How to Make Reading Less Like a Lecture and Get Sucked in Every Time
Reading can be extremely rewarding, but forcing yourself to do so can make it tiresome. A smarter solution is to improve the reading experience, so that you read better, that you remember what you are reading, and that you have more pleasure in reading. Here’s how to make your reading more useful.
Take notes of what you read
Sometimes you may find that you don’t remember anything from the last tens of pages of your book. Your eyes looked at the words, but in fact you have not read them. Avoid this by taking notes in the margins and highlighting the author’s key points so you can think about them further and come back to them later.
If you are afraid of taking notes in your books and magazines, just try it once with a pencil. Don’t underline whole sentences, just make short margins next to lines that have meant a lot to you. Compare this experience with the book you read but did not write.
Think of it more as a conversation with a book than a book lecturing you. These notes mean that you can easily return to your book to better preserve the information . You can also write notes or copy passages by hand to memorize them better (and organize them in a regular book ). It’s important to save your books for posterity, but it’s even more important that you really learn from your book (if you’re not a collector).
Embrace your obsession (and binge reading!)
Do not force yourself to read books that you are not interested in. Lack of interest could mean you’re not quite ready for it yet – or perhaps the author just isn’t right for you. If you’ve scanned 50 pages and are struggling to maintain interest, give it up . Life is too short to read books you don’t like.
On the other hand, when you have a real performer that you don’t want to suppress, give in to that feeling. This can lead you to the finish line. After I put the book aside for four or five days, I found that my curiosity about it diminished significantly. I can live without a book. In fact, I probably couldn’t have remembered the very last chapter right away.
Perhaps you are the type of person who can regularly read a book for just an hour a day. However, if you are less consistent or just have an irregular schedule, you may find the books more useful if you read them like the writer Ryan Holiday .
Follow the degrees of inspiration
If you really love the book, you might be able to find the book chain that inspired it. Popular science authors usually mention famous personalities throughout the book or in the footnotes at the end (ie, bibliography or cited works). It might be harder to track down the books that inspired fiction writers. They’ll likely mention them in interviews or in thanksgiving, so you might need to dig a little. You can also take a look at book critics’ reviews to see if they compared the books or mentioned the author’s inspirations.
Once you find one source of inspiration, you can repeat the exercise and find books that inspired that one. While it can be time consuming, looking at these levels of inspiration can be really rewarding (and surprisingly exhilarating) as well. You can stumble upon random, little-known, find and truly enjoy it. You may also hate this. Subsequently, you wonder what the author of the original book got from such a bizarre source of inspiration. You don’t have to just walk backwards from inspiration. You can also go ahead and search for books inspired by a book you love.
Author Robert Greene mentions in this AMA Reddit that he came across extremely unique books based on seeking inspiration from authors, one degree of separation at a time.
Read it two at a time.
If you dump books because you constantly move on to new ones, try reading two at once. (But no more!) It can be difficult to flip through one book at a time. When you read two, one book might be for personal interest (e.g. fiction, biography, poetry, etc.) and the other for personal or professional development (e.g. work-related, skill development, self-help, etc.) . D.). It may also be that one book is more comfortable for you, while another takes you out of your normal reading and comfort zone. You can think of these two books as vegetables and dessert.
You will most likely find your personal one attractive, so sometimes you can encourage yourself to read professional books by saying, “I will read 10 pages of this book before I start reading another book.” However, once you get into the puzzle, you may find that a professional book is just as interesting as a personal one, it just was n’t as attractive to begin with.
The idea is not to start working on new books until you’ve finished one or ditched one. So, for example, if you finish your personal book earlier than your professional book, you can start a new personal book. You can use this method to find out if you really don’t like the book – for example, if you’ve read three different personal books and are still settling on a professional book, it might be time to put it aside and try another.
Reading two books at a time can change the reading experience. Former TV host Lisa Boo notes in her TED Talk that comparative reading, which is common practice in the academic world, helps present a more holistic view of a subject. Even if they are random couples, your brain will most likely still find random interesting connections between the two books.
Reading shouldn’t be a chore. You don’t have to read every book. After you exit the book, you will be allowed to pick it up later. Accept the marginality and take a lot of notes. Use your impulse to focus on reading books on days when you have time, energy, and curiosity. Browse inspiration from authors to find new books. Read two books at once to stay persistent and focused.