On the days when I read a book, I read a full book every day. This means that I go through books and learn more much faster than most people, who often struggle to read a book a week! Think about the endless possibilities after you have developed the ability to read one book every day! You will be far smarter, and will have essentially downloaded the wisdom of the smartest people into your brain! You can’t put a price on that.
But the key is to master the fine art of strategically attacking each book with the goal in mind of assimilating as much knowledge as possible in the shortest amount of time possible. In order to accomplish this, I usually read the back of the book first, followed by a wikipedia page about it. Then I will read through the table of contents to get a better feel for content and understand the structure, after which I will start the process of carefully skimming. I go into a lot more detail in this episode.
Most people get too caught up on the idea of reading and internally pronouncing every single word in the books that they read, when in reality this is a huge waste of time if the goal is to assimilate as much knowledge as possible in as short a time as possible. My method accomplishes this goal, and it is how I manage to read a book a day. Learn how in this episode!
Key Takeaways:
- Most people think that reading a book a day is impossible, because they feel it is necessary to read every single word, rather than focusing on what they learn
- People look down on skim reading, when sometimes it is all that is necessary to assimilate all the contents of the book, and gain all the benefit of reading
- Reading non-fiction, all you need to do is learn whatever you can, however you can
- Underline things you can return to in the future, to reinforce something you’ve learned
- Schedule the time to read a book. Put it on the calendar to commit to making it happen!
- It’s hard to quantify the value of reading a book a day. It puts you way ahead of most people!
James’ Process to Read a Book a Day:
- Read the back of the book first to understand what the book is about
- Go to contents and read the name of the chapters to understand the layout and basic content
- Go to wikipedia and get an even better understanding of the content and thesis of the book
- When you do read the contents, let your eyes scan over the words, rather than pronouncing every word in your head. It takes practices, but you can learn to comprehend everything using this technique
- Take away everything you can learn, as fast as you can, so you can put it to practice in your own life, and don’t waste more time than you have to reading it!
Resources:
Blog Post: How to Read a Book a Day