People Who Read More Books In A Month Than Most Do All Year Do These 3 Little Things Differently
f.t.Photographer | ShutterstockI’m a doctor-to-be. However, when people ask me what I do, that’s not the first thing that comes to my mind. The first thing that comes to my mind is that I’m a writer. And as a writer, reading is my fuel. As a reader, I’ve iterated my process over the years to maximize what I gain from reading.
Unfortunately, reading has been on a steady decline. A study showed that daily reading for pleasure in the United States has declined by more than 40% over the last 20 years, raising urgent questions about the cultural, educational, and health consequences of a country reading less. To reverse the trend, some people are picking up more books in a month than most people read in a year or more.
People who read more have developed habits in their reading process that not only help them read more but also skyrocket the benefits they gain from reading. Note that these habits are small, but their literary power is immense. Let's take a deep dive into why each of these small reading habits is so powerful.
People who read more books in a month than most do all year do these things differently:
1. People who read a ton use a notecard system
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The notecard system is a system used by writers like Ryan Holiday and others. So naturally, I gave it a go as well. I realized that making notecards while reading is something non-writers should do as well. It is a simple process of jotting down insights you find while reading on a notecard. The notecard can contain a category, a title, some quotes, a reference to the page number, and some thoughts to make sense of the quotes.
Reading is a process of introducing new ideas to your conscious mind. However, research suggested 95% of your life runs from your subconscious. Hence, if you actually want these insights to change your life, you have to let the insights sink into your subconscious.
Think of your mind like a deep water body. When you read a book without pausing at all, the insights will just float on the surface waters. They’ll stay there for a while, but soon enough, they’ll be washed to the shore. They’ll be forgotten. However, if you somehow add weight to these insights, they will sink into your subconscious mind, where they’ll actually become a part of you and bring actual change to your way of living.
Let me take a quick detour to help you really understand this point. As a student, I’ve learned a lot of memory techniques to be able to learn facts from my huge medical syllabus. One memory technique that completely changed my life was a simple formula by memory expert Kevin Horseley: Long-term memory (LTM) + Short-term memory (STM) = Medium-term memory (MTM)
His idea is that while studying, you somehow attach new facts (that are in your short-term memory) to what’s already in your long-term memory, and you can commit these facts to your medium-term memory. As an example, he said you can try to remember a sequence of words in a list by imagining them sequentially in your house — room by room — in the order they are located after entering your house. Because you already remember the sequence of the rooms in your house, you’ll be better able to remember the sequence of the words as well.
Of course, it’s much more complex and harder than it sounds, but it’s a skill that’s developed over time. And the principle is airtight. It’s as if you’re sending information already present in your memory to your conscious mind, and using it to recruit new info to your subconscious mind.
The same thing can be done with notecards. When reading, if you find a good insight, you shouldn’t just appreciate it and continue reading. You should stop. You should somehow see how the insight relates to your life. You should find a memory in your life when this insight might have actually helped you.
When you write a notecard, you’re forcing yourself to pause at an insight and write it down. Pausing gives the insight enough time to get meatier and heavier. And then, it can sink into your subconscious mind.
How to do it:
Now that you understand why you should do it, let’s discuss a few key things to remember to make the most of this process.
- Use actual physical notecards. Yes, I understand the world is getting digital. But ‘pen and paper’ are still more powerful than digital note-taking in some cases. Physically writing an insight gives it more weight than typing it.
- You can buy notecards online for a few dollars. Write down insights you find interesting and store them in a box on your desk if possible.
- Connect it to your own life memories and experiences. This will ensure the insights get attached to your life and sink into your subconscious mind to become a part of your life.
- Occasionally, open your box and review your notecards.
There are more aspects to the notecard system. Don’t focus on perfecting the system at the beginning. Just start and keep iterating according to the needs of your life, and you’ll develop a system perfect for you.
2. They set timer-focused goals
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When people say they’re planning to read 100 books in a year, it makes me nauseous. I tried to do that a few years ago as well. But now I know better. So I do better. When you set goals like:
- “I’ll read 52 books in a year.”
- “I have to finish this book in 4 days.”
- “I have to read 20 books before sleeping.”
You’re compromising the process of reading. Setting goals like these will make you more concerned with finishing a book than actually learning from it. Let’s say you set a goal to read 20 pages in a day. Then one day, you weren't able to read for the entire day. At the end of the day, you’ll be racing against the clock. You’ll read fast. You won't stop and pause when you should take notes. This makes the entire point of reading moot. Yes, you’ll finish your 20 pages. But did you learn anything meaningful?
Let’s say you’re aiming to finish a particular book this week — but what if that book provides a ton of insights you must wire into your life? That takes time, but you’re so concerned with finishing the book and starting a new one, so you skip the aspect of reading that actually matters — making changes to your life.
If your goal is to read 52 books in a year, what happens when you’re halfway through a bad book? Will you be able to abandon it? You won’t. Because — again — you’re concerned with finishing the book because that’s what you’re trying to achieve. Hence, you’ll waste even more of your time reading a book you know is not worth the time.
Once you realize you are not going to learn from a book, stop reading it. Beginner readers aren’t able to do that — because they’re concerned with finishing a book. Not learning from it.
Research has agreed that instead of setting goals focused on the quantity of reading, set timer-focused goals like, “I’ll read for 30 minutes every day.” This is a minor tweak but extraordinarily powerful. In that time, you may read one page or a hundred pages. It doesn’t matter. What matters is the quality of the reading. Every one of those 30 minutes will be focused.
You’ll read to learn. You’ll read fast when you can read fast. But you’ll slow down when you need to. And you’ll even pause and take the time to write notecards. You’ll pause and see how the insight plays in your life.
This simple tweak allows the process of reading to change your life. It takes the pressure off finishing a book and focuses on learning from the book. The mindset change is absolutely beautiful.
How to do it:
- Set a daily timer-focused goal you’ll spend reading. Be realistic. It can be as little as 15 minutes.
- Set an actual timer. This ensures you’ll not be distracted.
- When you pause to introspect about an insight or to write a notecard, you don’t have to pause the timer! This introspection is what reading is about, so it should be a part of your reading time. Even if you read four sentences in a minute, and then spend the next 14 minutes thinking about an extraordinary insight you found, that’s fair game. In fact, that’s exactly what I want you to do.
3. People who read a ton create their own categorization of books
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When we think about categories of books, we think of fiction, non-fiction, autobiographies, etc. However, these categories don’t exist. It’s not as if these categories pre-existed and humans wrote books accordingly. Nope. Humans wrote what they wanted to, and then, due to the huge number of books, we created categories so we can sort them and better understand the world of books.
So, you must categorize books for yourself by how a particular book helps you. This teaches you to figure out how you want to look at books. For instance, here’s how I categorize the books I read (so far):
- Character-changing books: These are the books that change who I am
These books help me change as a person at the deepest level. For instance, before I read the book, Can’t Hurt Me by motivational speaker David Goggins, I was the kind of person who liked to seek comfort when things got rough. This book changed my identity. It resonated with something deep within me and made me tougher than anything life can throw at me.
I created this category because I’ve realized that if you want to change your life, you cannot do it without changing your character. A not-so-ambitious person can read a million books on productivity, but it won't help because they don’t want to be productive. A book on productivity can teach productivity only to someone who wants to be productive. Not to someone who doesn’t want to be productive.
Character-changing books are what I seek when I know I have to change as a person. Just reading these books alone can change your life.
- How-to books: These books change how you do something — but there’s a catch
These books teach how to do something. But here’s the thing, unlike “Character-changing books,” these books will not change your life just by reading them. In fact, these books will be worthless to you if they aren’t a fit for your character and if you don’t complement them with actual action.
For instance, I read the book Getting Things Done by David Allen a while ago, but it didn’t do anything for me, primarily for the above two reasons. By character, I’m not an obsessively productive person. I don’t want my whole life to be systemized — as David suggested. And because that’s not my character, I didn’t take any related action suggested in the book.
Another example: I also read the book The Art and Business of Online Writing by Nicolas Cole. Great stuff! But then again, it didn’t help me much because I don’t think of myself as an online writer obsessed with building a business. I think of myself as a deep thinker who uses writing as his most powerful tool.
If these “How-to” books match your character — and you take action, they can change your life. A year ago, I read Ultralearning by Scott Young, and it changed my life for the same reasons mentioned above. I’m a true lifelong learner. An obsession with learning runs in my blood. And I took every piece of advice mentioned in the book and used it to master my huge medical syllabus. I continue to use the principles in other fields as well.
- Exploration books
These are books that help explore a new subject in depth. These days I’m exploring the neurotransmitter Dopamine — what it does, how it works, and how to use hack it to my advantage in real life. Now, we all read books about new topics now and then. But here’s what I’m doing differently this time. I’m not reading only a single book on the topic. But I’m reading multiple books (5+) on the same topic.
In the case of Dopamine, I finished my first book on it a while ago — Dopamine Nation. Then, I explored more books on dopamine, and as of now, I’m reading The Molecule of More. After this, I’m going to read The Dopamine Mind in Human Evolution & History. This way, I’m gathering a thorough understanding of a new subject through multiple perspectives.
Doing this is stretching my perspective in life, and I can sense it. I can vaguely sense when my dopamine spikes and when I’m low on dopamine. I also have a far better understanding of how I should reframe my self-talk and how that relates to dopamine.
The understanding is not extraordinary — but it’s something. I know if I continue to dive deeper, I’ll stretch my perspective even further. I use Exploration books specifically to learn new subjects and know more about how our beautiful world works.
- Other books
All the other books that don’t fit into the above three categories are in this category for now. As a reader, I’m continuously asking what each book means and how it helps elevate my life. If I need another category, I’ll create one. Then, I’ll figure out how to approach the category in a meaningful way.
Remember, categories don’t actually exist. They are just a way for our minds to comprehend the world a bit easier. Categorize books for yourself because it forces you to inquire about your relationship with books and reading in general. This inquiry leads to a better understanding and allows you to approach reading more intentionally.
You don’t have to achieve this in a day or a year. The perfect approach cannot be invented. The goal here is to be a more intentional and mindful reader. The goal is to allow more books to change your life.
A quick recap:
- Make notecards while reading. This makes sure you pause when you’re supposed to while reading and helps insights gain enough weight so they sink into your subconscious mind.
- Don’t set reading goals in terms of the number of books or pages. Instead, decide to read every day for a specific amount of time and focus on learning instead of finishing the book.
- Categorize books by inquiring about your relationship with them. By categorizing, you allow yourself to figure out what books help you in which ways, and tell you how to approach a specific book to maximize your learning.
Akshad Singi, M.D., has been published in Better Humans, Mind Cafe, and more.
