Finding time to read boils down to choices about how you allocate
your time. And allocating your time is how successful people increase
productivity.
In a good week, I
can read three to five books. Sometimes fewer. I’m an average
reader, likely within one standard deviation in terms of speed and
retention. In short, I’m no different from you when it comes to how
fast I read.
For example, while
remarkably enjoyable, Blood and Beauty consumed almost a week. I was
incredibly slow reading Seneca’s Epistles 1-65, and even slower
with Antifragile. These are books I don’t want to rush. On the
other hand, I can cruise through something like Fate of the States in
an afternoon.
When reading, I
generally take notes. I’m underlining, synthesizing, asking
questions, and relating concepts from other things I’ve read. I use
a variation of the how-to-read system developed by Mortimer Adler.
After I finish a
book, I let it age for a week or two and then pick it up again. I
look at my notes and the sections I’ve marked as important. I write
them down. Or I let the book age for another week or two.
Let’s look at this
another way. Rather than say what I do, I’ll tell you what I don’t
do.
What gets in the way
of reading?
I don’t spend a
lot of time watching TV. (The lone exception to this is during
football season, when I watch one game a week.)
I watch very few
movies.
I don’t spend a
lot of time commuting.
I don’t spend a
lot of time shopping.
These choices are
deliberate. I don’t even have cable TV. I watch NFL through Game
Pass, which also saves time (if you don’t watch games live, you can
watch the full game in under 30 minutes).
I live downtown; I
can walk to the grocery store, purchase a bagful of groceries, and
return home all within 15 minutes.
If you assume that
the average person spends 3–4 hours a day watching TV, an hour or
more commuting, and another 2–3 hours a week shopping, that’s 28
hours a week on the low end.
Twenty-eight hours.
That’s 1,680 minutes. That’s huge. If you read a page a minute,
that’s more than 1,600 pages a week.
Books Are Important
Few things are as
rewarding as making friends with the eminent dead. Reading isn’t
something to be done once a week to check a box; it’s something to
do every day.
If you’re a
knowledge worker, you’re paid to use your brain, so it’s in your
best interest to make that brain as big as possible.
Wherever I go, a
book is not far behind. It might be on my phone or physical, but
there is always a book close by.
Finding time to read
is easier than you might think. Waiting for a bus? Stop staring down
the street and read. Waiting for a taxi? Read. On the train? Read. On
the plane? Read. Waiting for your flight? Read.
What I read depends
on the situation.
If I know I have
only a few minutes, I’m not going to read something that requires a
lot of mental context switching to get back into. I’ll keep it
simple, with something like Phil Jackson’s Eleven Rings: The Soul
of Success or Grow Regardless. Waiting around is also a great time to
read magazines and printed copies of articles from the web. These
tend to be short, rather disposable, and easily digested.
Early in the
evening, say around 8 or 9, I’ll grab a glass of wine and sink into
something serious. Something I want to read without interruption.
Some nights I’ll read well past midnight; other nights I’ll stop
reading around 10 or 11.
I’ll then do a
little bit of blogging and plop myself into bed and read till I fall
asleep.
Sometimes I’ll
read something light before going to bed, and sometimes I’ll read
something requiring more thought so I can ponder an idea while I’m
falling asleep.
When I’m not
reading, I’m trying to think about what I’ve just read. I don’t
pull out a book while I’m in the checkout line at the grocery
store. While everyone else is playing the “which line is longer
game,” I’m toying with something I’ve read recently.
Ignorance is more
expensive than a book.
Investments
The biggest problem
with reading so much is money.
Books are expensive.
I often joke that the only group I’m in the 1% of is Amazon
customers.
After I graduated
from university, I made a choice that I’ve rarely deviated from: I
don’t worry about any money spent on books. I’m not alone. I know
other people do this, too.
The first thing I
did when I started making money was to call my younger brothers and
tell them that until they graduated high school, I’d buy them
whatever books they wanted as long as they promised to read them. As
many as they wanted; whatever they wanted.
Why Do You Read?
Some people read for
entertainment. Some people read to acquire knowledge. Some read for
both.
To me, reading is
more than a raw input. I read to increase knowledge. I read to find
meaning. I read for better understanding of others and myself. I read
to discover. I read to make my life better. I read to make fewer
mistakes.
To borrow words from
David Ogilvy, reading can be “a priceless opportunity to furnish
your mind and enrich the quality of your life.”
Remember the tagline
of this website: Mastering the best that other people have already
figured out. That’d be nearly impossible without reading. In fact,
it is largely through reading that we walk this path.
We’ve been
recording knowledge in books for a long time. That means there’s
not a lot that’s new; it’s just recycled old knowledge. Even
Nassim Taleb, author of Antifragile, points out that several ancient
philosophers grasped the concept of antifragility. Odds are that no
matter what you’re working on, someone somewhere, who is smarter
than you, has probably thought about your problem and put it into a
book.
In The Prince,
Machiavelli writes, “A wise man ought always to follow the paths
beaten by great men, and to imitate those who have been supreme, so
that if his ability does not equal theirs, at least it will savor of
it.” That’s not to say that this is the only way, but why not
start with the best thinking that has come before you? Seneca, on the
same subject, wrote, “Men who have made these discoveries before us
are not our masters, but our guides.”
The Library
When I get into
detailed discussions on my book buying habits, people often ask why I
never use the library. “Think of all the money you’d save,”
they say.
The truth is, I keep
most of the books I read and I go back to them. “If you are OK
giving the books back after two weeks,” writes Ryan Holiday, “you
might want to examine what you are reading.” I take that one step
further: If you’re not keeping what you read, you probably want to
think about what you’re reading and how.
While not
impossible, it’s harder to have conversations with library books.
You can’t pull out a pen and write in the margin. You can’t
highlight something. Having conversations with books is one of the
ways that I learn.
“The rich invest
in time, the poor invest in money.”
— Warren Buffett
If you wanted to
look something up again in a library book, you’d have to get in
your car and drive back to the library. But how much time have you
spent now driving back and forth?
How do you value
your time? We can make more money; we can’t make more time.
Charlie Munger,
voracious reader, billionaire, and vice chairman of Berkshire
Hathaway, once commented: “In my whole life, I have known no wise
people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn’t read all the
time – none, zero.”
It’s pretty
simple: Either you read or you don’t. If you read, you probably
want to do it more. If you don’t read, I’m not going to convince
you to put down the remote.
Reading more isn’t
a secret. It comes down to choices.
Warning: Side
effects of reading more may include (1) increased intelligence; (2)
an uncomfortable silence when someone asks you what happened on Game
of Thrones last night and you say “Game of what?”; (3) better
ideas; and (4) increased understanding of yourself and others.