6 Ways To Read More Books
Ryan McEniff, CDP
I help seniors living with mid-to-late state dementia/Alzheimer's live their best life.
In an interview on the excellent podcast Farnam Street, Naval Ravikant explains that he reads multiple hours per day which likely puts him into the top 5% of readers in America, if not the world.
While surprising, he might be right, as 33% of high-school educated adults never read a book again in their life and 42% of college-educated adults never read too.
So if you are one of those people that wants to read, but doesn't want to spend hours in a book, here is a list for you!
Let me preference this with, quality of quantity. While it might feel good to say you read seventy books in a year, if you are lackadaisically reading without gaining knowledge from the book, then you are just wasting time.
1) Stop Reading Crappy Books
If you are 50-60 pages into a book and hate it. Ditch it. Like any creative endeavor some will find value in work that others don't.
Save yourself the time and ditch the books you aren't enjoying.
2) Cherry-Pick
Read the table of contents and pick the chapters that intrest you. Most self-improvement books have 1-3 main points that are then reinforced with lots of anecdotes. A book with twelve chapters might only have three chapters of value.
3) Chapter Summaries
For many self-improvement books (Rich Dad Poor Dad & How To Win Friends and Influence People) have summaries at the end of each chapter.
Do the anecdotes from the 1930's How to Win Friends really matter to me? Not really.
Read the summaries, then you can go back and read chapters if you wish.
4) Audiobooks
Wow, do audiobooks make life easier. During your daily 5 AM walk, driving, or grocery shopping there are plenty of opportunities to listen to a book. Most apps allow you to increase the speed so you can fly through these books.
I use audiobooks for biographies or fiction, because the one drawback with audiobooks is the difficulty of taking notes while walking or driving.
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5) Blinkist
Blinkist has become a go-to for me, especially in the self-improvement category. As mentioned before there are many books that are 95% fluff and 5% substance. Blinkist is an online written and audiobook cliff notes for most popular books.
For $15 a month (about 1/2 the cost of an audiobook from Amazon) you have access to thousands of books summarized in fifteen minutes or less.
This is great for learning about a subject quickly. Read half a dozen blinks and then you can pick one book to read or listen too
Get through the fluff and into the meat and bones.
6) Podcast notes
This website has some free podcast notes, but also has a paid membership. For $100 a year, it seems like it would be worth it.
Think of this a Blinkist but for podcasts, so if you want to read podcasts rather than listen (as many are hours long) this is a time-saving option for you.
As an example, here are the podcast notes for the Naval Ravikant podcast on Farnam Street that was I mentioned earlier.
Wrapping It Up
What did I miss? Probably something! Let me know in the comments, otherwise, go start reading more!
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3 年I have read about 15 which is less than last year at this time. I still prefer an actual book versus Audiobooks. And I have to read the whole book, I can't cherry pick!