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by Roberto Zoia

learning

Three Ideas to Improve Your Reading

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For several years, as part of my end-of-year review, I take a look at my reading1 and make plans for the year to come. I’ve written down some ideas from my process that you may find useful. Of course, most of the advice is not originally mine: I learned about these ideas by reading about how some giants –call them virtual mentors if you like– do their learning.

1. Have a list of the books you want to read this year

Compiling a list of the books you want to read during the year has several benefits. Taking the time to build a reading list is a signal to yourself of the importance you give to reading and more in general to gaining knowledge.

As soon as you start adding books to your list, you’ll soon realize that the number of books you can read in a year is finite. You will need to prune your list, which at least in my case is a painful process. But it’s absolutely necessary. Not only will it help you make the best use of your time. Sending books to a not-this-year list will also force you to think and gain clarity about what topics you really care about.

The list will also help you avoid falling to the song of the sirens and pick the latest and shiny book you learned about some days ago. When you finish reading a book, you just look at your curated list of books and decide what’s next. Of course this doesn’t mean that your list must be cast in iron. But it should be a clear guide of where are you investing your time (and money).

While in the process of deciding what to read, book recommendations can be of great help. There are a lot of sources for this, you’ll find some ideas at the end of this article.

2. Have a system in place so you read every day

One of the best tactics I’ve found is Shane Parrish’s advice of reading 25 pages every day. If you are reading just for the pleasure of reading, keeping track of the pages you read every day may seem anticlimatic to you. But if you read to gain knowledge, and like most humans are bound to time constraints, then reading 25 pages per day will help you achieve a reasonable pace and read on average three books every two months].

It also helps to block a specific time on for reading in your calendar2. Best if it’s at the same time of the day. This will help you build the habit of reading3, it will help you focus faster on what you are reading. If for whatever reason you break your reading chain and miss reading some days, try to restart your routine as soon as posible.

Few things are as rewarding as making friends with the eminent dead. Reading isn’t something to be done once a week to check a box; it’s something to do every day. —Shane Parrish

3. Connecting the dots

We live in an age where finding information is not a problem. Connecting ideas and coming up with new ones, however, does not happen just by collecting information. Although for 2019 I’ve set a reading goal that is challenging for me, if I have to sacrifice the number of books I read to gain deeper understanding of a topic, so be it. That’s one of the reasons of why I’m not into fast reading techniques, or use executive summaries of books.

Learning how to take better notes, and anything that helps you grow a “second brain” is something you should always be interested in.

In my case, in my reading process I make heavy use of highlights and notes. After finishing a book, I reread the notes and highlights and incorporate them into my knowledge system. This is process is time consuming, but is totally worth it.

4. (Bonus) Where to find books

There are lots of resouces that can help you find good titles to read. Depending on the topics you are interested in, you may find the following list useful.

  • The book review section of The Gates Notes, Bill Gates’ personal page. Bill Gates is a long time avid reader, and writes reviews of the books he finds interesting.
  • Brainpickings. Maria Popova started Brainpickings this living monument to intellectual hunger for cross-disciplinary curiosity and self-directed learning in 2006 as a weekly email that went out to seven friend.
  • Taylor Pearson’s newsletter. Taylor is author of The End of Jobs, and writes about innovation, productivity, and the blockchain. Once a month he sends an email titled_Favorite Books, Articles, and Quotes_to his subscribers. You can also check his book notes.
  • Farnam’s Street Blog, by Shane Parrish.
  • Ryan Holliday’s Reading List and Favorite Read List for every year. Ryan is a writer and media strategist, author of several bestsellers about marketing, culture, and the human condition.
  • Derek Sivers notes to more than 250 books.

You don’t have to agree with me about the importance of reading. People may have different priorities and motivation. However, we live in an age where self-learning becomes more relevant every day. As less people read books, reading becomes a real competitive advantage. It’s a very effective way of standing on the shoulders of giants.

Photo by Jonas Jacobsson on Unsplash.

  1. The results for 2018 are mixed. On one hand, I read some very good books, three of which stand out: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, by Yuval N. Harari; Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, by Walter Isaacson; and Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman. On the other hand, because I didn’t stick to my reading routine, I read less books than the previous year. Non-fiction reading gets a space in my calendar. It’s a more conscious reading. Novels, I read them on my spare time, like before going to sleep. ↩
  2. In my case, if something is not in my calendar, it has a 99% percent probability it won’t get done. ↩
  3. Resolutions or goals without habits to support them are most likely to fail in short time. The exception may be situations where emotions about the resolution are strong enough to amass enough will to cross the dip and begin forming an habit. ↩

I don’t know how to do this –yet. Fixed Mindset vs. Growth Mindset

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I’ve just started reading Carol Dweck’s book Mindset. Dweck has been studying for years why it’s not just our abilities and talent that brings us success– but whether we see them as fixed qualities or as the basis for improving and learning. She calls this two different mindsets fixed mindset and growth mindset.

Here is table compiled from the examples she gives in the first chapters of the book about the different mindsets. What column resonates more with you?

FIXED MINDSET GROWTH MINDSET
Your intelligence is something very basic about you that you can’t change very much. No matter how much intelligence you have, you can always change it quite a bit.
You can learn new things, but you can’t really change how intelligent you are. You can always substantially change how intelligent you are.
Urgency to prove yourself over and over. Passion for learning. Why waste time proving over and over how great you are, when you could be getting better?
Focused on being right. Focused on learning from mistakes.
I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to do this –yet.
“Nothing ventured, nothing lost.” “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”
If at first you don’t succeed, you probably don’t have the ability. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.
Don’t believe in effort. Recognize the value of challenging themselves and the importance of effort.
Terrible at estimating their abilities. Amazingly accurate at estimating their abilities because they need it for learning.
Poor resilience against life setbacks. Fragile. Special talent for converting life’s setbacks into future successes. Antifragile.
Avoids challenge. Thrives on the sure thing. Seeks challenge, thrives on it.

Photo credits: Unsplash, Dan Carlson.

How many books did you read last year?

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How many books did you read last year? How many do you plan to read this year?

Reading books is in decline.

Taylor Pearson1 writes that “in a 1978 survey [US], 42% of adults had read 11 books or more in the past year, and 13% they had read more than 50. In a 2014 study, Pew found that just 28% hit the 11 book mark and only 1% had read more than 50%.2”

In our interconnected reality books have to compete for time against Facebook, instant messaging, mail, or whatever the app of the moment may be. As Seth Godin says, if we have to choose between reading a book and checking e-mail, e-mail wins. The chime of a text message coming in is so irresistible that for many texting while driving is a serious problem.

Our use of the Internet and social media trains us for short bursts of attention and jumping between tasks, not for deep reading or activities that require long spans of attention. Even if we find time for reading a book, we may have a hard time reading it effectively –which is essential for learning– because it has become difficult for us to focus in one thing for even half an hour.

Are books the only way of learning?

Reading books is of course not the only way to learn things.

For example, the offer of open or paid online courses today is better than ever, with plenty of alternatives from serious institutions and companies. Some universities like MIT have published almost all of their course content online for free. But online courses have their own problems. For example, according to a 2014 study3, only an average 6.5% of enrolled students complete open online course, and the rates are negatively correlated with course length.

TED is another great way of learning. TED offers interesting talks, and maintains its quality thanks to the events organizers and the TED community. But I think part of its success is because the talks are around 15 minutes long. Watching a 15 minute video of a talk by an interesting speaker –many times a reference in her field–, with good text transcriptions, is something most of us can do.

Shane Parrish makes a distinction between reading for information and reading for understanding4.

A good heuristic: anything easily digested is reading for information.

Consider the newspaper, are you truly learning anything new? Do you consider the writer your superior when it comes to knowledge in the subject? Odds are probably not. That means you’re reading for information.

There’s nothing wrong with that; it’s how most people read. But you’re not really learning anything new. It’s not going to give you an edge or make you better at your job.

Learning something insightful is harder, you have to read something clearly above your current level.

Listening to a 15 minutes video may give you some insights and ignite the spark of curiosity needed to learn further about a specific topic. But if you need a deep and thorough understanding of the matter, books are still one of the best choices.

Why read

Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider.” — Francis Bacon, The Essays.

The benefits of reading books are widely known. Reading broadens our understanding of the world, improves focus and concentration. It enhances our imagination. Reading books allows us to have a conversation with men and women of the present and past, learn from them, and let them affect our lives.

“People who do little or no serious reading (that is, reading for other than practical purposes or shallow amusement) don’t comprehend others, or their culture, or the complexities of reality, as well as those who do such reading.”5

The habit of reading correlates with better reading skills and higher academic achievement6. “Learning constantly is one of the best ways to get results in life. And reading –reading effectively, and reading a lot– is one of the best ways to learn7“.

According to his father, Microsoft’s co-founder Bill Gates was an avid reader since an early age8:

Just about every kind of book interested him -–encyclopedias, science fiction, you name it. I was thrilled that my child was such an avid reader, but he read so much that Bill’s mother and I had to institute a rule: no books at the dinner table.

As you can see from his book recommendations page on his personal blog, despite his multiple responsibilities, Bill hasn’t stop reading.

Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg, whose challenge for 2015 was to read a new book every other week –with an emphasis on learning about different cultures, beliefs, histories and technologies– states that books allow us to fully explore a topic and immerse yourself in a deeper way than most media today.

Whether or not people read, and indeed how much and how often they read, affects their lives in crucial ways. (…) The data (…) demonstrate that reading is an irreplaceable activity in developing productive and active adults as well as healthy communities.

Amazon’s best selling business author Taylor Pearson, who reads around 60 books a year, writes:

For all the tricks I’ve developed to, the real reason I think I read so much is that I see it as a career competitive advantage. If I have to cut something out of my schedule, reading books is one of the last things to go. (…)

As less and less people read books, it’s getting even more valuable. As more people are focused on USA Today [newspaper] articles on their phones, the more profound the benefits from older books.

Reading is also an expression of who we are. Harold Bloom’s answer to the question of why should we read is that “only deep, constant reading fully establishes and augments an autonomous self.” Read not to change the world or to be a better person but simply to know, to become, yourself9. We read (…) in order to strengthen the self, and to learn its authentic interests10.

All the books we own, both read and unread, are the fullest expression of self we have at our disposal. With each passing year, and with each whimsical purchase, our libraries become more and more able to articulate who we are, whether we read the books or not. — Nick Hornby, Ten Years in the Tub

A closing quote from Bloom, Why read:

We read Shakespeare, Dante, Chaucer, Cervantes, Dickens, Proust, and all their peers because they more than enlarge life… We read deeply for varied reasons, most of them familiar: that we cannot know enough people profoundly enough; that we need to know ourselves better; that we require knowledge, not just of self and others, but of the way things are. Yet the strongest, most authentic motive for deep reading of the now much-abused traditional canon is the search for a difficult pleasure. I am not exactly an erotics-of-reading purveyor, and a pleasurable difficulty seems to me a plausible definition of the Sublime, but a higher pleasure remains the reader’s quest… I urge you to find what truly comes near to you, that can be used for weighing and for considering. Read deeply, not to believe, not to accept, not to contradict, but to learn to share in that one nature that writes and reads.

How many do you plan to read this year? Set yourself a goal, it’s worth the effort.

  1. cfr 8 Ways to Read 60 Books A Year. ↩
  2. If you were wondering about reading habits in Peru (where I live), according to a survey by Ipsos, only 19% of adults in Lima read a book the previous year, compared to 24% in 2010 and 25% in 2009. Note that there is no mention for adults reading more than one book a year, so the data wasn’t worth mentioning. According to another survey by Arellano (2014), 26% of peruvians have never read a book. ↩
  3. cfr Farnam Street, How to read a book. ↩
  4. cfr John Hallwas, Reading decline. ↩
  5. To Read or Not To Read, National Endowment for the Arts, 2007. ↩
  6. cfr The Best Way to Get Smarter? Learn to Read the Right Way.. ↩
  7. cfr How to Raise a Billionaire: An Interview with Bill Gates’ Father in Forbes, Jan 2016. ↩
  8. cfr Michael Gorrat’s review of Bloom’s How to Read and Why. ↩
  9. cfr Harold Bloom, How to Read and Why. ↩

Reading and Managing your Time

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Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s right-hand man at Berkshire Hathaway, says about reading:

In my whole life, I have known no wise people who didn’t read all the time — none, zero. You’d be amazed at how much Warren(Buffett) reads — at how much I read. My children laugh at me. They think I’m a book with a couple of legs sticking out”1

Reading takes time. If reading is important for you –it should be, reading and learning are closely related–, you need to allocate specific time for it. More, you need to develop the habit of reading, and nurture it. Even if you find excellent reading material, if reading is not part of your routine, you will end up with a nice, ever-growing list of unread books and articles.

Different kind of readings deserve different reading strategies

Not all readings require the same kind of attention. What you expect to learn from what you are reading also affects the equation. Are you reading for information, or are you reading for knowledge? Different kinds of reading call for different reading strategies. (A more interesting question is what kind of readings take most of our time.)

Casual reading is informative. It may ignite some ideas, but it does not require a great deal of concentration or reasoning. Most of the time, it doesn’t require taking notes. Informative reading material can be consumed almost anywhere, whenever a small amount of time is available. Interruptions while reading casual stuff may be annoying, but don’t do great harm. What is critical is to have this kind of reading material at hand, so you can take advantage of unplanned free time slots.

In-depth, analytical reading, however, is another kind of beast. Reading something above your level of knowledge requires patiently trained reading skills. Taking notes becomes a necessity, at least for me. (If you haven’t do so, you should read this excellent article by Shane Parrish, How to Read A Book, where he explains how to improve your reading skills.)

Reading for knowledge also requires finding interruption-free time, time without distractions that could kill your concentration and reading flow. Learning to say no –deciding what not to read– is also important. Your hard-earned time for reading is limited. You need to focus on what’s important, and finding quality sources of reading material.

Useful tips

Improving your reading skills and finding time to read is essential, but some tactics for managing your reads can help you get the most of your time. Some things I do:

  • When I find an online article or post that I want to read, chances are I can’t read it at that moment. I use Instapaper, a read-it-later application that lets me save articles and posts for later consumption2, be it from my desktop, tablet or smartphone.

  • For keeping up with blogs, I use an _aggregator_3 for following interesting blogs. Keep the list of blogs you follow short, and prune it frequently.

  • Books receive a different handling. When I find a book worth considering (usually by recommendation from friends, or colleagues, or from people I follow online), I search it on Amazon’s website and inspect its table of contents. I also research about the author, his background, and what other people think about the book. If the results are positive, I buy the book right away, usually as an ebook, and it gets added to my reading queue.

  • For in-depth reading, I use Evernote to take notes. (Check Best Note-Taking Apps for an in-depth comparison between Evernote and One Note.)

A reading plan

What books did you read last year? Are you satisfied with the list? Which topics do you plan to read about in the next months? It’s not difficult to see the importance of choosing carefully where you invest your reading time.

  1. Quote from Charles T. Munger, Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger. ↩
  2. Instapaper is great. However, it does not save videos. Other read-it-later apps, like Pocket, handle text and videos. ↩
  3. I use ReadKit on my Mac and Reeder on my smartphone and tablet. Feedly is also a good web based alternative. ↩