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Certain words need a little bit more dwell time than others. No one reads the way this device flashes words at you. Thanks for your perspective on this!
You mentioned footnotes, references, etc. Are there other sources where you discover your quality reads? Well, obviously that depends on your interests. I utilize the Amazon wish list a lot, and have thousands of books in my ever growing and changing books. I list them by priority and by topic: I also have a master list ordered by priority. With time, a corpus emerges of the same authors and writers, who one can now trust to always produce profound writing.
I then pretty much will read everything I can get my hands on by these authors. There are probably about authors in that category: These folks will always make you think, stretch your mind, bring you closer to God, and make you a better person.
I do the same for blogs, podcasts, and YouTube: All very compulsive, I know: But, life is short and so full of really big questions; I hate to waste time on trivial stuff. All that said, I do like to kick back with my pipe and a glass of wine with Wodehouse, Chesterton, Dickens, etc.
Writing them down helps crystalise my thoughts and put them more firmly in my memory a bit like writing notes in a training session — plus it means I have the notes readily available for future reference.
Really great suggestion, Mark! I would have never thought of reviews, but this makes complete sense on how it must reinforce your takeaways from a book. Might have to give this one a try. I set a goal of reading two books per week this year and audio has made achieving that painless so far. Speed Reading I once took a speed reading class during which we would read whole books in 30 minutes and complete a 20 minute reading comprehension quiz.
Unfortunately, concentrating with that level of intensity forced me to miss out on the important mental doodling that takes place while reading at a more comfortable pace. For this reason I believe that speed reading is a useful tool in certain instances but often leaves one hollow.
The value comes from playing with the challenges he faced and mapping them to my own life and circumstances, from deciding where I can borrow from the great man and when I should avoid his model. There is no room for synthesis or modeling to take place when speed reading and comprehension can be a misleading metric of the value of reading speed.
Thanks for sharing it! A similar product to Blinkist that has been around for much longer is getAbstract. These are 5 page summaries and I think the quality is higher. Wow, thanks so much for sharing your experience here, Graham! Really good to know a first-person account of how Blinkist works. Great tip on getAbstract, too. Probably worth mentioning too that getAbstract is mostly aimed at business books but they have a huge library.
But in a constructive, helpful way, really. Thanks for the insight! These are good tips. See my speed reading program at http: Our class gets you reading and remembering thousands of words per minute. In , I purposely tracked the number of books I read using the book list that linkedin used to have the idiots.
I read 78 books that year so I try to keep that as the benchmark. I rarely buy brand new books. I have a stack of my own, I buy used, and I go to the library about once a week.
I usually read at night with a headlamp, but i almost always carry a book with me i think the author Stephen King, a prolific reader, mentions this in his tips for writers. This was another great buffer article and excellent reminders on one of the keys to success. Grab a good book! I would add that the Read to Lead Podcast, and others like it, is a great way to consume more books in less time or, at the very least, to know what books are worth your time.
Kevan, great post I wonder can you help me with a problem that has come with age. I try to stick to novels or even plays with very few characters. I read about an hour a night. My biggest war is with comprehension and then application. I started reading after too many years of not.
I now set aside little bits of time in my day and time before going to bed. My goal this year is to read at least two books a month or 25 books. I love reading more than I love most things. However, I remembered that reading is one of the activities I love the most! I simply had to make time for it. So, I created a list of the 12 books I wanted to read in , identified a goal for myself, and bought the books so that I already had them on the bookshelf. A very demanding r article for someone who hardly reads only stuff on the Web and averages words per min But the article is w well set a lot of good technique ideas explanations Hope I will slowly read more read faster do some homework n and remember to build m am opinion.
How to remember what you read! This is a great article. I am surprised people do buy ebooks from amazon. Also the lack of updates really bugs me. This article illustrates my point more in detail: I have been reading constantly since graduating college , I feel like it takes me forever to read a book. I have read 7 habits, naked statistics, and the personal MBA.. It takes me a week each unemployed. Seems like I never have read fast..
Its like saying I can run 4 laps and get a mile of exercise or i can run across the field to the other side of the lap and only do half laps and still get a miles worth of work lol…. I also believe the 17 books a year is complete hogwash lol, Look at my generation aged ….
Their dreams are often huge. Thus, the second shift begins with 10x thinking and subsequently As Stephen R. Covey explains, “We control our actions, but the Get this clear: confidence is a direct reflection of past performance. In the book, Tribal Leadership, authors Dave Logan, John King, and. My favorite quotes that will help you get the new year started in a positive happiness on major events like a great job, huge amounts of money, Frank Sinatra; "Take time to deliberate; but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking Martin Luther King, Jr. "We become what we think about most of the.
You have to be kidding to think that any one under the age of 40 reads even 2 books a year. Hi there, we use cookies to offer you a better browsing experience and to analyze site traffic. By continuing to use our website, you consent to the use of these cookies. Open blog New workplace culture articles every week. New workplace culture articles every week. Related Articles More Motivated in Minutes: That open spritz things looks like it could be a game changer. As usual, thanks Kevan for the great tips!
Sorry for the essay. I often ramble after midnight. I do something similar what Blinklist does: Yes, nothing quite like the feel and smell of a real book! I recommend the Spreed extension for Google Chrome as well: Excited to try this one, Vincent! Like Shane this is all I do.
By the way, two other things about read: What are you reading currently? Say goodbye to the energy vampires in your life the negative souls who steal your enthusiasm. When I studied the creative lives of massively productive people like Stephen King, John Grisham and Thomas Edison, I discovered they follow strict daily routines. Get up at 5 am. Win the battle of the bed. Put mind over mattress. This habit alone will strengthen your willpower so it serves you more dutifully in the key areas of your life.
Most of us have a deep need to be liked. That translates into us saying yes to everything — which is the end of your elite productivity. New research confirms that all the distractions invading our lives are rewiring the way our brains work and drop our IQ by 5 points! Be one of the rare-air few who develops the mental and physical discipline to have a mono-maniacal focus on one thing for many hours.
Get fit like Madonna. Getting to your absolute best physical condition will create explosive energy, renew your focus and multiply your creativity. Workout 2X a day. So do 20 minutes first thing in the morning and then another workout around 6 or 7 pm to set you up for wow in the evening.
And get less done. Or, from getting 10, page views to getting , When you do this, your strategy immediately shifts. If you have a year plan of how to get [somewhere], you should ask: Of this type of questioning, Ferriss continues:. If you want to think bigger, ask better and more absurd questions. I once asked myself how I could write a blog post that would get one million social shares. These types of questions lead to creative breakthroughs and different avenues of thought. They also organically facilitate a very different strategic approach. What absurd question will break you out of your limiting and traditional ways of thinking?
You need to be far more focused. Thus, it becomes essential to build a team around you immediately. Your network is your networth. The sooner you build a team around you, the faster, wider, and deeper will be your results.
It could mean that you exchange favors. When you go to the gym, do you have a workout partner? Surveys show that most people prefer working out alone.
In a Darwinian sense, most people compete with others on their own level. For instance, if you want to get stronger or faster really fast, exercise with people in far better shape. If you want to do incredible work, work with more talented people than you. Survival in business requires a synergy of skills.
In everything you do, there should be collaborative and synergistic elements. Of course, there is work which is your work. However, that work should be embedded within a group of others and toward something much bigger. Again, a huge difference from the first shift to the second is that you are responsible for more than just yourself. Because others depend on you to show up and do what you do best, you are responsible to your team.
These others could be customers, fans, family, a workout partner. Moreover, in many ways, their success is your success. Deep, creative, and strategic thinking and work is exhausting. To experience the first shift, you often just need to throw a bunch of darts at a board. Simply throwing a dart is seen as a huge win, initially. Eventually, some of those darts start hitting the board and getting some attention. However, once you make the second shift, you are among the world-class. Conservation, rest, and recovery, then, becoming increasingly essential.
This is true at all elite levels. For example, professional athletes spend an enormous time resting. Roger Federer and LeBron James have said they sleep an average of 12 hours per day. Similarly, to build mass and strength, many people need to workout less , and give their body more time for recovery and sleep. Yet, during their workouts, they need to push themselves harder and heavier. The same is true of mental and strategic work. Recovery is more than just physically resting. People keep their smartphones on them constantly. In the study, the experimental group, who became more conscious of their smartphone use, and took adequate breaks from it, were able to experience psychological detachment from work which is essential for recovery and engagement , relaxation, and mastery.
Set healthy boundaries on your smartphone and internet use. When possible, keep your smartphone away from your person. Keep it in your car when you get home from work. Or keep it in a drawer in a separate room.