Epiphany

Two more weeks till I finish work, hand in my office key and parking permit and head off into the sunlit uplands of whatever comes next. This morning an email arrived from the library saying that a book I had suggested for purchase has arrived and will be kept for me to see. This is the book. It looks interesting, I think it will be useful for students and there may be a point in the future when I will find it useful to know that is accessible in the library (I'll still have library access after I retire). But, as I contemplated when I could conveniently get to the library to collect it, I realised that I didn't need to. And with that realisation came another: I can cut down on my reading.

A colleague recently described me as a voracious reader. She based this view on the number of emails I send to colleagues suggesting that something I've come across may be of interest to them. It's true, I spend a huge amount of my time reading for work. I have several ToC alerts set up for journals relevant to my work and when they arrive I follow up anything interesting immediately. But I could just as easily search for specific keywords when I really need to. So I shall cancel them, which will reduce my email traffic as well.

I also pick up a great deal of reading via Twitter. If you're selective about who you follow it's a very useful way of keeping up to date with debates in areas of academic interest. But the errors made by journalists irritate me very much. Here's today's example: you'd think Reuters' journalists could distinguish between auditing and bookkeeping!  Some financial journalists are also prone to report research findings inaccurately or report "research" which is not peer-reviewed, all for the sake of a catchy headline. And then I feel compelled to point out their errors and spend time engaged in discussions which are pointless because the inaccurate stuff has been published and won't be changed and the journalists are, by and large, unlikely to change their ways. So I shall cut down on my Twitter reading and lower my blood pressure at the same time.

If I am in future slower to discover the frontiers of knowledge in my areas of research interest, will that matter?