I get the point, so what's the point in reading the whole thing?

I am very adept at finding the one piece of information that I need from a research paper. Why bother reading the whole thing when I can get what I need from a couple figures and a passage or two of text? I recently started applying a similar criteria to books that I'm thinking about reading. I was poised to read The Innovator's Dilemma. Rather than starting at the page one and reading straight through, I flipped to the back and read the summary of findings presented in the book. After reading that and the intro I felt like I had a good enough grasp of the innovator's dilemma. Rather than wade through a detailed description of the disk drive industry's evolution, I returned the book to the VCU library without reading the whole thing. I can't add the book to my list of completed books, but I don't think I would have gained anything by reading the whole thing.

I have also decided to pass on Clay Shirky's new book. I commented on a video that is basically a synopsis of the book (at least from the reviews of the book that I have read) a few months ago. (This interview with NPR also lays out a few of his arguments.) This whole cognitive surplus idea is an interesting way of thinking about how we use our time, but I really don't need to read (and buy) a whole book about how the web allows each of us to make a small contribution to a much larger project. I am not all that blown away by people using their free time to develop Linux. If there was a comparable thing for chemists, I would work on that. I have spent almost half of my life learning chemistry and using that knowledge to solve interesting problems. I would happily spend a couple of hours trying to make sense of data that somebody couldn't figure out. While it's not as easy to recognize as playing a musical instrument or painting a picture, I like to use my chemistry research skills. I have developed some level of mastery over an area of inquiry. I like to use expand my skill set by trying to solve new problems (after watching this video I can also cross Drive off of the books that I would like to read, I think this video pretty much says it all).

I have been a reader of fiction for most of my life. A novel begs to be read straight through from page one until the story ends. I am slowly orienting myself to the idea of flipping through a book to get the main idea and moving on to something else. Most of the popular business books that I've read are really only trying to convey one or two ideas. Most of the book is illustraions of that idea or an argument to support some conclusions. Unless I am extra interested in a topic, I don't see why I should spend time on what is really just filler. I will likely start applying strategies like these to get the good stuff out of a book and leave the rest behind. Once I start using my cognitive surplus to get my MBA, I will need to find new ways to find new ideas. This is a good place to start.