How to Read a Ton of Books and Actually Remember the Content
One thing you consistently hear in podcasts, interviews and articles with successful people is what voracious readers they are. Newsletters from such individuals go out with lengthy lists of “what I’m reading now”, and you wonder how they possibly have the time.
And then of course there’s this guy, plowing through a book a day (allegedly).
How do they do it? How can you read so many books so quickly, and more importantly, actually retain the knowledge in those books?
It starts with changing the way you approach reading. Bear in mind, this advice is not aimed at someone who hates to read. It is aimed at people who love learning, but feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of books out there that they feel they need to get through. This advice also applies to NON-FICTION books only. I do not recommend reading fiction this way at all.
Here’s the thing: You don’t actually have to read EVERY word on EVERY page to gain value from a book and understand what it is trying to say. It is possible to get the overall argument or idea of a book very quickly.
The fact is that a typical fact-based, nonfiction book only contains one or two (usually one) major ideas that serve as the foundation that the rest of the book is built upon. If you can understand that idea, you understand the book, and you can derive some value from it.
Let’s say there’s a stack of business books you want to get through. There’s a couple ways I recommend approaching this:
1) The speed-read approach. Read the covers, jackets, author bio, introduction, and first chapter. Scan the table of contents, and take note of how the chapters form natural parts of a whole, each supporting the overall thesis of the book. By doing this, I can tell very quickly whether a book is worth delving deeper into, or if I should move on.
(Side note: Check out this great blog post by Tim Ferriss about dramatically increasing reading speed by changing the way you scan the page with your eyes.)
2) Just read organically, at your own pace. Don’t take notes, don’t underline, and don’t worry about trying to remember everything you read. Just allow your brain to absorb the content as you go. When you finish the book, put it down and just let the ideas marinate in your mind for a few days. If and when you revisit it, you’ll remember which parts of the book really spoke to you. Those are the parts where you’ll get the most value, and which contained the knowledge you probably needed the most.
3) The academic dissection. This is where you break out the marker, pen or pencil, and start underlining and highlighting sentences, paragraphs, or whole pages, and filling in the margins with notes. This is only necessary if the book covers a subject you’re really passionate about, or something you want to gain advanced knowledge of.
Let go of the idea that you MUST read a book all the way through to understand it, as well as the idea that you can only read it once, or that you have to “get it” the first time. You can always go back.
Furthermore, you should always asking yourself: is reading this even necessary to achieve what I’m trying to do? Is it in alignment with your goals? This will prevent you from wasting time on books that aren’t a good fit for you (exception: if someone more successful than you is recommending a book, you might want to check it out anyway, even if it doesn’t seem relevant to you at first).
Try out these 3 methods, or some combination of them, and you’ll be amazed at how much content you can not only read, but actually understand and retain. For years, it took me forever to finish a book because I was so obsessed with trying to meticulously read each page and make sure I didn’t miss anything. Now I usually follow methods 1 and 2, and only do 3 if it is something I’m really in to. Amazingly, I remember far more of what I read now than in the past. I think the same will be true for you.
