For me, reading is like writing on the inside of my brain. It’s like borrowing someone else’s brain, opening it up, and see what’s inside.
Knowledge is the ultimate equalizer; therefore, reading is the ultimate enabler.
Who needs real-life mentors when they can have 100+ mentors compressed into a small digital device like a kindle? I’m kidding on the mentors part; real-life mentors have their value, you get the point.
Long story short, I love reading, it’s one of the things I value doing the most.
It gives me peace while it also stimulates my brain at the same time. I don’t know many activities that give the same punch as reading does.
In reading more than 100 books over the past years, I’ve learned a few different reading styles to harness.
By the way, if you’re interested in the books I’ve read, please check out my GoodReads account and follow me there.
I’m currently reading How I Built This by Guy Raz, the host from the popular podcast: How I Built This from NPR. Even though I’ve been building companies for over the past 8 years, I still love how practical this book is and how many ideas (nuggets) I’m getting from the anecdotes in it.
But let’s get back to the real reason why we’re here: understanding the different methods for reading a book that you can apply in your life. These methods and reading techniques will help you to become a better reader in general. Mix them up and use them wisely to get the most out of your time.
Some of these methods are my own, and some are ‘probably’ borrowed from others. Let me know if you’ve been applying any of them!
1. Studying
Let’s start with the slowest and most time-consuming method: Studying a book. We all know it, and we’ve all done it. You take your time with a pen and paper, and you truly study the contents of the book.
Your goal here is to understand the contents. You want to repeat the ideas that are told in the book, and you want to utilize its information in other concepts that you’re working on.
You study it to make it your own. When you’re studying, you go beyond reading. You want to go beyond the meaning, and you want to make the information part of you.
When to study?
Studying is intense and time-consuming, so I wouldn’t recommend studying every book you want to read. I use the study method when there is a pragmatic need to enhance my knowledge on a subject to a certain level.
Business law is such an example for me.
It’s a subject that I’ve studied intensely since, as a startup founder, you tend to have to deal with a lot of legal stuff. You’ll get shaven if you don’t know some basic things.
Study a subject that you need in a certain moment, and you’ll have 2x more focus while diving into a subject. When the need is high for knowledge on the subject, it’s even better to study.
For example, for me, at a certain point in my career, I had a pragmatic need to study business accounting. I felt like an idiot in meetings with investors since I didn’t know what a P&L was or what the difference between Capex and Opex was.
What reading Speed are we talking about?
0.25x the speed of your normal reading speed since you’ll be rereading, writing and taking notes along the way.
2. Just ‘normal’ reading
‘Normal’ reading is the reading we all know and trust. It’s the reading we learn early in school. It’s reading without a specific goal in mind. Just you, eating the content cookies.
‘Normal’ reading is similar to regular driving. You sit behind the steering wheel and drive the car. You’re not rushing, you’re not stressed you don’t really need to get there in time and you don’t have any specific stops planned for the drive. It’s just driving from point A to B. It’s the same with reading. You sit somewhere, take out your book and read.
‘Normal’ reading is your baseline reading speed; it’s your 1x reading speed.
‘Normal’ reading is fine, and many get by this way, but I tend to use the methods below more often.
3. Nugget Hunting
No, not chicken nuggets, we’re hunting for idea nuggets. Idea nuggets are pieces of information in a book that spark great ideas. What is a great idea?
You’ll know it when you’ll have one because it gives you an instant kick of energy. These ideas hit you like an electrifying tingle down your spine.
An idea like this will lift you and spark up all your brains synapsis.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I feel bad for you.
Nugget hunting is slightly faster than “just reading”, but it’s slower than scanning. You put up the pace 2x so this will mean that you’ll miss a lot of content since you won’t absorb as much information consciously.
How can you hunt for nuggets? (IMPORTANT)
Nugget hunting is a skill. It’s a method you need to master since it requires you to be focussed while being unfocused at the same time. It will help if you read through the pages without trying to really absorb the information. You let the information come to you while at the same time you keep track of a single feeling in your body: The electrifying tingle. Once the tingle comes up, and the contents your reading is giving you many new ideas and new concepts or new connections are popping up in your mind, that is when you’ve undelved an idea nugget.
Take it slower now that you have an idea nugget, take your time. Once the excitement fades, pick up the pace and start hunting for those nuggets again.
4. Scanning
Scanning is for those of us that lack time. Scanning a book is for those that are too anxious to commit all their time to a single book. Most books are extremely stretched blog posts anyways. Scanning works well for most books these days. Actually, now that I think about it, I always scan a book first before I delve into it.
Maybe scanning is more like a sub-method to get to know what you’re up against. I would recommend you scan every book before you go and read it since it can save you time.
How do you scan a book effectively?
My scan starts on the GoodReads book reviews section. The reviews section on GoodReads is handy when it comes to scanning a book. Besides sharing their personal opinion on a book, people tend to write down summaries of a book in their reviews.
When the reviews are good, and the summaries sound compelling, I’ll know that the book is worth it. Try it. It’s like doing a try out for free before you buy something.
After the Goodreads step, you can now go one step deeper. It’s time to scan the book from cover to cover. Step one is always to skip the following parts when you’re scanning:
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- Foreword
- Preface or Introduction
This will save you some time from the start since most of these are just filled with fluff. Skip these sections always unless you’re studying and you want to know which thinkers and other people might have influenced the writer.
What you do want to look at is the:
- Table of Contents
For scanning, the table of contents is the most important part of the book. It would be best if you took a few moments to go through it and see which chapters catch your attention.
Again, your feeling is the indicator here. Try to feel which chapters speak to you intrinsically. Which chapters excite you?
Now that a few chapters excite you try to come up with some questions that arise when reading the chapter’s title.
For example, below are some questions that I use when I’m about to scan a book:
- What’s the main point of this chapter?
- Why is this chapter important
- And finally, how does it relate to the other chapters.
Side note: If none of the chapters looks promising, I think the book is not for you, and you NEED to put it away. Never continue reading a book because you’ve spent money on it.
You made a bet on the contents of a book, and it didn’t pan out, that’s okay. Like an investment, don’t fall for the sunk cost fallacy and try to recoup your investment by reading the book. Just put it away, or instantly put it on eBay or Amazon and see if you can get something out of it.
Now that you’ve picked your focus chapter because you picked these intuitively open the pages up at the chapter you like and start scanning the pages.
Start with beginnings and ends of chunks and sections in chapters. Always take your time at the end of a chapter. That is mostly where the meat is in 99% of the cases.
When there’s no meat at the end of the chapter, it could mean one of two things: 1) the writer has a shitty editor, or 2) the entire chapter was just full of fluff, and you just justified the entire practice of scanning.
Your goal with scanning is to get quick answers on the questions that you came up with for the chapter that spoke to you.
Now rinse and repeat for every chapter that speaks to you, and you’ll be on your way to the next one in no time.
What reading Speed are we talking about?
Scanning increases my reading speed to 4x the normal speed. I will go through books quick when I’m scanning.
But it’s not the quickest method yet…
5. Sniping
Sniping is the Usain Bolt of reading for those of you that want to get maximum bang for their buck.
When I say ‘bang for your buck’, I mean saving yourself a lot of time while still finding what you wish for in a book.
Let’s say the subject of parenting, for instance. I can think of 10 good books on parenting, but would you really want to read all of those?
When you only have 9 months to prepare, 10 books is a lot.
So how do you read all of them in the most effective way?
You snipe for content. Sniping is like firing one shot to kill.
You need it to be on the mark since it’s war and you need to be effective.
When you’re sniping, you have a sole purpose, which is to answer a single question.
So before you snipe for content, you need to come up with a single question that you want to be answered. It helps when you have a pragmatic question.
Let’s say you want to become a Memory master. Then you can snipe for useful content by asking the single question: What do all memory master have in common in their practice? You find the books that can help you become a memory master and you snipe for this single answer.
Sniping has the benefit of being very goal-oriented, and that is what makes this method so effective.
It’s also effective since this goal-oriented hunt for an answer makes you forget your time and place in the universe quickly. Sniping brings me into flow most often, which makes me an even more effective Sniper.
Sniping is the focussed quest to answer a single question
Finally, sniping is almost the same as scanning but with a single focus and question in mind. Find the chapters that can potentially answer this question, start and the end of the chapter. Those the end hint on a potential answer to your question? If not, continue to the next one. If so, start the chapter fro the beginning and look for answers.
Now you know the five methods that I use to read non-fiction books. I hope the methods serve you well and I hope they’ll make you better at reading.
And always remember, it’s not about speed, it’s about the methods you use, and it’s about cultivating a strong process. A process that’ll help you to become more effective in your life.
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