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You, Too, Could Read More Books

August 8, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Read More Books With all of life’s distractions, here’s how to make time to read and get through more books:

  • Don’t make reading a chore. Read because you want to, and like to.
  • Become more selective. Choose topics you know you’ll enjoy—topics that have engrossed you previously.
  • Rather than choosing a book you haven’t read yet, reread one of the more helpful books you’ve read in the past. It usually takes multiple exposures for an idea to sink in.
  • Never be without a book; have one at hand wherever you are. Then, squeeze in some reading whenever you have a few minutes to spare—whether on the bus or while waiting at the dentist’s. (Charlie Munger, a voracious reader, has said, “As long as I have a book in my hand, I don’t feel like I’m wasting time.”)
  • Don’t feel obliged to complete everything you’ve started. The more enjoyable your read, the quicker you’ll get through it. If a book doesn’t hold your interest (“spark joy” to borrow Marie Kondo’s concept,) say, by page 50, stop reading.
  • Be decisive with the no-good books. Turn four pages at a time if you have to. Frequently, authors blather endlessly about studies and anecdotes of marginal relevance to the book’s premise.
  • Take a respectable speed-reading course to learn how to use your eyes to focus and gloss over groups of words (“chunking”) while making sure you dwell on what needs to be retained.
  • Make reading social. Join a book club—it’ll help you get more out of a title. Hearing other people’s interpretations—whether you agree with them—makes you think more about your own reading and synthesis.
  • Have a system to jot down, record, summarize, organize, and recall whatever you’ve read.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Eat That Frog! // Summary of Brian Tracy’s Time Management Bestseller
  2. How to Process that Pile of Books You Can’t Seem to Finish [+ 5 Other Reading Hacks]
  3. How to Boost Your Willpower // Book Summary of Baumeister & Tierney’s ‘Willpower’
  4. Thinking Straight in the Age of Overload // Book Summary of Daniel Levitin’s ‘The Organized Mind’
  5. What Your Messy Desk Says About You

Filed Under: Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Books, Discipline, Reading

How to Read Faster and Better

July 20, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Look at the big picture first.

When reading new, unfamiliar material, do not leap directly into it. You can increase your comprehension and retention if you scan the material first.

Skim headings, subheadings, photo captions, and any available summaries.

How to Read Faster and Better Sense how the author has organized the key points. With reports and articles, read the first sentence of each paragraph, with books, glance at the table of contents, and chapter introductions. Scan the initial and concluding paragraphs of each section.

All this previewing will help anchor in your mind what you then read.

However, speed-reading doesn’t work if you need to really get to grips with the content of a piece of writing. So much of what’s significant about reading isn’t just about processing words.

Learn to pace your reading as per your purpose:

  • Read very fast if you’re looking only for a specific piece of information—skimming over revision notes before an exam.
  • Skim over text rapidly if you’re trying to get just general idea without worrying about details, like scanning a news article.
  • Read at a moderate pace if you want to comprehend and retain what you are reading. The more difficult the text, the slower you’ll read. Some texts will require rereading.
  • Read very slowly if you’re probing a text or soaking up its substance. When you just want to sit down and enjoy a good book, what’s the point in rushing anyway? After all, reading is about exploration, appreciating the beauty of a well-crafted sentence, thinking deeply, and following your imagination. Refer to Mortimer Adler’s guide to intelligent reading, How to Read a Book (1972; my summary.)

Idea for Impact: Reading is a skill, and, like any other skill, it’s worth your time to take, master, and enjoy. Skimming will help you cope with the overwhelming amount of text you’ll have to read in this day and age.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. A Guide to Intelligent Reading // Book Summary of Mortimer Adler’s ‘How to Read a Book’
  2. You Have a Pile of Reading Material at Your Desk?
  3. You, Too, Could Read More Books
  4. How to Process that Pile of Books You Can’t Seem to Finish [+ 5 Other Reading Hacks]
  5. Rip and Read During Little Pockets of Time

Filed Under: Leadership Reading, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Books, Critical Thinking, Reading

A Guide to Intelligent Reading // Book Summary of Mortimer Adler’s ‘How to Read a Book’

October 29, 2018 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

'How to Read a Book' by Mortimer Adler (ISBN 0671212095) If you’re interested in sharpening up your ability to read, comprehend, and debate, Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren’s bestselling How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading (1972; first published in 1940 under only Adler’s name) is the definitive guidebook.

The book stemmed from Adler’s belief that students of liberal education needed to be grounded in the “great ideas” of humankind, as represented in the canon of Western classic literature. To Adler, the art of reading well is deeply correlated to the art of thinking clearly, critically, and freely.

After the publication of How to Read a Book (1940,) Adler advanced his ideas on educational theory further by starting the Great Books of the Western World program and the Great Books Foundation. His later successes as a University of Chicago philosopher and an educator had an colossal influence on American education in the twentieth century.

Take-away Lesson #1: Active Reading is the Effort to Understand

How to Read a Book is divided into four parts:

  • Part one discusses the first two levels of reading: elementary reading (the level of reading taught in elementary schools and high schools) and inspectional reading (methodical skimming and cursory reading.)
  • Part two contains the third level of reading, analytical reading: classifying the author’s arguments and information, coming to terms with the book’s line of reasoning, establishing the author’s implications, criticizing the book, and critiquing the author.
  • Abraham Lincoln and son reading a book Part three covers the particular nuances of reading various types of literature: practical books, creative literature, stories, plays, poems, history, philosophy, science, mathematics, and social science.
  • Part four of the book is earmarked to the ultimate goals of reading—viz., expanding one’s mind for further understanding—a goal facilitated by “synoptical reading.” Since, per Carl Jung, “one book opens another,” a determined reader should peruse several works on the same subject with the intention of establishing a broader outlook of the subject matter. According to Adler, syntopical reading is the hallmark of scholarship: “Knowing that more than one book is relevant to a particular question is the first requirement in any project of syntopical reading. Knowing which books should be read, in a general way, is the second requirement.”

The essence of reading’s comprehension and appreciation lies in how best the reader can answer four questions during the course of reading a book:

  • During elementary reading: “What does the book say?”
  • During inspectional reading: “What is the book about?” How the author is trying to say it? What methodologies, narratives, substantiations, and examples does he use?
  • During analytical reading: “What does the book mean?” And, “Are the author’s arguments and claims valid—in whole or part? What is the significance of the author’s theses?”
  • During syntopical reading: “How does this book compare with other books?” And, “What other sources of knowledge could be pursued?”

How to Read a Book concludes with two appendices: (1) a list of titles in the “Great Books of the Western World” program, and (2) a number of exercises and tests on all four levels of reading.

Take-away Lesson #2: A Reader Must Suspend Judgment Until He Can Express the Author’s Positions

  • “You must be able to say, with reasonable certainty, ‘I understand,’ before you can say any one of the following things: ‘I agree,’ or ‘I disagree,’ or ‘I suspend judgment.'”
  • “Students who plainly do not know what the author is saying seem to have no hesitation in setting themselves up as his judges. They not only disagree with something they do not understand but, what is equally bad, they also often agree to a position they cannot express intelligibly in their own words.” As I’ve elaborated on this blog before (here, here, here, here, and here,) you must be able to accurately state—in your own words—the position of those you’re debating, before you can challenge them.
  • “When you disagree, do so reasonably, and not disputatiously or contentiously.” And, “Most people think that winning the argument is what matters, not learning the truth. He who regards conversation as a battle can win only by being an antagonist, only by disagreeing successfully, whether he is right or wrong.”

Take-away Lesson #3: Reading Well is Better Than Reading Widely

  • Bill Gates Reading one of his Favorite Books The objective of reading a book is to evolve to the level of the author: “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.” Additionally, “Enlightenment is achieved only when, in addition to knowing what an author says, you know what he means and why he says it.”
  • Read a “difficult” book multiple times. Each time you read a specific book, you’ll discover more—new ideas, new concepts, and deeper truths.
    • “In tackling a difficult book for the first time, read it through without ever stopping to look up or ponder the things you do not understand right away.”
    • “It is generally desirable to skim even a book that you intend to read carefully, to get some idea of its form and structure.”
    • “Ask questions while you read—questions that you yourself must try to answer in the course of reading.”
  • Regarding the “ignorance of those who have misread many books”, Adler asserts that such people, “are, as Alexander Pope rightly calls them, bookful blockheads, ignorantly read. There have always been literate ignoramuses who have read too widely and not well.”

Recommendation: Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren’s How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading is a smart reading that should be on everybody’s library. It is a goldmine of invaluable insights into the art of reading, debate, and persuasion.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. How to Read Faster and Better
  2. How to Process that Pile of Books You Can’t Seem to Finish [+ 5 Other Reading Hacks]
  3. You Have a Pile of Reading Material at Your Desk?
  4. You, Too, Could Read More Books
  5. Rip and Read During Little Pockets of Time

Filed Under: Leadership Reading, Mental Models, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Books, Critical Thinking, Reading

Rip and Read During Little Pockets of Time

March 4, 2016 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

On-the-go Reading

Rip and Read During Little Pockets of Time “Rip and Read” is a technique to make good use of little pockets of time you’ll have while waiting around. Here’s how it works:

  1. Leaf through all magazines, periodicals, and journals that show up on your desk.
  2. Tear out the articles that interest you and recycle the rest of the magazine. Stack the articles in an “on-the-go reading” folder and carry it around.
  3. When you have little pockets of time while waiting around or during your travels, pull out your “on-the-go reading” folder, and read the article on top of the stack.

Using “rip and read,” you will not only have fewer papers and magazines to carry around, but you’ll also not waste time flipping through pages to get to the articles you want to read.

Online Bookmarking and Saving Articles for Later Reading

Online Bookmarking and Saving Articles: Pocket Read-It-Later app The digital equivalent of this technique is to use one of the free “Read It Later” apps such as Pocket.

When you find a lengthy article on the internet but don’t have time to read it right then, you can add it to your Pocket account using either the Pocket bookmarklet in your browser or the Pocket extension on whatever app you’re using.

The Pocket app stores most content offline and displays web pages in a clutter-free view. It also lets you tag and share articles via email.

Pocket is available on all mobile and desktop operating systems and integrates with the most popular apps of the day. Pocket automatically synchronizes your content across all your devices. Thus, you can save content from one location and read it later on another device.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. You Have a Pile of Reading Material at Your Desk?
  2. How to Read Faster and Better
  3. You, Too, Could Read More Books
  4. How to Process that Pile of Books You Can’t Seem to Finish [+ 5 Other Reading Hacks]
  5. A Guide to Intelligent Reading // Book Summary of Mortimer Adler’s ‘How to Read a Book’

Filed Under: Managing People, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Books, Reading

How to Process that Pile of Books You Can’t Seem to Finish [+ 5 Other Reading Hacks]

April 21, 2015 By Nagesh Belludi 1 Comment

How to Read a Pile of Books

If you’re an avid reader, you most likely have a stack of books you’ve started reading but never seem to complete. You may have the habit of eagerly devouring a book until another arrives. Consumed by enthusiasm, you start reading that new book and set the first aside. Continually finding more to read, this shortcoming repeats itself. Inevitably, you are left with a pile of books on your nightstand.

The following tips will help you read more than one book at a time, process a pile of books, and finish all the works you’ve ever wanted to read.

  1. Rotate your reading and stick to a pile before adding more books to your reading list. To process a pile of three to five books, use this disciplined system: when you’re in the mood to read, choose the book on top of your pile. Then, read it as long as you feel like reading it. When you’re done reading, don’t put back the book back on the top of your pile. Instead, put the book at the bottom of the pile. During your next reading session, pick up the second book, which is now at the top of the pile. Rotate your reading. In this way, you can progressively read every book and finish everything before taking on a new pile.
  2. Don’t add new books to your reading list until you’ve finished the texts at hand. As you process each group of books, don’t add anything to your reading list before you’ve finished everything in the existing pile. Focus on one pile of books at a time.
  3. You may not need to read every page or chapter to “read” a book. Pre-read a book by finding its summary on the Internet. Customer reviews on Amazon.com often have useful summaries or a list of significant ideas. To read a book quickly, first skim through its preface, table of contents, and index. Next, browse its substance by scanning section titles, subtitles and chapters, and by glossing over any pictures and illustrations. Read the first and last paragraphs of each chapter, and executive summaries. If you feel like reading any section of the book, read each paragraph’s first line to develop a conceptual understanding before reading the content more closely. Consider taking a speed-reading course to improve reading speed and comprehension.
  4. Give up if you find a volume uninteresting or unnecessary. You’re not obligated to finish a book just because you’ve committed to reading it.
  5. Choose books with a variety of topics, themes, or genres. The variety will keep your interest.
  6. Abraham Lincoln reading to his son Tadd at the White House Review what you’ve read. If you’re not sure which book to read next, instead of choosing from a wealth of new titles, consider rereading a book that you’ve previously read and found useful. A good book’s valuable concepts can’t be entirely absorbed with just one reading. As film critic Dana Stevens once wrote, “Going back to a book is a way of daring that past self to find new evidence for that old love.” Some books invite periodic perusing for further intellectual stimulation or for reinforcement of various insights. Moreover, it often takes multiple exposures to a useful concept for you to store it in your “little brain attic” (to borrow Sherlock Holmes’s term for mental models) and incorporate it in your behavior.

If you’re looking for something good to read, here’s a list of books I read in 2014 and recommended in an earlier article.

While we’re on the topic of reading, I recommend How to Read a Book, American educator Mortimer Adler’s classic guide to intelligent reading.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. A Guide to Intelligent Reading // Book Summary of Mortimer Adler’s ‘How to Read a Book’
  2. You Have a Pile of Reading Material at Your Desk?
  3. How to Read Faster and Better
  4. You, Too, Could Read More Books
  5. Rip and Read During Little Pockets of Time

Filed Under: Mental Models, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Books, Reading

You Have a Pile of Reading Material at Your Desk?

October 28, 2007 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Staying on Top of Reading Material

In this ‘information overload’ era, you confront a sizeable quantity of reading material everyday: books, magazines, newspapers, memos, reports, and so forth. You are incessantly pressed for time. Consequently, you probably have a stack of reading material accumulating at a corner of your desk.

Here are four habits to help manage your reading material.

Preview

  • Manage Reading Material - Preview Preview memos, magazine- and newsletter-articles. Scrutinize the table of contents, and for each article that may seem interesting, scan through section-headings, introductory and concluding paragraphs, illustrations and keywords in boldface or italics. If you ought to read an article, tear-away or photocopy the relevant pages and add them to a ‘To Read’ folder.
  • Preview books before buying or borrowing a book. Check reviews on Amazon.com or other websites. Scan the jacket cover, table of contents and chapter headings. After obtaining the book, focus on reading only chapters and sections that are relevant to your interests.

Organize

  • Manage Reading Material - Organize Discard old reading material. If your reading material expands into a disorganized—and perhaps intimidating—pile, consider discarding the older articles, likely at the bottom of your pile. The content of these articles may no longer be relevant. In addition, you will probably never get to reading them.
  • Classify for priority. Assess the importance of every article and organize your reading material into two or three groups. This way, if your reading stack gets unmanageable, you may discard the least-important group.

Expand Comprehension

  • Manage Reading Material - Expand Comprehension Read with purpose. Throughout your reading, ask yourself questions such as “What are the key details discussed here? How are these details relevant? What are the take-away ideas? What can I learn? How can I change?”
  • Read the first and last lines of each paragraph to help grasp the premise of the entire paragraph. Check the summary or highlights first.
  • Study tables, illustrations, graphics and charts carefully. Characteristically, these visual elements contain comprehensive information that may summarize entire sections of text.

Stay On Top

  • Manage Reading Material - Stay on Top Carry your ‘To Read’ folder in your briefcase or bag so you can read while waiting for an appointment with your dentist or at an airport waiting to board your flight.
  • Set aside time for reading. Dedicate convenient times for reading activities and add these times to your calendar. Even brief periods of focused reading can be very productive.

Concluding Thoughts

In this fast-paced world, reading can be overwhelming. By prioritizing and adopting the above habits, you can make significant improvements to your ability to read more quickly and efficiently.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. How to Read Faster and Better
  2. You, Too, Could Read More Books
  3. How to Process that Pile of Books You Can’t Seem to Finish [+ 5 Other Reading Hacks]
  4. Rip and Read During Little Pockets of Time
  5. A Guide to Intelligent Reading // Book Summary of Mortimer Adler’s ‘How to Read a Book’

Filed Under: Effective Communication, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Books, Reading

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About: Nagesh Belludi [hire] is a St. Petersburg, Florida-based freethinker, investor, and leadership coach. He specializes in helping executives and companies ensure that the overall quality of their decision-making benefits isn’t compromised by a lack of a big-picture understanding.

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