How I Read Non-Fiction.

This blog post covers my reading strategy acquired through years of practice. I’ve always tried to get the most that I can out of what I read – especially when related to non-fiction books.

Whether it be a skill-based personal development book or a biography of an Ancient Philosopher, there’s always things I can find to apply to my own life.

There are some obvious nuances and exceptions to this plan. I’m not trying to convince everyone to read the same way – but I implore you to try at least a few of these strategies and see how they help you.

SELECTION

• Before starting on a book, write out what I intend / hope to learn from it. This is just a quick hack to get me even more excited about the book.

• No limits for when I can read biographies, philosophy, general non-fiction, or fiction. I usually read these books without a specific purpose in mind. Most of the time, they’re just to increase my general knowledge, gain random insights, or for pure enjoyment (the best of them hit all 3).

• Only start with practical based books when I intend to use them. This method, called the Just-In-Time System, has been a great way for me to stop procrastinating by reading. For example, I refused to let myself read any books on Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu until I had attended my first class. For years, I read business books without any concrete plans to start a business. The same goes for people who read books on the craft of writing and never put down their own words. The JIT system is the best counter I know to this tendency.

READING

• Make time to read each day. There’s a great study that shows people who seem most disciplined with things tend to be using the least discipline. Why? They enjoy it or have trained the habit well enough. If I read a page, I’ll end up reading way more. Once I get over that inertia of picking up the book, it’s all easy from there.

• Train reading speed (Tim Ferriss Method for increasing speed). When I was younger, I trained my reading speed up to a break-neck pace without losing comprehension. Over the years, I let it dwindle down to a rather average pace. I’ve changed that again recently. For those interested in boosting their reading speed, check out this great video from Tim Ferriss: How to Speed Read | Tim Ferriss

• Use advanced speed reading for less important books. It feels egotistical to call any book “less important” – and an argument can be made that I shouldn’t be reading those books at all – but occasionally, I’m looking to get a few insights from a book that is largely derivative (think a book that essentially summarises other books). In that case, I’ll skim the book, taking notes of chapter summaries and marking particular passages that interest me.

• Take notes on each read – unless planning to reread from the start. I’ve had people – most who don’t read – be appalled to see me writing in my books. The fact is, if I’m reading to learn, I need to take notes. So, I underline, I write in the margins, I circle passages, you get the idea. Occasionally, if it’s a short book that I know I’ll be re-reading, I’ll miss notes on the first pass through – but I’m thinking of phasing this out since I’ve found it to be less effective than I hoped at forcing me to retain.

• (Optional): Apply How To Read A Book Strategies for deeper understanding. Want to get some weird looks on the train? Pick up a copy of “How to Read A Book” by Mortimer J. Adler. The book, written back in the 40’s and heavily revised in the 70’s, provides an intense guide on how to read to understand the most you can from a book. There’s a lot in the book that is dated or confrontational, but it has a lot of great stuff in there too.

• (Optional): Use Active Recall throughout the process. If I’m waiting in line, or just driving without an audiobook or podcast, I’ll think back to what I’ve learned so far from the book I’m reading. It’s a good habit that’s easy to do: the moment you close the book to think back on all the things you’ve read, and before you pick it up again, try to remember what you read in your last session.

NOTE-TAKING

• Take notes while reading by marking the pages. Let notes “simmer” for 1 to 2 weeks before going through them to filter out the unimportant. I’m fairly liberal with what I mark in a book, it might be a quote I like, a tip I want to try, a story I want to remember, or a book recommendation I want to read – the list goes on. Because of this, the amount of notes I take is ridiculous. One tactic I’ve recently learned about was letting the notes “simmer” for 1 to 2 weeks before going through them. This naturally lets me filter out the unimportant, as I’ll only want to transfer the best of them. 

• Create an index at the front of the book. Pick up any non-fiction book I’ve read in the past 3 years, and you’ll find an index at the front with my favourite notes. It’s such an underrated tool that makes it a breeze to review the book or find a certain passage.

• Transition key ideas / quotes to index cards. I might be changing this soon – funny enough back to a commonplace book. Either way, it’s useful to pull the best ideas out and have them in one place.

• Write a review of the book – summarising key points. This is just another way to force yourself to distil the contents and see how much you actually understood from the book.

• Produce a one-page summary of the book and create necessary one-pages on topics. Although similar, this is different to a review. The one-page summary makes it extremely easy to implement what you’ve learned. For example, a book on writing better – I might just have all the best tips on a single page. However, if there’s a great amount of information on one topic (for this example, let’s say editing) I’ll produce a one-page summary on that as well.

IMPLEMENTATION – Words Into Works.

• Create an idea list (or multiple) on experiments to implement the information. The gulf between the person I am and the person I want to be is more action and more discipline. By forcing myself to create these lists, I distil further from the book (helping me retain it) but also give myself a low-effort way to put the ideas into practice. When I first read “How To Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie, I tested the concepts with a couple of people – the results made me change my behaviour completely.

• If the book is convincing, run through implementation of experiments. If I read a book that’s not very convincing to me, I might hesitate to run through the experiments. If the book is convincing, I have no excuse, and will start to experiment as soon as possible.

• Track experiments with blog posts or in journals. I like to track my experiments. Most of the time I just catch them in my notebook or journal, but the most effective ones, I’ll start to transition into blog posts.

• Produce a one-page summary of the experiment / implementation. You getting an idea of a theme? If the experiment is successful, I’ll create a dead-simple one page guide to doing it again OR keeping it for a long-time.

LONG-TERM LEARNING

• Review notes: 1 week, 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, and 1 year after reading. This usually involves a skimming of my summaries of the book or the index cards I created. Sometimes this will spur me to do a re-read or a deep review, but most of the time, it’s just a good way to jog my memory or remind me of things I should be doing.

• Re-read index often. This is just a way to keep capturing ideas, generating new experiment ideas, and reminding myself of how much I want / need to learn.

• Add findings from experiments to notes on each category. All of my findings from an experiment will go into my notes on a subject – it could be Writing, Mental Health, Motivation, etc. It’s just a way to help reinforce and capture what I’m learning.

• Gather one-pagers together into subject playbooks. Having all of my one-pagers together let’s me create playbooks that inform how I handle particular situations or achieve certain outcomes. In the end, these are my ultimate guides to particular subjects.

And that’s a wrap.

Yes, the system is much more complex than simply reading the books cover to cover. It’s more time intensive but I believe the returns are more than just marginal.

I think this system provides a magnitude more benefits than “ordinary” reading. It is something that I hope to prove as I continue to improve it and attempt to apply it.