How to become a better Reader!

I love reading books, it's something that, I think is the best form of learning, personally for me and what I want to do in this post is share with you the process that I use to read my books because the biggest question that gets asked quite often is, 'I do read books, but I don't know how to remember what I've read, I don't know how to apply what is it that I've read in my own life', and I've struggled with that for the longest time as well. And then, I think about four or five  year back, I came up with this process that has worked immensely well for me and that is what I want to share with you. 

1. I ONLY READ NON- FICTOIN

First, a few things, one, I only read non-fiction. I've never read fiction, in fact, I think the last fiction I read was The FountainHead by Ayn Rand and  I think that that was such a powerful book, that is was almost like I don't want to read fiction again. I have nothing against fiction it's just that it doesn't appeal to me. So, a lot of what I'm going to discuss is applicable only to non-fiction because it is driven by the fact that whatever is it that I am reading, I want to apply some of that to my life, make a change, make some difference in how I live and that is why there will be a few nuances which will only be specific to non-fiction. 

2.I ONLY READ IN DIGITAL FORMAT

I only reading a book on a digital format, I use a Kindle, So, I read my books on a kindle and I love that because a kindle is a really powerful device, it allows you to highlight, bookmark, all the things that you can also do in a book, but it makes it very easy to search for what you highlighted or bookmarked and extract that, which is a very important component of how I read my books and that's why I start reading it digitally. I do eventually, buy books in a physical format but I'll tell you which are the books that I buy, because most, I don't. So, I read every day, I read about thirty to forty-five minutes.

3.I READ 30-45 MINUTES EVERYDAY

I read every day, I read about thirty to forty-five minutes every day, this is right in the start, so when I get up, after I've meditated, the next thing that I do is I read, and those thirty to forty-five  minutes are mostly either on my sofa or on my bed. I'm not so particular about the posture that I  read in, I do follow a very strict discipline after I've read the book and I'll tell you what that is, but while reading, it is just about comfort. 

4.I DON'T READ IN THE NIGHT

I don't read before I go to bed because I just, and this is personal, I just feel that books that help me sleep better are not the kind of books that I want to read, I want to read books that activate me, that genuinely get me to think and that's why non-fiction, and that's why reading early in the morning. Because when I'm reading early in the morning, I'm active, I'm ready to get things done, so I want to be proved, I want to be challenged, I want to be reading something that maybe just throws at me something that I have never believed in or thought was never to be true and now it's forcing me to think in a different way, so that's why I really like reading right in the morning, not towards the end of the day. 

5.WHILE READING I SKIM A LOT

When I'm reading, I skim a lot, so I'm not one of those who reads every single word and every single sentence, I don't. I skim a lot. I'm skimming through sentences, I'm skimming through even pages, because, here's the truth about nonfiction, most of them should not have been books, they should've been blog posts at beast, and that means the book becomes repetitive, the book is just reinforcing the same thing, which is important by the way, but if you've got it then you just want to quickly move, move, move. So I'm a fast reader by that sense, and not because I'm reading fast, but because I'm jumping words. This has come after years of practice hours, so I wouldn't recommend for you to start skimming if you are just starting how to read, just start by being as slow as it takes, being just as thoughtful as it needs to be, and enjoy the process, that's the key thing, you have to enjoy the process and whatever works for you. By the same logic though, and this was a big change that I made four-five years back, I don't finish all my books.

6.I DON'T FINISH ALL MY BOOKS

I don' t finish all my books, I don't finish the books that I start, in case it doesn't interest me. I, in fact, today believe that it is as much a book's responsibility to earn my attention, as it is my responsibility to give the books its attention. And that is why, it's a give and take, if a book in the early stages, or somewhere in the middle is just losing my attention and is just becoming repetitive or not becoming as gripping as it should be in its story-telling, I'm like, I'll give it one chance but after that I'll just leave the book. I know it look me forever to read 'Autobiography of a Yogi' because it is an intensely deep book and a difficult one at that. But I was okay, I think that is my most quit book, if there is some title like that that I can give it, I have quit that book almost five, six, seven times, which is I start reading it and this time I'm determined that I will and then at some point of time I'm like, "You know what? Not happening, not happening". And it took me almost seven or eight times to finish that book, I'm glad that I did, it's a great, great book, but as I said, I didn't put the pressure on myself to finish the book just because I started it and that's an important distinction of how I read my books.  

7.I LIKE TO HIGHLIGHT

While I'm reading, and because I'm reading digitally, I'm highlighting like crazy. Any sentence that strikes me, any thought that strikes me, any story that strikes me, anything at all that captivates me, I'm highlighting it. It's very easy to highlight it on kindle, you use your finger to do that, so it becomes supremely easy. And once I finish the book, or even if  I leave it midway, whatever is it that I've highlighted, kindle has this really powerful feature of exporting the highlights in a PDF and e-mailing it to an address and that is brilliant, because at the point of time I export all the highlights, convert that into a PDF, and send it to my mail address and then, the next day, I sit, and this is when I sit in a disciplined fashion, this is work, so this is scheduled during my work hours. Well, my work is slightly in my control and that is why I can afford to do so, if you are working in a job, then you will have to set time aside, which is reading, and that's capturing all these thoughts, then reflecting, which is an equally important and perhaps the most important part of reading a book. So I then sit down on a table in a proper, professional manner, as if it is work, I have the PDF in front of me on a laptop or an iPad or whatever and for each of the PDFs, I now make a note of how can I apply this in my life. It could be anything, it could be a story that  was shared and how can I convert that maybe into a posts that I share with all of you, it is a thought that provokes me and I want to see how I want to experiment with it or maybe do something about it, it could be a great idea that  I can apply in my startup, in perhaps something else in life. Whatever is it, I will force myself to think of where can this sentence, story, paragraph be used in my life. And that is a first level draft that I make for myself. When I write it, my brain registers that to be important, I've spoken about this quite actively.

Retention level 1 WRITING

When you write something, you are telling your brain "This is important." And that is a great way for you to retain something more than just by reading it, so that's the first level of retention.

Retention level 2 READING THE NOTES AGAIN

 I then come back to these notes a month afterwards,  would've made some changes, maybe made some promises, maybe made some commitments, maybe just done something differently from what I used to in the past. And after a month I see, which of these still stayed, which of  these have brought about a change, as early as that change maybe, which of these just fell through, so they didn't make really make any difference or perhaps I got bored of it or perhaps I just realized "You know what, it doesn't work for me" whatever the case may be. So, I'm not being harsh on myself, I'm not putting any pressure of it making work. I just am asking, "Where am I in this perhaps drop it. And that's the second level of retention. At that point of time, if I feel that this book has really made a big difference in my life and I feel that there is a lot more that I can perhaps learn from this book because this was the first level glance right? 

Retention level 3 BUYING A PHYSICAL COPY 

I was skimming through it maybe I was skipping some chapter some pages and even despite that, whatever highlights I made, they brought about some meaningful change in my thought, in the way that I look at life or the way that I go about it. So I was like great, I'll buy a physical copy of that book and that is when I buy a physical copy of the book and it goes into my re-read list. So  I maintain a re-read list and those are books that I keep reading every now and then, at least once every year, and those just form part of my arms and ammunition to continuously keep challenging myself or learning something new about my own self or about the world, and I have come to believe that there are millions of books in the world and you possibly can't read all of  them, but there are only a few that apply very strongly to you and if you were to consistently and continuously read those books every now and then, you will learn a lot more than to just keep reading newer books and not retaining anything out of that. So that is my simple journey of going through how I read a book, as you would imagine, it has this reading part to it, which is habitual, all of us commit to it but this equally important if not more, retention part of it and that's like work, that's serious business, and until I didn't do that, whatever is it that I was reading, I was unable to conclude whether I was really applying it in my life or in fact, I was even retaining what I was reading in the first place or not, and it's only once I started writing, only once I started forcing myself to ask this question "How does this one thing apply to my life? Did it  make a material, big difference?" 

So, a few other things that I do when I read books. One, I don't listen to books, I'm not a big fan of audiobooks, I read  my books, and it's because there is a pecking order of learning. We can learn form watching, we can learn from listening, we can learn from reading and we can learn from doing and  we can learn from writing. And these five ways of learning, have very different learning patterns for everyone. So you would figure that maybe, you are a terrific learner and you absorb things really very well, when you hear them. Not the case with me, I absorb things very will if I read them and I write them. And that's why I double down on these two activities. So for me, hearning does not help, for me, hearning is a passive commitment, and when I'm making anything passive, when I'm committing anything passively, it's not as impactful as getting it done actively. So if  I'm listening to an audiobook and I'm also checking my mails or maybe writing something else and so on, that other activity is becoming more important, the listening is just going into some subconscious and it becomes really hard for me to dig into  that subconscious and pull out the best extracts, so I don't. I also don't read multiple books at the same time, I devote myself to one book and I  read that, thankfully because  I skim and I have the daily practice of reading, I'm able to read about a book a week because most books are between the four-to-five-hour range, and over seven days I get about four to four and a half hours of reading, and with the skimming, I'm able to finish most books in that time. There are some books that take longer and I'm totally okay with that, I'm absolutely fine with a book taking more than a week, I  am not responding to anyone, I'm not setting some world record, I'm not setting some output or goal or target of reading any 'A' books in a year, none, I've just committed myself to the habit of reading and I thoroughly enjoy that. The only big difference that I've done is what this post is about, making a proper process of how do I go about reading the book.