I am by no means an expert on reading books. I am not even a voracious reader. I read only about 30 books a year but over the last 2 years I have been able to develop a system that works well for me in terms of reading consistently and absorbing what I am reading. This system also allows me to incorporate the lessons from the books in my life in a structured way. I should mention I reread books a lot. My books are almost always bookmarked so I can go back and read specific chapters and parts and extract the golden nuggets quickly.
What follows is a pretty simple system for reading 20-30 books every year. 20-30 books per year is not a lot but it will put you on the top 1% of all readers. According to Pew Research the median number of books adults read in the US is 5. That’s it. 5. If you’re like most people, you’re probably in the sub 5 books range right now. Let’s get you to the top 1% of book readers in the US.
Like any new habit, reading will sting a little if you’re not used to it. We will discuss how to make it less painful but for the moment let’s concentrate on how to make a schedule for reading. If you’re like me, you’re a slave to your calendar. The right way to make time for anything is to, well, make time for it. Start with 40 minutes of reading time divided over two reading sessions every day. This is every day. Sitting with a book for 20 mins is not very hard. You will likely lose attention but it will get easier with time. If your reading speed is average, you will still be able to read around 15 pages in a 20 min session. In all you should be able to 30-35 pages per day. In just three days you will feel you’re half way through your book and that’s when it starts to get easier.
The easiest way to form a habit is to fall in love with it. The actual doing of it. Not the result but the action. You may want to learn things or know certain things and that’s a great end result but believe it or not, it can be a side effect too. The easiest way to start reading is to select books that are easy to read and digest. There are 4 rules I would suggest you follow while picking up your first 10 books.
Normally I would say drop it and go pick another, but I do think there is some merit in fighting your way through for your first 5 or so books. This is also why picking the right books is so important. Often times our mind builds a story to make up for our laziness. It is hard to know whether we hate the book we are reading or we just hate the idea of reading books in general. The latter is what we want to do away with so it might make sense to power through. This is also why having a schedule is so important as just 2-3 days in, you will get a sense of completion and that will keep you going.
Most books have an inherent structure that goes beyond the chapters. This is what I call the skeleton of the book. It is important to internalise how the books is organised. Some books make this easy by being divided into parts. Each part has a few chapters and you can always know which top level topic you’re reading about based on the part of the book. This is not the case with all books though. The most common way books are divided are into top level topics with each top level topic taking up some chapters.
The authors generally talk about how their book is organised in the introduction, so don’t skip it and jump headfirst into chapter 1.
I understand you may want to skip the acknowledgements. That’s fine for now but it is imperative to learn about how the information is structured and use that meta idea to keep track of what you are reading.
One word. Bookmarks. Lots of them. If you’re reading a physical book, write in the margins. Use Post-it notes. Highlight things if you’re into that sort of thing. Basically anything that you can get back to. Do not start reading a book thinking you’re going to absorb everything in one go. It will again put pressure on you. Most books are written over years and someone did a lot of research to put the words on the pages you are reading. It is absolutely okay if you don’t absorb it all in one read. Bookmark things you like and keep coming back to it. In the early days, your job is to kickstart the habit and become a reader. You can become a more efficient reader later.
Write about what you’ve read. It doesn’t have to be a long form article blog post. It can be a twitter thread talking about your learnings (top picks from your bookmarks) or a Facebook post on your key takeaways or a Whatsapp message that extracts your top learnings for your family group or an email you write to your colleagues. Writing helps clarify your thinking and helps you identify real world applications of what you’ve just read.
The examples you provide or the real life scenarios you refer to in your written extract, will help solidify your learnings. You can also go back to these extracts to help refresh your learnings. Best is when you reread a book and go back and add to your previous extract, some new piece of information you have just uncovered or an interesting connection you just made with what you read previously.
That’s it really. This simple system of sticking to a schedule, reading a book after understanding its overall structure while bookmarking copiously will definitely help you become a much better reader. Time to go pick up that book and get started.
I run a startup called Harmonize. We are hiring and if you’re looking for an exciting startup journey, please write to jobs@harmonizehq.com. Apart from this blog, I tweet about startup life and practical wisdom in books.