, and freedom. Thanks for the inspiration.
I agree completely with the “hacker” comparison—I’m thinking especially of Paul Graham’s 2003 essay “Hackers and Painters” where he draws out that quality of curiosity, learning through making, and non-institutional modes of knowledge and expertise https://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html
Now that I’m revisiting it, I just realized he had a substantial portion in the beginning critiquing the academic model of publishing. I think he’s too critical of paper publishing perhaps, but the 2 pitfalls he outlines are very useful to keep in mind for all kinds of intellectual/creative work!
“It's easy to drift away from building beautiful things toward building ugly things that make more suitable subjects for research papers.
Unfortunately, beautiful things don't always make the best subjects for papers. Number one, research must be original—and as anyone who has written a PhD dissertation knows, the way to be sure that you're exploring virgin territory is to stake out a piece of ground that no one wants. Number two, research must be substantial—and awkward systems yield meatier papers, because you can write about the obstacles you have to overcome in order to get things done. Nothing yields meaty problems like starting with the wrong assumptions. “
This article is just... wow...it's really put into words one of my biggest hobbies that I classified as reading when it's not just reading. it's meditation and thought. If I could live my life by the ethos expressed in this essay I'd have lived a happy life. Thanks for writing this. Can't wait to look more into your archive (this was my first intro to your work :) )
Jessica, this comment was so beautiful!!! loved how you described it as "meditation and thought"—reading/researching as a way of sharpening and refining one's ideas. I'm so happy you enjoyed this 💌
Wow. This article hits so many beats describing where I am in my life right now. It's absolutely encouraging to have a concrete reference that defines the line between seemingly disparate dots. When (professional) transitions are long, every note of affirmation becomes a lifeline. Thank you
I’m so glad this spoke to you, and I really loved what you said about how “every note of affirmation becomes a lifeline.” I am similarly embarking on a lot of new/exciting/scary projects right now, and I take SO much solace in the things I come across which are encouraging, inviting, and activating…it’s so important to have faith in our efforts!!
Absolutely.
I loved this essay - it gave me all the sparkly feels! I added a few of my fave quotes to my are.na channel on digital gardens, kaleidoscopes and learning. My own curiosities led me to swap your use of the word 'telescoping' with 'kaleidoscoping' - some thoughts here: https://www.are.na/block/28391560
omg thank you for sharing your Are.na and your own reflections on this—I love the use of "kaleidoscoping" here too…just going to quote your explanation for anyone else in the comments section!!
'Instead of 'telescoping', how about 'kaleidoscope-ing' here, i.e. "To move in shifting (and often attractive or colourful) patterns"…Adding shapes, spotting connections, meanings shifting as patterning and re-patterning continues through shapes being organised and connected in different ways. Like that sparkly feeling you get exploring your curiosities and having realisations.'
Totally feel this! It's beautiful getting to spend time diving into different topics and coming across new findings.
yes! I really think there's something intrinsically pleasurable and deeply HUMAN about simply learning and exercising our minds…our brains want to associate information, draw connections, make new inferences…
I feel so validated by someone with a working knowledge of research writing about research as a leisure activity because that’s what I’ve found myself doing a lot of this year! I’ve been inspired by other young women essayists and “leisurely researchers” (like Tiffany Ferguson and Mina Le on YouTube and the women who run the Binchtopia podcast) and wanted to experiment with my own writing and try to back it up with academic research ...
I’ve discouraged myself at times, fearing that my research isn’t rigorous or disciplined enough, but there’s just so much fun in learning nonetheless. My most researched piece is “Eco disaster but make it eco chic.”
I’m looking forward to checking out all these links and artists you include :)
Mina Le and the Binchtopia women are really good examples of this! I think the way fans (tbh myself included) respond to them is also quite interesting…people are EXCITED by a deep dive, people are enthusiastic when a deeply passionate person shares what they've learned about a particular idiosyncratic interest
I would love to read the results of any leisurely research you do! I also think that finding the right level of rigor/research/seriousness is a skill that grows over time…you end up finding the research style that is appropriate for your writing style
thank you for reading!
Today is my first day of retirement and this landed in my Inbox serendipitously. I’ve been a librarian and school district library director as well as an academic-trained public school teacher. I have little to no idea what I’ll be doing next but seeing this gave me permission to use my love of information and seeking and learning and my more formal training to keep exploring interests.
Congratulations on retirement!! I hope it's a really rewarding and renewing time. I really love speaking to librarians/archivists about their personal projects—very excited that you'll have MUCH more time to explore them now!
I also am recently retired and am finding this timely. I love researching and am a life-long learner. Love this!
Aw man!! It’s like this essay was custom tailored to validate my neurotic dilettante-short-attention-span-research behavior!! Thank youuuu!! 😭
hahah I’m glad it resonates! and I similarly approach so much learning like a dilettante…but I do think that approach can generate interesting associations and cross-disciplinary ideas to dig into!
Agreed! Nothing like having breadth of knowledge instead of just depth!
Love this essay! Our Substack, The Novel Tea, probably falls into this space - we write about books and literary criticism, but we have no formal education or training in literature & humanities - but I never thought about it this way! 'Research as leisure activity' is an excellent angle, and one that I'm now inspired to think about in new ways
- S
thank you for reading and it's also lovely to hear that you both write about similar things! I have SOME formal training in the humanities (history MA) but basically zero in literature 🥲 (somehow didn't even manage to take a literature class in undergrad…)
so I feel a deep affinity with people who similarly have no training BUT love this thing—books, reading, close reading, literature, literary culture—so deeply!
And finding connections to different things can sometimes be easier when you're not buried in the sand in just one discipline!
I return to this essay often.
I'm late to this, but I wanted to say that I shared a couple of the components of your definition of research with my librarian colleagues, and one of them said we should make a big poster and post it on the front of the building. Questions, evidence, disciplinarity, community--all so vitally important. But I especially like your championing of research as activity that "lay" people can/do/should engage in, because I think at the core of librarianship, and at the basis of "the liberal arts" (broadly conceived, and for lack of a better term), is the goal of fostering and facilitating the kind of curiosity that's at the center of a pleasurable individual existence and a robust civic sphere. You've hit on a key aspect of the pedagogy involved in this too; I have the probably naive dream of helping every patron find that tiny thing they're fascinated enough and facilitating their autodidactic deep-dives, because I think those can be the threads that lead to the sociopolitical bedrock underlying, you know, everything. Never going to happen, but it's at least a way of keeping my eye on the ball and a little bit of hope while trying to exist in the deeply distressing information ecosystem we find ourselves in. All of which is to say, this is much appreciated.
I'm now late to replying to your comment, but thank you!!! I really feel strongly about research and intellectual work, broadly speaking, as a kind of practice that everyone should feel capable of accessing…whether they're professionally/vocationally identified as researchers or not.
I really loved how you described the goal of librarianship: "fostering and facilitating the kind of curiosity that's at the center of a pleasurable individual existence and a robust civic sphere." I do really think that access to information—but also access to mentorship, community, and other resources to work with that information—makes our individual lives more meaningful. And it also has so many benefits to our social and civic lives.
This is a lovely comment and I'll be thinking about it for some time—thank you so much.
I loved this piece. Thank you. You might be interested in my brother Reid Byers's deeply researched labor of love, The Private Library, which he worked on for the better part of two decades and published in 2021 with Oak Knoll ( a press specializing in books about books and related subjects). It's a book about the physical space of people's libraries, and it's really found an audience. It was reviewed very favorably in TLS by A. N. WIlson, and made the Washington Post's list of "50 Notable Works of Non-Fiction." It's now in its third printing. The thing is, this is purely research for the love of the topic and for the love of research itself. Reid is not a professional researcher; he is retired from IBM. He has a history of deep dives and of teaching himself on various topics. For awhile, he became obsessed with harpsichords, and taught himself enough about them to publish an article in Continuo, a prominent early music magazine. I think he's a remarkable instance of what you're writing about here.
This is a truly delightful example, thank you!! I'm reading this article about it now https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/24/realestate/why-do-people-keep-books.html and I have to say, I'm envious that your brother has a dedicated library in his home! It's very cool to see how a personal project (building a home library) quickly became a research project and then a book for others to enjoy
Thanks! I am very proud of him and happy that he made his dream come true (at age 75!).
Last week, I rented a place through AirBnB and was delightfully surprised to find that one wall of my bedroom was nothing but shelves, books and a few nicely placed interesting pieces of what-nots. It was the best part of the entire, lovely space!
An academic colleague recently asked me what I wanted to do with my future. I paused for a moment..."Well," I said. "Just what I'm doing now. I've never been happier in my life!"
The context, I left my faculty position at the beginning of the pandemic. I got COVID and Long COVID. Digging out has been at the heart of my research and then my writing at Substack beginning in 2022. I'm free of the bureaucracy, free of someone else's schedule and rules. I'm constantly energized by the thrill of discovery. I love knowing that my work is helping others.
What is the best job in the world? Doing what you love.
love what you said about being "constantly energized by the thrill of discovery"—that very active, energetic feeling is what makes life most vivid! I hope your recovery from long COVID is going well, and that you'll continue to have that excitement and happiness in the months/years ahead!
This is so me; living my life in the footnotes 😀
yes!! I'm always in the footnotes and "Works cited" section at the end of a book, trying to find new things to read…