Knolling +

I don't remember where I first heard the expression "Always Be Knolling" but it is possible that I said it to myself.

I am a natural knoller.

The act of laying things out flat, organizing them visually, has a calming effect on me. It is about sensemaking and prioritizing. And finish-ability.

I believe the word "knolling" derives from the Knoll furniture company, whose manufacturing process involved laying out the entire set of components for a piece of furniture before starting to assemble it.

Here's how I do it.

Next to my desk I have a long worksurface on which I line-up what I intend to read next. Stacked in order of priority, the items form a queue of ready reading.

Today I have I pile of papers from the Maine Media Workshop where Magda and I spent a week. The summer course listings. A menu from Nīna June. A map of Mohegan Island.

Next, there is a pile of small-format books. An Essential Solitude by Kathleen Shields about her experience maintaining Walter De Maria's The Lightening Field.  Kenya Hara's book Designing Japan about the future of Japanese aesthetics. And Kengo Kuma's Studies in Organic.

Next, there is a small pile of copies of Maine The Way, a visually-attractive quarterly journal about life in the Pine Tree State.

Last up is a concept book that I made/stitched a few weeks ago, sitting on top of another book called Publish Your Photography Book by Darius D. Himes and Mary Virginia Swanson, and published by Princeton Architectural Press.

If I keep looking down the line, past the last pile, everything points towards a bookshelf full of art, design and travel books. Some of them will end up there.

Here is a nice Japanese word to end on - Tsundoku. This word captures the idea that piled books are a kind of reading list.

Tsundoku is acquiring reading materials but letting them pile up in one's home without reading them. The term originated in the Meiji era (1868–1912) as Japanese slang. It combines elements of tsunde-oku (to pile things up ready for later and leave) and dokusho (reading books). As currently written, the word combines the characters for "pile up" (積) and the character for "read" (読).   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsundoku

I know that piling and knolling are a little different. But, for me, they combine into a system that proposes the next good thing to read and has it waiting for me when I’m ready.