Oliver Burkeman, giving readers permission to forget what we read instead of trying to feverishly retain it all:

It’s easy to operate on the assumption that the main point of picking up a book – a non-fiction or work-related book, at any rate – is to add to your storehouse of data, hoarding information and insights like a squirrel hoarding nuts, ready for some future moment when you’ll finally take advantage of it all.

But that’s a recipe for living permanently in the future, never quite reaping the value of life in the present moment. Better, I’d say, to think of reading not as preparation for living later on, but as one way of engaging with the world, one way of living, right here in the present.

By all means let your reading shape your thinking over the long haul, and generate or improve your ideas for future projects. But consider also the possibility that spending half an hour reading something interesting or moving or awe-inspiring or just amusing might be worth doing, not only for some other, future reason, but for the sake of that very half hour of being alive.