I love reading and read almost every night. However, I’ve begun to worry that I’m not reading well. Someone I know of had developed a terminal condition— Life is short. And given that it is, I want to spend what little time I have reading well.

Let’s clarify: what is reading well? What is reading poorly? As with all normative questions, there is no right answer. But here’s mine: I read to get inspired. I read to grow. I read for insights because it’s delightful to learn something new.

So maybe what I’m trying to say is that I like engaging with ideas, and reading is my preferred medium. From this view, I’d be right to question what I read as I’d be right to question what I eat. Garbage in, garbage out. Except instead of getting fat, reading poorly is more pernicious. It pollutes the mind with bad ideas. And what are we, if not an idea of ourselves?

But enough dilly-dallying. How do we find the good stuff out there?

A first pass is we go off the recommendations of others. I buy all my monitors and electronics based off of Reddit’s recommendation. Why? Because these people spend their free time talking about specs and graphic cards and pixel density. They’re likely more informed consumers than me since I’ve only bought two monitors in my lifetime. Of course, there’s always disagreement among what these experts say. But if 8 out of 10 are saying I should get the Dell U2723QE, then I’ll get it.

In this case, it’s easy to make a decision because (a) there’s some way to tell who’s an expert and (b) there’s a general consensus among experts. It’s similar to Obama’s argument a while back about climate change: if you go to a 100 doctors and 99 of them say you have a disease, you should probably do something about it.

When it comes to book recommendations, however, things aren’t as clear cut. You don’t know if someone is an “idea expert” as easily as in other fields. If they’re a doctor, they have a degree from training. If they’re a personal trainer, presumably they’re fit. But unless you have your own way to evaluate ideas, you don’t know if someone’s actually an expert.

Which brings me to the crux of this essay: you need to develop taste for yourself. How do you do this?

Well, you could read more. Read from a diverse set. Read reviews of reviews. And these are all great. But if you’d like to read well— and all the underpinnings that entails, like knowing what you’re reading is a solid idea expressed well through words— then I’d argue that the only guaranteed way to get there is to write well.

This stems from my belief that the surest way to become an informed consumer is to become a producer. Put it like this: Not all food critics are great chefs, but all great chefs would make great food critics. Why? Because if you are a great chef, then you know why a certain dish is good. If you didn’t, how else could you consistently serve up great dishes?

When you become a better producer, you can say more. You have more footholds to describe. Instead of saying “this article is good” you can say “this article is good because its structure is easy to follow.’’ And if you’re even better, you can say, “despite talking about a technical subject like gerrymandering, the author could clearly explain the mechanics because she wrote simply. Her word choice conveyed a lot of meaning while keeping the piece tight.“ Of course, there’s nothing stopping you from saying this as someone who doesn’t write. But if you do, you’d pick up on things most others wouldn’t since you’re familiar with the creative process.

Then it becomes a virtuous cycle. You read well by writing well. And you write well by reading well.

Of course, no one has the time to be an expert in everything, and few of us will be experts in anything. When embarking upon a new hobby, the question then becomes: is it worth going deep in this pursuit? For reading and writing, the answer for me is an unequivocal yes. I just feel so much more awesome and alive when I’m engaged with a cool idea. In this sense, I think Socrates got it backwards. It’s not that the unexamined life isn’t worth living. It’s that once you do examine it, you realize why it’s worth living.