Golly gosh, how is it already nearly the end of the year.

I write this newsletter every week. Have done for over two years straight, rarely missing a session. Why? Because I love the reflection. I love sitting down and picking through the week, the chaos, the thing I got wrong, the thing that was funny, the thing I learned, usually the hard way, because I make a lot of fuck ups and most of them end up in here eventually. The reflection is the best part. Always has been.

So why did I just miss four weeks of it.

I told myself it was because I got busy. Nothing sexy about it. Just properly, relentlessly busy. A few things going at once across the businesses, kids’ activities most days of the week, school drop offs, the gym, and by the time all of that’s done I’m wrecked, and the laptop stays shut.

That’s the story I’ve been telling myself. Right up until I sat down to write this.

Because the busy thing isn’t actually it. I’ve been busier than this before and still written. The real thing, the thing I didn’t want to admit, is that I stopped reading.

I read every day. Usually have for years. Some days it’s hours, some days it’s five minutes squeezed in somewhere stupid, but I make the effort. Philosophy, mostly. Character. Books on being a better dad, a better husband, a better operator, a better leader. Doesn’t matter which one. The point was always the habit, not the specific book.

A few weeks ago that habit just stopped. No decision behind it. No dramatic reason. I just didn’t pick one up, and then I didn’t the next day either, and before long not reading had become the new default the same way reading used to be.

And it turns out that was the actual cause of the writing drought, not the busyness. The writing was never really coming from having time. It was coming from having something in my head worth reflecting on, and the reading was what kept putting something new in there. Stop feeding it, and eventually there’s nothing left to pour back out.

There’s a line often credited to Harry Truman. Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.

Truman never finished college. No money for it. He read instead, constantly, by most accounts getting through every book in his town library as a kid, and kept doing it all the way to the presidency. He wasn’t born into the job and he didn’t inherit the knowledge for it either. He read his way into being capable of it.

I think about that whenever I catch myself making excuses for not reading. The excuse is always busyness. The actual cost is quieter than that. You don’t notice your thinking getting duller in real time. You just notice, a few weeks later, that you’ve got nothing left to write about, or nothing new to say to the people you’re meant to be leading, or nothing interesting going on in your own head at 2am anymore.

So here’s my question for you, properly, not rhetorically.

When did you last pick up a book. What was it. Doesn’t need to be a big thing. Doesn’t need to be philosophy or leadership or anything that sounds impressive at a dinner party. Just something that’s yours, a few minutes a day, something that puts a bit of fuel back in before you’re expected to produce anything worthwhile out the other end.

I let that slip for a month and felt it everywhere. Writing. Thinking. Mood. All of it, quieter and flatter than usual, and I didn’t connect the dots until right now, writing this.

Back on it as of today.

Until next time,

Broden Johnson