Do not Speed Read! I mean it, Let me tell you why.
To our readers out there, I mean readers: If you could have superpowers and began writing down a list, What place would the ability to read more than 2 books a day be? Surely above 10. Though not a seriously rewarding one, It is easily seen as quite possible one. I fell into this trap many times, and came out and slipped back in ( While I considered coming out an addicting bad habit) But I ultimately realised the inconvenience of Speed reading.
We all know that Benjamin franklin read two books a day, and so did Elon Musk when he was 12!, also he once read Three books on Aerospace Engineering before founding Spacex on a single weekend to converse with the industry pioneers. (remember the quote from Avengers, “When did you become an expert in thermonuclear Astrophysics”, “Last Night”). And hearing these might want you wanna get there. Again I tried that for three years and finally I figured out how it is done.
The problem is, of the billion paid, free and live speed reading mentoring out there, I could bet that you couldn’t find at least one that ask you to enjoy reading, and read between the lines.
So what am I trying to say, Reading a lot of books is bad? Well Yes. . and No.
There is this guy that I admire a lot, easily one of my most admired person alive - Naval Ravikant. He is an Indian American Entrepreneur, and a very avid reader sharing his insights and Personal wisdom through twitter for so long, that It was composed as a book - The Almanack Of Naval Ravikant, by Eric Jorgenson. But my point is he is not a fan of Speed reading, but still reads many books in a short amount of time. Naturally Velocity is not equal to distance travelled divided by time in Booksverse. Here is a famous Quote by him:
We need to read many books, good books and absorbing them completely while spending the same amount of time.
Let’s look at this, When I was 12 I used to finish two books minimum during a typical weekend, (Think its a bit high? You should have tried reading stuff like Harry Potter when you were 12) But till I was 13.5 or something, I didn’t finish many books just one series. Such a waste of time. Primarily because of lack of book resources (I knew just one website), And believe in Linus Torvalds’s (Developer of Linux) famous quote about softwares “It’s better when it is free”. But there came a hurdle. That website was banned. I felt like something slipped out of me.
I went to hunt out for free reading websites and sources, and when I did find another one: I couldn’t stop it. I opened 5 books at a time, read all simultaneously ( I mean reading many books without finishing the previous ones); This is the best reading strategy I have procured till date. I opened many books at a time, Finished many, dropped many only to read a year later. And abandoned a lot. This enabled me to not read books, but to learn the books.
I was able to read many books, and develop an inclusive mind that had several mental models. That is how I see how the brain works. We have neural Models of Information, When we learn something new, we need to modify our Mental model or abandon it to create a new one. That is why sometimes learning is easy (where new information fills the unexplainable gaps in our model); and sometimes really painful (Calculus anyone?)(Because we need to abandon our model or change it beyond recognition, often choose between them). but when you read books in an aforementioned manner, you can adapt to creating more models and changing other models faster and easier: Giving a perfect learning mindset. But don’t go for my word, There is a hundred reasons to not read like this, Though I don’t believe in many of them or consider them insignificant. So do your research.
But in my opinion I am not a very good reader, I have met better ones. What about you, You definitely could be one of them. You might already have definite reading strategies and principles; Even if you do it only on weekends and for leisure, you must have some personal principles of reading. If you are already reading a dozen books at a time, congrats! But try to take up different strategies. Just what Linus Torvalds told about software, also applies to books: They are better when you try new things ;).
And I cannot hope to express the importance of re-reading more. It is crucial. I once thought it was a meaningless addiction (well, it could be when overdone) But It is a very important aspect of reading. I won’t say any further, try it and you’ll see it’s importance.
So get it? Read more books, while spending good time on each. Suppose you begin 5 books, finish them in a month, you’d have read more than a book a week, but not finish any book for 29 days. But a better advantage is you give each book a whole month, to let that information soak in. But nearly everything beautiful in paper, fails many times when done outside of papers, experimentation is the only Truth. This is a little personal experiment I did for this post.
I stopped this Multibooks of Madness, and tried just two books. One Non-fiction: 5AM club, and a fiction:Percy Jackson series. (Could I be reading any lesser?) And read them over a week(Fiction finished by 4 days, Non-fic - a week)(A little Note: If you think that you are not reading enough after hearing how much others read, don’t give in; Just in this case, imagine everyone is a liar). 5AM club is a good book, but I felt like I didn’t do it any justice. It was like Duh! Boof! Bam! Boom! Bye! The end. So many insights, so many philosophies, so little time. I promised myself that I would I reread it the usual way later. As for Percy Jackson, dude! Five cool books, great character development, good storyline and a ton of dam wit, I felt like I committed Bibliocide. I began to hate myself when I read the last pages of the last book, where usually heartless (but great) authors generously throw grenades of nostalgia to push readers into a blanket of goosebumps, and well… you know those guys. But when I read Harry Potter for the first time, I could exactly tell when a character/spell/concept is first introduced and in which chapter. Here, I entirely forgot the rising action of the Second and Third books.
You must have got it already. There is a billion books out there, not all are equally profound. But certain books are treasures. If you are going to keep leaving treasure islands to see all islands, You will be futile in your attempts. you may enjoy it. But it defeats the purpose of your voyage, You will be tired are weak when you realize this, and most importantly never even visit more than 20% of every island out there. Also Don’t be like I was 12, Stuck on a single Calypso’s island (Of Harry Potter), while a million more awaited me.
How I read the other times, and their advantages. Eight books a time, not even touch two most boring ones, Read the rest as your mercurial monkey mind wishes. The Information can sink in, while you are not voluntarily stopping yourself from reading so as to let that sink in. Besides, some books are very deep, like an ocean. You can take a flight and whiz past it while looking through a window to observe the surface. However beautiful the surface, It is still just the surface, just superficial. But you can board a huge ship, spend a week and look at its beauty while also enduring seasickness, but enjoying the smell, the wind, the seagulls, the salt in your tongue, the eternal humidity. Or you can rent a boat and hire a seaman, and experience not just the sensory feast, but also the inexperience of seafaring, the beauty of navigation, the fear in uncertainty. Usually Experience is payed for not in money, but in time. Also this helps you to literally read between the lines, and read between the words. Because an Author cannot write English in between lines and words, He can only use Blankness. And Readers read Blankness thinking about the author’s message, while actually reading them!
These kinds of philosophy seem stupid, even to me. But they seem not stupid only if you pay them enough time. Time is the ultimate currency.
Another advantage would be that, When you read slower you write your own version of the books, in your own mind. Books with endless experiences, excerpts and lessons from your own life. That makes even an ordinary book extraordinary, learning things which even the author didn’t mention but you learn from your own version of the book. For example, In The Alchemist (Really good book again) I highlighted more than two hundred verses, I am not even sure if Paulo Coelho filled his 150 page book with that many casual philosophies, But these simple lines talk to me. Teaching great things.
So that is what I mean folks, Read a lot, But give each book a lot of time, don’t hesitate to kick a book’s spine till you want to read it, and don’t worry about wasting time re-reading (20% to 70% of all books I’ll be reading is actually re-reads. But I’m not a model reader, so find what’s best for you). Also I really want this to be a Post, not a post-ling; but I’m thinking of doing a post on Reading strategy. Also I feel like this is a bit of a (too much of a) give-away. I would hesitate to share this to a person I do not know. But you guys are so rocking, and motivating; I felt that I was not doing enough. So Let me know if this Multi-reads strategy works for you, and how it goes with your other strategies. If not I’ll come up with something else. And If someone might find it useful, Let them have a read folks.
Till the next Post on sunday, Let’s read like… well enjoying every book (Modded version of Warren Zevon’s Enjoy every sandwich)
Will try this strategy!