Read less to read more!
Enjoying random books with random reads…
I just finished reading a randomly picked fantastic office based light-hearted book titled “Office Secrets”. It was a weekend read only. The best part about this book (or any non-fiction books in general) was the freedom to read random chapters.
Arrival of a strange thought…
While I was engrossed in this book, a thought came into my mind. The thought pertains to the general reading habit. I have realized that people generally read word by word or page by page or chapter by chapter. It doesn’t allow them to read freely or to read randomly which makes it hard to finish a book.
The question is why they do so?
I am not an expert on this subject. As a non-expert (Oops!) on this subject, I can offer my unverified and untested theory (Oops!). My theory points our two reasons behind this –
When we were kids, we were taught to read every word and memorize it with the purpose of clearing the exam. It was a feasible technique as one year period was enough to finish textbooks with average size of less than 200 pages. But the issue is not in this technique. This technique may even be helpful in our office or academic related documents.
The issue came when we took it seriously to apply it for our leisure reads also. Leisure reads may cover fiction or non-fictional books which we read to enhance knowledge without any pressure or expectation.
We have a habit of investing in assets which are value for money. This is a good way of thinking. We apply the same formula in book purchasing also. But we do it wrongly.
Our conscious mind thinks that every word in the book deserves our attention as we have paid for it (or paid for reading every word). This is a wrong notion. ?
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How?
The books are generally the result of extensive time-taking research. The author may have dedicated decades of his life to arrive at the conclusion.
Let me share an example. I recently bought a book titled “Attention Span” by Gloria Mark. The author is a psychologist who spent decades researching how technology affects attention and came up with the concept of kinetic attention. This book is 300 pages long only. For a normal reader, it won’t take more than a month to read. A reader can get the gist of decades of research in just 30 days. This won’t even cost more than 400 bucks.
This is indeed a startling fact. There is no comparison between 30 days + 400 bucks (from readers’ perspective) VS decades of research (from author’s perspective). ?
In a nutshell, the concept of value for money in reference to any books is VOID and NULL because it holds always TRUE. I follow a simple formula – if I get minimum of three new learnings from a book, I hold myself free to skip the rest of the book right away.
Why would you agree with me?
I would be happy if you won’t. Better to do your own research of technique used by superb readers like Amrut Deshmukh (the booklet guy), Jay Shetty or Jim Kwik .
The conclusion is…
The conclusion is simple. Read less to read more.
(Note: This blog may pertain mostly to leisure reading. Office related and educational content may require slow and deep reading.)