How to start reading and become a life long learner.

Let reading come to you!

It’s always better to start with why? So, if you are still not sure about why you should start reading in the first place, go through the following post.

Why Read?

Here’s what I learned from 5+ years of reading?

By the end of this post, you will learn:

1. How to start reading?
2. How to get into a habit of reading regularly?

How to start?

Knowing the benefits of reading, we keep thinking that we will start reading someday but never seem to get that habit of regular reading.

We even get that dream book from somewhere and start reading but then something happens and there we are, stuck at some point in the book for a month.

Being humans, we do what we feel like doing at the present moment, most of which is governed by our habits and feelings. So, it’s important to make sustainable habits which will not only last for a long time but which we can enjoy overtime.

Reading, in the beginning is not very easy; particularly, reading a non-fiction. Let’s see how we can do it in an exciting way.

Let reading come to you!

Wrong Mindset — Pick a book →Think that i will complete this book →force yourself to do so → feel bad when you are stuck at one book.

You may end up reading a book or two like this but it is not enough to make you a life long reader. It will keep you from reading a lot of books in a short amount of time. For reading to become something you enjoy, you need a different approach.

Sustainable way: “Macro patience, micro speed”

Pick multiple books →Start by reading one or two chapters which you find interesting → No need to complete every book you start …. →..→Iterate → Before long you will have read many books.

STEP I:

Pick many books on:

1. Things you are excited about/interested in. E.g.- Space and time excite me, so i read “Brief history of time” by Stephen Hawkins.
2. Something you can use in your life right now. E.g.- There was a time I was struggling with my habits, so i picked “The Power of habit” by Charles Duhigg.
3. Best works in Fiction/Non-Fiction like “Think and grow rich” by Napolean Hill.
4. It’s important that you have many books at your disposal. “At any point of time i am going through at least 5–6 different books of different types on my kindle.” We will see why it is important, shortly.

STEP II:

For you to be attracted to the book, you have to convince yourself that it will help you grow or it has something that you need to know.

How to start reading ?

1. See summary and review of the book from Youtube or just google it out to get the whole picture.

2. Go through the cover of the book, and the contents. Pick the chapters you think you definitely need to read or the ones which excite you.

3. Open those chapters straight away and start reading.

4. You don’t need to complete the book, just read the chapters you picked and you can always decide later if you want to read the whole book.

After reading dozens of books over time, i can tell you that most of the time it’s only 20% of the book that is valuable and worthy of our time. Rest 80% is just repetition of the same information.

Remember that we read not to complete a book but to get maximum learning out of it which we can use in our life.

5. Read multiple books at a time. — This way you won’t get stuck at a single book.

“I open up my kindle, I look through. Based on my mood, I’ll flip through to whatever book matches my mood…The most important thing that does for me is it lets me read on a regular basis. “- Naval Ravikant.

Doing this i have been able to read a book every two-three weeks on an average for the last couple of years.

STEP III:

How to become a regular reader.

Having picked the books on subjects that excite you and having gone through the contents of the book, you have done the most important work.

1. It’s important to read less than you are capable of reading in a single day, in the beginning.
2. Keep a copy of your books on a phone or a kindle, a device you carry everywhere.
3. Have variety of books for every mood type and every situation. For eg.-: have good audio books for the time when you are walking or traveling in a public transport; Have good fiction to read before you go to bed or for holidays.
4. Commit to reading a single page of any book before you go to bed.
5. There is no right time for reading, so read whenever you feel like reading.
6. Make reading just like you read blogs or spend time on facebook or twitter based on your mood- A page or a chapter at a time.

We are what we read.

In a short time you will fall in love with reading and will be excited to learn more, be more and give more.

You can see for yourself: — How much of the world is there for you to explore and that it is a never ending process.

You can now view the world from the eyes of the greatest people that ever lived. You will have new ideas on variety of subjects. You can experiment with what you learned and see for yourself what is true.

Non-fictions you can start with:

1. “Surely you are joking Mr. Feynman” → if you love science.
2. “How to win friends and influence people” by Dale Carnegie. →Best book written so far on human relationships and behaviour.
3. “The power of Habit” by Charles Duhigg.
4. “Four-Hour-Work-Week “by Tim Ferriss.

If you want to learn speed learning techniques, see this:

How to read a book a day?

Happy reading!

Love!