Getting yourself to read more books is not as scary as it sounds. I think you are already reading more than you know. I may go as far as saying you are reading 100 books a year. Oops! Yes, you! Yes, you easily read more books every year. I know you are saying to yourself but he doesn’t know me. How can he say that? Allow me to explain. Go to the settings on your iPhone. Find Screen Time, and check how many hours you spend on apps such as WhatsApp, Facebook, and Twitter. I am guessing you are hovering around a minimum of 6 hours per day. Oops! if you do, leave a comment “I read more books” down below.
The point is you are reading more than you think you do. We read constantly on our phones. Checking emails, going through our Facebook and Twitter feeds. We are all reading more words per year. So why do we feel we are read less. I have a few thoughts.
We Happen Not to Read “Books”
We just happen not to read “books”. Why is this the case? It is not your fault as a reader but the fault of the book industry.
Allow me to explain. Average nonfiction books have to be a minimum of 10,000 words. An average fiction book has to be between 80,000 -100,000 words. Why so many words? That’s a value issue but not a content issue. The average nonfiction has 40% content and 60% filler. Most writers are “forced” to make their books longer to increase the perceived “value” of the book. You could care less. The reader could care less. We all can care less.
Unfortunately, you have assumed you don’t like “reading” because you are hoping to pick a book and quickly get an idea to solve your problem, and here you are at chapter 2 with nothing. You then drop the book and make yourself wonder, how do you get yourself to read more books?
2 tips on how to get yourself to read more books
To read more you have to drop your bad reading habits and learn to extract value quickly from the book you are reading. Let me explain.
1. Dropping your bad reading habits
We have never been taught how to read and extract value as quickly as possible. Rather we have been taught some extremely bad habits about reading. As Abby Marks-Beale in 10 Days to Faster Reading, writes, the following are bad habits we must drop if we are to extract value quickly from a book.
- You need to completely understand everything you read.❌
- It doesn’t matter what you read as long as you read.❌
- You should read every word in a book. ❌
- You need to sound out every word aloud or in your head.❌
- Don’t skim, that’s cheating.❌
- You need to remember everything you read. ❌
As you have already figured out, all the above methods slow us down when we read. Dropping these bad reading habits will get you to read more books. So how should we read to extract value in a time-effective manner? I am glad you asked.
2. Learn to extract value quickly from a book
The steps to reading quickly and extracting value from a book are:
- Setting your purpose for reading
- Scoping the book
- Previewing the book, and
- Reading the book
Setting Your Purpose for Reading
When you pick a book, you have to decide what you want to get from it. For example, you may pick a fiction book because you want to read a good story. You may pick a nonfiction book because you want to make more money. All your reading must be geared towards a purpose.
Scoping the book
After setting your purpose, you want to make sure the book will solve your problem. This is where scoping the book becomes crucial. It helps you to not waste time.
Scoping a book is extremely easy. You go through the table of contents and glance through the chapters. Do the chapters align with the goals you have set? If not, drop the book and move on to another book.
Previewing the Book
Now, we come to my favorite part of the process. We preview a book by reading as little as possible to assess whether we will get any detailed information from it.
Previewing is a straightforward process. You start reading from
- Preface
- Introduction, and
- Conclusion of the book
This first part should give you a solid overview of the book.
Second part of review process
The second part of the preview process is now to quickly read each paragraph or chapter you find interesting. When reading each paragraph, you only read the first sentence. This is known as the topic sentence. As we were taught in school, The first sentence of a paragraph should explain what the whole paragraph is about. The subsequent sentences expand on the main idea. Quickly preview the chapters you are interested in by reading only the topic sentences from the paragraphs. In effect, the process from setting your purpose to Previewing should take you about 30 minutes.
Reading the book
Now to actually, reading the book. You don’t need to read any book word for word. You should if you set that as a purpose. But when it comes to actual reading, you should only read the chapter or paragraphs you find most useful in your preview process. Again, read in detail the paragraphs and chapters you found most useful.
To wrap up, you should never read a book word for word. All books, I mean all books, should be previewed before reading. Previewing every book will help you to read more books quickly.
My thoughts on reading more books
When I was younger, I loved reading. My love for reading dwindled because of accessibility to good books and having less time. The challenge was I spent too much time reading every word. The trade-off with time and value didn’t make sense. So I stopped reading. It was not my fault and it is not your fault if you feel the same way. I stopped because I didn’t understand how books were written. Secondly, I was taught to read and understand every word before moving on. What a waste of time?
With the techniques of scoping and previewing, I now “read” and extract “value” for more books than I ever thought possible. Reading is not boring or scary if you understand the needed tools to avoid reading every single word.
Readers are leaders and as wealth builders, we need to cultivate the habit of updating ourselves without wasting too much time.
Until next time wealth builders, let’s build wealth.
