I read a lot of books. Frankly, everything I know I’ve learned from books and research papers rather than I’ve been taught at university. But one thing I’ve realized is that university does not have to teach you. University has to encourage your learning, give you basics of the area of study and provide you with the reading list or indicate you to the right direction to study.
Anyway, if you know where you want to go and what you need to read, let me share with you how to read fast and effectively.

There are five types of reads:

1. Books that are written by ‘simple people’
2. Books that are written by academics
3. Research Papers
4. Internet posts
5. Other books

Books that are written by ‘simple people’ are usually written be ‘managing directors’ or ‘ceos’ or ‘executives’ or ‘entrepreneurs’ of small unknown companies who claim to be pros in what they do and journalists. If I have to give my preferences I would go with books y journalists. They have more stories to tell, interesting observations and theories.

Type: Fast/Medium Read

How to read:

1. Go through the content first
2. Either choose what you are interested in, or choose at random or simply go through each title reading jumping from line to line (paragraph to paragraph) getting the main idea and avoiding all the beautiful adjectives.

Why: don’t pay attention to every single words they say. They can be biased and their ‘assumptions’ on ‘successful way to lead business’ and etc. may be wrong and not applicable to your cases.

What: see how they do whatever they do, analyse their theories, learn from their creativity and get the main/general idea about whatever they write (that could be either about unfamiliar to you culture, or industry or else)

Books that are written by academics are always a good read. You have a lot to learn from them, their theories are empirically proven and they can give you a lot of thinking. This is my favorite type of books.

Type: Slow read

How to read:

1. Go through the content
2. Analyze the content and build logical chain between the chapters. See the flow.
3. Read each word carefully with the pencil.

Why: these books are not a waste of time you can spend most of your time reading such books.

What: get the key theories, the key terms and the key points on each theory out of them.

Research Papers are the most difficult to comprehend, however they are the best sources of information.

Type: Fast read

How to read:

1. Read Abstract see if it’s interesting and useful for you
2. Read Introduction
3. Read conclusion
4. If you are interested how they got to the conclusion read the whole paper together with the methodology and analysis.

Why: they are empirically proven and whatever you get from the research papers you could use as facts, rather than ‘opinion’

What: understand the theory they talk about and see if their hypothesis are correct.

Internet posts you can read when you are in a subway or boring lecture or before going to bed or when you are on Facebook. Usually blog posts like this one and articles are for staying plugged-in and seeing what other people do and how they do it. You can follow their advice (if it’s a blog post) but don’t expect it to work for you if it worked for them.

By other books I mean poems, drama, fiction, science fiction, self-help and history books. If you are in business they should serve as an inspiration, creativity and making you an all-round person. For me they are not the key read, but I do read occasionally Dan Brown, historical books on Templar, fiction about Dragons and Shakespeare (although I struggle with an ancient English language, considering that my ‘modern’ English is not perfect). ☺

Hope that helps!