Books borrowed

A young man named Huang came to Yuan Mei asking to borrow books. Yuan Mei lent them, and then wrote a short essay about it.

His argument: books you own are less read than books you borrow. When you own something, you keep it in a box and think "I'll read it later". The borrowing, the return date, the wondering whether the owner will lend again, all of it makes you read faster.

Then he gives his own experience. As a boy he had no money for books, so he had to borrow from people who charged a deposit or made him come back at certain hours, and he read everything twice and wanted them more. Later, when he had his own collection, it sat there.

The essay continues into a digression about how people in easy circumstances undervalue what they have.

Its point is not that borrowing is better. It's that scarcity does work that abundance doesn't.

I have a version of this with courses. The ones I've paid for and downloaded and never opened are memorable in their number. The ones I had to show up for with real people, at a set time, got read.

What would you do differently if the thing you own were due back on Friday? Take one book, one course, one bookmarked article you've been keeping, and set an actual return date on it.

This whole content line exists partly because I'd stopped doing that.

MOJOWAY puts a date on the thing you have been keeping, because scarcity does work that ownership does not.