this is how warren buffett, one of the most successful people in the business world, describes his day. session. reading.
advises everyone to read more, and that is certainly a goal that we can all achieve. our personal improvements in the buffer are regularly reflected in the books we read: how we resolve to read more and make reading a habit. I imagine you are in the same boat too. read more is one of our most common ambitions.
You are reading: Best way to read books
so how do we do it? And what are we going to do with all that information once we have it?
read more and remembering it all is a discussion with many different layers and many interesting possibilities. I’m happy to present a few possibilities here on how to read more and remember it all, and I’d love to hear your thoughts below.
but first, let’s establish some baselines…
how fast do you read?
One of the obvious shortcuts to reading more is reading faster. that’s probably the first place many of us would look for a quick win in our reading routine.
so how fast do you read?
staples (yes, the office supply chain) collected speed reading data as part of an advertising campaign to sell e-readers. the campaign also included a speed reading tool that is still available for testing. go ahead and take the quiz to see how fast you read.
(My score was 337 words per minute. Yours?)
The basic speed reading test includes data on how other demographics compare in words per minute. according to staples, the average adult reads 300 words per minute.
- 3rd graders = 150 words per minute
- 8th graders = 250
- average college student = 450
- average “ top executive level” = 575
- average university professor = 675
- speed readers = 1500
- world champion speed reader = 4700
Is reading faster always the right solution to the goal of reading more? Not always. Comprehension still matters, and some reports say that speed reading or skimming leads to forgotten details and poor retention. Still, if you can bump up your words per minute marginally while still maintaining your reading comprehension, it can certainly pay dividends in your quest to read more.
There is also another way to view the “read more” question.
how much do you read?
There’s speed reading and there’s plenty of reading. a combination of the two will be the best way to boost your reading routine, but each is valuable on its own. in fact, for many people, it’s not about the time trial of getting from start to finish with a book or a story, but rather about the story itself. speed reading doesn’t really help when reading for pleasure.
In this sense, the desire to read more could simply mean having more time to read and reading more content (books, magazines, articles, blog posts) in its entirety.
Let’s start with a reading baseline. How many books do you read a year?
A 2012 study by the Pew Research Center found that adults read an average of 17 books each year.
the keyword here is “average”. there are huge extremes at each end, both those who read more than 17 books per year and those who read much less, like zero. the same bank research study found that 19 percent of Americans don’t read any books. A 2013 Huffington Post/Yougov poll showed that number could be even higher: 28 percent of Americans haven’t read a book in the past year.
wanting to read more puts you in some pretty elite company.
5 ways to read more books, blogs and articles
1. read to speed up: tim ferriss’s guide to reading 300% faster
Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Workweek and a handful of other bestsellers, is one of the leading voices on tricks, experiments, and how-to’s. so it’s no wonder it has a speed reading method to triple your reading speed.
his plan contains two techniques:
- use a pen as a tracker and pacemaker, such as when some people move their finger back and forth along a line while reading
- start reading each new line at least three words from the first word of the line and end at least three words after the last word
The first technique, the tracker/pacemaker, is primarily a tool to master the second technique. Ferriss calls this second technique perceptual expansion. With practice, you train your peripheral vision to be more effective at picking up words that you don’t follow directly with your eye. according to ferriss:
The following image from eyetracking.me shows what this concept of perceptual expansion might look like in terms of reading:
You’ll find similar ideas in a lot of speed reading tips and classes (some going so far as to suggest you read line by line in a snake fashion). Rapid eye movements called saccades occur constantly as we read and as our eyes jump from margins to words. Minimizing these is a key way to boost your reading times.
The bottom line here: If you can improve your peripheral vision, you may be able to read faster—maybe not 300 percent faster, but every little bit counts.
2. try a new way of reading
Is there still room for innovation in reading? a couple of new reading tools say yes.
See Also: Grace Burrowes – Book Series In Order
spritz and blinkist take unique approaches to help you read more: one helps you read faster, and the other helps you digest books faster.
first, spray. As mentioned earlier in the speed reading section, a lot of motion is wasted when reading side to side and top to bottom.
spritz cuts off the entire movement completely.
spritz displays one word from an article or book at a time within a box. each word is centered in the box according to the optimal recognition point (the spritz term for the place in a word that the eye naturally seeks) and this central letter is colored red.
spritz hasn’t released anything related to its technology yet, but there is a bookmarklet called openspritz, created by gun.io, that allows you to use the spritz reading method on any text you find online.
This is what openpritz looks like at 600 wpm:
The Spritz website has a demo on the homepage that you can try for yourself and speed up or slow down the speeds as you need.
Together with spritz is the new blinkist application. rather than a reinvention of the way we read, blinkist is a reinvention of the way we consume books. Based on the belief that the wisdom of books should be more accessible to all of us, blinkist takes popular works of non-fiction and breaks chapters into smaller parts.
These so-called “blinks” contain key information from the books and are meant to be read in two minutes or less. yes, it looks a lot like cliff notes. though the way the information is delivered – designed to look great and be eminently usable on mobile devices so you can learn wherever you are – makes it unique.
here’s an example of ben horowitz’s flickering table of contents of the hard of hard things:
I’m sure we can agree that it’s a lot easier to read more when a book is distlled into 10 chapters, two minutes each.
3. read more doing the time
Shane Parrish of the Farnam Street blog read 14 books in March, and tackles grand totals like this month after month. How does she do it?
makes it a priority and takes time away from other activities.
If you break it down in terms of raw numbers, the average person watches 35 hours of TV a week, averages an hour a day commuting to and from work, and can spend at least another hour a week doing grocery shopping. go shopping.
All told, that’s a total of 43 hours a week, and at least some of that could be spent reading books.
4. buy an e-reader
In the same Pew research study that showed Americans’ reading habits, Pew also noted that the average e-book reader reads 24 books in a year, compared to a person without an e-reader who reads a average of 15.
Could you really read nine more books a year just by buying an e-reader?
Without a doubt, the technology is intended to be easy to use, portable and convenient. those factors alone might make it easier to spend more time reading when you have a spare minute. those spare minutes may not add up to nine books a year, but it will still be time well spent.
5. read more without reading anything
This is pretty counterintuitive advice, and it comes from a pretty counterintuitive book.
How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read, written by University of Paris literature professor Pierre Bayard, suggests that we view the act of reading on a spectrum and that we consider more categories for books besides simply “have or haven’t read.” Specifically, Bayard suggests the following:
- books we have read
- books we have leafed through
- books we have heard of
- books we have forgotten
- books we’ve never opened.
It even has its own rating system to keep track of how you’ve interacted with a book in the past.
perhaps the key to reading more books is simply looking at the act of reading from a different perspective? In Bayard’s system, you’re essentially counting books you’ve skimmed, listened to, or forgotten about as books you’ve read. how might these new definitions alter your total reading for the year?
3 ways to remember what you read
1. train your brain with impression, association and repetition
A great place to start with book retention is to understand a few key ways our brain stores information. here are three specific items to consider:
- association
- repetition
See Also: 2020 Highlights — William Kent Krueger
Suppose you read how to win friends and influence people by dale carnegie, one of our favorites here at buffer. you loved the information and want to remember as much as possible. here’s how:
impression: let yourself be impressed by the text. stop and picture a scene in your mind, even add elements like grandeur, shock, or a cameo of yourself to make the impression stronger. If Dale Carnegie is explaining his distaste for criticism, imagine receiving the Nobel Peace Prize and then nailing the Nobel Prize to the stand.
(Another trick with print is to read an important passage out loud. For some of us, our sensitivity to information may be greater with sounds than images.)
association: link the text to something you already know. this technique is used to great effect in memorization and the construction of memory palaces. In the case of Carnegie’s book, if there is a particular principle you want to retain, think back to a time when you were part of a specific example related to the principle. prior knowledge is a great way to build associations.
repetition: the more you repeat, the more you remember. this can happen by literally rereading a certain passage or by highlighting or writing it down and coming back to it later.
Practicing these three things to remember will help you get better and better. the more you work at it, the more you’ll remember.
2. focus on the four levels of reading
mortimer adler’s book, how to read a book, identifies four levels of reading:
- elementary
- inspection
- analytical
- syntopic
each step builds on the previous step. Elementary reading is what they teach you in school. inspection reading can take two forms: 1) a quick, leisurely read or 2) skimming through the book’s preface, table of contents, table of contents, and inside cover.
where the real work (and the real retention begins) is with the analytic reading and the syntopic reading.
With analytical reading, you read a book thoroughly. Furthermore, you read a book according to four rules, which should help you with the context and understanding of the book.
- classify the book by topic.
- state what the whole book is about. be as brief as possible.
- list the main parts in order and relationship. outline these parts as you have outlined the whole.
- define the problem(s) the author is trying to solve.
The final reading level is syntopic, requiring you to read books on the same topic and challenge yourself to compare and contrast as you go.
As you progress through these levels, you’ll find yourself incorporating the brain’s techniques of impression, association, and repetition along the way. going into detail with a book (such as at the analytic and syntopic level) will help cement impressions of the book in your mind, develop associations with other books you have read and ideas you have learned, and reinforce repetition in thoughtful, studied reading . nature of different reading levels.
3. keep the book close (or at least your notes in the book)
one of the most common threads in my research to remember more of the books you read is this: take good notes.
Scribble in the margins as you go.
bookmark your favorite passages.
write a review when you’re done.
use your kindle highlights extensively.
and when you’ve done these things, come back to your notes periodically to review and update them.
, and you find yourself constantly going back to the books you read.
Even Professor Pierre Bayard, the author of How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read, identifies the importance of taking notes and revising:
I have tried this method myself and it has completely changed the way I perceive the books I read. I see books as investments in a future of learning rather than a fleeting moment of insight, soon to be forgotten. I keep all my book reviews and notes on my personal blog so I can search for them when I need to remember something I’ve read.
(Kindle also has a very useful feature online, where it shows you a random daily highlight from your highlights archive. It’s a great way to relive what you’ve read in the past.)
It’s not important which method you have for note-taking and review so long as you have one. Let it be as simple as possible to complete so that you can make sure you follow through.
to you
How many books do you read a year? what will be your goal for this year? what is your best advice to read more and remember more? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
p.s. If you liked this post, you might also like The Two Brain Systems That Control Our Attention: The Science of Getting Attention and 5 Unconventional Ways to Become a Better Writer (Hint: It’s all about being a better reader). /p>
Image Credits: patrick gage via compfight, eyetracking.me, openspritz,
See Also: Susanna Kearsley – Book Series In Order