Reading. Why read? How? And what?

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Part 1. The Why

Every time I see ‘Reading’ under hobbies or interests in resumes it amazes me. Reading is not a hobby. It is a necessity.

Reading is the single most important activity you can engage in if you aim to grow as an individual and as a professional. My father used to call reading “the best competitive advantage”. A book is the lifetime of experience of the author packaged in a format you can tackle in a few hours.

When you read a book, you hold another’s mind in your hands. – James Burke

I have rarely ever met anyone who would argue against this. However, lately most of the time I ask people about the last book they have read, the typical answer is: “Oh, it has been a while”. Then again, every once in a while, I will get a book title in response. We will talk about the book, then about other books, maybe even recommend books. One thing is certain, I have never come across an avid reader who would be boring or incompetent.

Some time ago, I wrote an article on the Two Rules that guide my life. They are simple. The first rule is: Every day, do something that elevates you. Among the thing you can do to this end, reading is one of the most high-impact activities.

Reading expands your vocabulary and improves your spoken and written language skills. It teaches you to articulate your thoughts clearly and effectively. It improves your ability to consider opposing opinions and formulate arguments in support or against a position. It enhances your creativity. It improves your focus and concentration, something you can and will apply elsewhere in your life. Reading makes you interesting, though granted, that depends on what you read.

Without reading, you have what Jordan Peterson calls a “low-resolution understanding” of ideas. Reading gives you depth, sophistication. Reading equips you with the knowledge that helps figure out solutions to the challenges in your life, to come to and justify your choices and decisions. Reading prevents cognitive decline, though of course, reading is not the only way to do that.

Reading is powerful even if you barely remember anything from a book you have finished. You may not be able to quote anything from the book or even remember its title. But you’ll get the “feel” of it, the mood, the main message, or even one thought. And if you carry that with you that is the knowledge that can come to your aid when you most need it.

Books give a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything. – Plato

So why don’t people read?

I believe the main reason, though not always clearly articulated, is that people go through life aimlessly. Yes, sometimes there are vague goals and dreams, but not many people set specific goals and plan out how to achieve them. Without a clear destination, one does not need to read or do any other work to get there.

People say they don’t have time. Which is absurd of course. There is no such thing as lack of time. There is only how we choose to spend it. What we prioritize.

The abundance of entertainment is another reason people don’t feel the need to read. TV, movies, internet (particularly YouTube), computer games — there is so much competing for our attention that before you know it, the hour, the day, the week is gone and we have barely accomplished anything. Even for those of us who are keen to learn and grow, there are websites, podcasts, YouTube channels that are powerful alternatives to learning from books.

Some people still carry the trauma of being forced to read at school. I know the feeling. I did not touch Tolstoy or Dostoyevski well into my late 30s. But then I got over it and invested time in reading the classics. I enjoyed and appreciated it tremendously.

Reading best fiction, and non-fiction is not always fun. It can be hard work. You have to think through this process, analyze what you read, check your reactions and attitudes, understand yourself better. Reading requires effort and as such, trains your focus, concentration, ability to engage in deep work.

With all the benefits of reading, it is easy to look at it as an isolated activity. But to maximize the benefit from reading, you need to link it to action, to real life. Coming back to my Two Rules, the second rule is: Every day, do something that elevates the world around you. The first rule is really about making you more capable of making an impact. This is why reading is only the first step. Its true value is in combining it with action. Use the knowledge you gain.

Think before you speak. Read before you think. — Fran Lebowitz

Part 2. The How

Alright, you might say, I have not read anything for a while, where do I start? How do I go about this?

• Set the pace

Start with a simple setup. Make it a daily habit. DAILY. Yes, there will probably be days when you won’t get to it, but you should aim at reading every day. 10 pages. 20 pages. Whatever is the smallest quantity that you are comfortable committing to. It does not sound like much, but do it daily, it will add up. 20 pages a day is 7,300 pages a year. Make it 25 and you are at 9,125. Read a little more every once in a while and you are hitting 10,000 pages a year. Not bad? To compare, Tolstoy’s War and Peace is little over 1,200 pages. Since most books are 250 to 300 pages, 10,000 pages can mean 30 to 40 books.

Commit to the daily pace. Small steps add up, but only if you take them.

• How to find time

If you are struggling to find time for even 20–25 pages a day, then you need to quit something that you know is not useful. Watch less TV. Browse the Internet less. Spend less time on social media. Prioritize reading.

Do you commute? Have the book you read on your phone or tablet. Listen to audiobooks. Carry the actual book with you at all times, so if you have to wait somewhere for 10–15 minutes, you can read a few pages. I try to have the book I am reading in different formats — physically, electronically at the same time, so I can read it in different situations.

If you are a morning person, you can knock the daily reading norm off of your to-do list the first thing in the morning. If you are a night owl like me, you can read before going to bed.

• Create the right conditions

The place you read in has to be comfortable, though not too much, and well lit. Sitting is always better than lying down. Find the environment that works best for you. Some of us prefer absolute silence, others want a specific type of music or noise in the background.

Sometimes it helps to identify an anchor that gets you in the right mood. For me, it is listening to Chopin’s nocturnes by Claudio Arrau. I have read, studied, and worked with this music in the background hundreds of times. Now, all I need is to put it on and I am almost automatically in the right mindset.

I recommend also to work on being able to concentrate on reading anywhere — in public transport, in a waiting room for a dentist appointment, in an airport, in traffic. That is very practical and saves a lot of time.

• About the reading speed

I am very skeptical about Speed Reading. I have practiced the Speed Reading techniques and the impact has been, at best, and temporary. If you want to read faster, there are a couple of things you can do.

First of all, just read. Don’t be overly concerned about speed. Reading good books and continuing to read will make you better at it. As you read, your knowledge will increase. On the subject matter, whatever it is, and on how non-fiction and fiction books are generally structured. This will help absorb the material faster. Secondly, as you read, your vocabulary will improve. This will not only help with reading but also make you more articulate.

You can also work on expanding your vocabulary. Vocabulary is arguably the single most important determining factor of your reading speed. Your word-identification ability is the key and some people specifically work on this. If you don’t want to bother, you don’t have to understand every word in a book. A useful rule of thumb is — if it comes your way more than a few times, then look it up.

Of all the speed reading advice, one practical thing that seems to work is to use a pointer. I first picked it up in Tony Buzan’s book, but it goes back to a useful childhood habit of using the finger. It is better to use something thinner than a finger though, like a pencil. Some “gurus” recommend using the pointer to push your speed beyond your comfort zone, but for me, the point of the pointer is to help maintain concentration more than anything else.

When reading non-fiction, it helps to get a sense of the material, the contents, the chapters, overall structure. You could look through the first and last paragraphs of each chapter before starting.

Finally, concentrate. Do not multitask. If you can focus on the text and keep moving forward, instead of daydreaming and having to go back, the speed goes up.

This is it. Any time you will waste on learning speed reading methods you can use better for actual reading. Don’t waste time trying to eliminate subvocalizations. Subvocalization is an entirely natural process that helps comprehension. Don’t waste time working on eye fixations. It will just get you to skim and scan more and you will feel that you are reading faster. Just read.

Reading fast is worse than not reading. Reading fast gives you two things that should never mix: surface knowledge and overconfidence. And that’s a recipe for really bad decisions. — Farnam Street

• Know what you are looking for

Be clear about what you are after when starting a book. It is useful to think about what you know on the topic before you start. It will help link what you know to what you will learn from the book.

You don’t have to read every book cover to cover. Most non-fiction books have a few main ideas. If you feel there is a lot of unnecessary material in the book, skip it. If a couple of chapters in, you don’t feel the book is useful, ditch it.

“In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.” — Mortimer J. Adler

• How to absorb what you read

This is key. There is no point in going through books if you do not retain much. Remember, the purpose of reading is to help you in thinking, decision-making, in real-life action.

Take notes. Make a summary. The process in and of itself will help absorb the information better. We all have different styles of how we take notes and what works for one person may not work for another. Some use specific software, Notion Evernote, OneNote, or any other. Others use paper notebooks. I use the book’s margins to scribble and take notes. I then revisit the book a few weeks later and go through my notes, preparing a short summary that I type up and save in Evernote.

Part 3. The What

Now, what to read. Of course, tastes differ and no two persons have the same preferences when it comes to books. Still, here is some advice. Don’t fall for the latest fashion. Best books are known. It is easy to figure out what you want to concentrate on as a start. Whether you are going for fiction or non-fiction, just search 3–4 top 10, top 20 book list recommendations on the topic of your choice and the books you see mentioned most frequently is where you start.

Ask people you admire and look up to for book recommendations. If you don’t have access to people you would really want to ask, you can find online the recommendations of some of the most successful individuals. A simple rule is to choose what educates you, rather than what entertains you. Over time, you will develop a particular taste and will know what you are after.

Read the classics. The schools do their part in making us averse to classics, but they really are worth the effort. Try them. Rather than what is popular now, read what has remained popular after decades or centuries. Build your “repertoire” from there.

Here are 12 fiction books I will recommend without any hesitation.

• Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
• Martin Eden by Jack London
• One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
• 1984 by George Orwell
• The Count of Monte-Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
• The Great Gatsby by F.Scott Fitzgerald
• The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevski
• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
• Don Quixote by Miguel de Servantes
• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

There are countless other fantastic books. Explore away. You will figure out if there is a particular time, genre, or country the literature of which you prefer.

As to non-fiction, here are my 12 top recommendations:

• Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
• The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt
• Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
• 12 rules for life by Jordan Peterson
• Peak by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool
• How to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie
• A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
• Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond
• Getting Things Done by David Allen
• Deep Work by Cal Newport
• Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker
• On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder

Here are some additional resources:

• Farnam Street. This is an excellent resource on reading, but also learning, decision-making, and mental models. Since 2015, you can find annual book recommendations on this page.
• Book recommendations from Jordan Peterson, the author of 12 rules for life, Beyond Order and Maps of Meaning.
• Book recommendations from James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits.
• Books to base your life on from Ryan Holiday, the author of Obstacle is the Way, Ego is the Enemy, Stillness is the Key, Lives of the Stoics, and other books.
• Book recommendations from Mark Manson, the author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck and Everything is F*cked
• Book recommendations from Yuval Noah Harari, the author of Sapiens, Homo Deus and 21 lessons for the 21st century
• Farnam Street has dedicated pages to book recommendations from Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, and Bill Gates. You can look up lists from other personalities.

There you go. Dig in, explore away and enjoy.