How to read a lot of books in a short time
Sunday, February 26, 2006 at 6:04PM 
We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn. -- Peter F. Drucker
As part of my self-planned Master's Degree in Personal Productivity I've been reading non-fiction rather voraciously [1]. For example, I usually have 3-5 books going per week, with replacements arriving regularly [2]. The topics cover productivity, personal growth, consulting, networking, and creativity. However, a significant problem I've encountered is a certain "tyranny" of reading for education (rather than for entertainment), and it has threatened to turn the process into a form of aversion therapy.
Naturally, because my goal is to learn, the reading involves work. But the question is: How can one read efficiently, capture relevant ideas in a usable way, and keep the process sustainable and enjoyable? The rest of my post summarizes the best solutions I've found, but the most useful technique comes from Jason Womack [3], and synthesizes nicely the most common ideas. In a nutshell, he says he reads the book four times:
- Table of contents, glossary, index.
- Anything in bold, titles, and subtitles.
- First line of every paragraph.
- Entire book
Here's the twist: Steps 1-3 should only take about 10 minutes. To capture relevant information he uses a note-taking scheme involving putting dots in margins, and cross-referencing them in an index in the book's front. When done, he transfers them to a text file.
After adopting his system with a slight variation (I dictate my notes into an inexpensive cassette tape recorder, then transcribe them into my system [4]), I've found it works great. I can very quickly scan a book, decide if it's worth reading in depth (steps 3 and 4), and which sections are likely to be most relevant to my goals. My only other point is to note that I seem to need a balance between non-fiction and fiction. (My current ratio of non-fiction to fiction is about 5:1, but should probably be more like 3:1.)
I'd love to hear your suggestions and tricks!
Related methods
Following are related articles, each with its own twist. The common point, though, is to efficiently find ideas that are relevant to your goals, usually via some sort of skimming. The big change for me (some slight embarrassment here) was the realization that I didn't have to read the entire book word-for-word!
In How to read a business book, Brendon Connelly suggests marking up (tagging) interesting passages with a master index at the back of the book. He also contributes tips on where to read, pens to use, etc.
The classic How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life (by Alan Lakein), suggests reading books like newspapers. The main points:
- Put a new book into your inbox every day, and take the old one out, even if unread.
- Then read the 'headlines' on jacket (most significant points).
- Then glance through it quickly, noting items of interest, taking about the same amount of time as reading a newspaper.
- The goal: Find the key ideas and understand their applicability to your situation.
- Use the preface, table of contents, and summaries at beginning and end of book.
- Read details only if a) it's meaningful, and b) it's involved.
This approach allows gaining value in a surprisingly short time. It's good because you see more books, and are more likely to see really good ones. Also, you get efficient at skipping lower quality works.
In Open Loops: A Quick and Dirty Reading Strategy When Time is Short, the section "How To Find the Essential 20%" lists these points:
- Read the title of the material.
- Read the introduction.
- Read the Table of Contents.
- Flip through the material, scanning the chapter titles and sub-headings.
- Look at the illustrations and captions. Look at the charts and diagrams. Read the pull-quotes and sidebars.
- Scan through the index looking for your particular business’ buzz words.
- Now read the first chapter (or in a shorter work, the first paragraph).
- Flip through the book and read the first sentence of each paragraph.
- Read the last chapter (or paragraph in a shorter work). If there is an executive summary, read it.
- Read any other information on the cover or dust jacket.
In How to Study and Make the Most of Your Time, an approach is presented that I found was commonly recommended to students:
- Schedule important work.
- Ask yourself questions as you read - read to answer questions.
- Use SQ3R: Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Review.
- Try to develop an overall concept of what you have read in your own words and thoughts. try to connect things you have just read to things you already know.
- Every paragraph contains a main idea - make it a habit to find the main idea in each paragraph you read.
- Think!
The article Leading Forward: How to Read and Digest a Book! (apparently gone, but still in - Google's cache) recommended five steps: Selection, Preparation, Read Actively, Reflect for Insight, Systemise for implementation. This was in the minority in that it addressed how to use the information after reading.
Finally, from The Great Big Book of Personal Productivity, by Ron Fry: To summarize the skimming process:
- Read and be sure you understand the title or heading. Try rephrasing it as a question for further clarification of what you will read.
- Examine all the subheadings, illustrations, and graphics. these will help you identify the significant matter within the text.
- Read thoroughly the introductory paragraphs, the summary, and any questions at chapter's end.
- Read the first sentence of every paragraph.this generally includes the main idea.
- Evaluate what you have gained from this process: Can you answer the questions at the end of the chapter? Can you intelligently participate in a class discussion of the material?
- Write a brief summary that capsulizes what you have learned from your skimming.
- Based on this evaluation, decide whether a more thorough reading is required.
References
- [1] In his article Read a Book a Week, Steve Pavlina explains a meta reason for reading voraciously:
But the actual knowledge and the new distinctions you gain from reading are not the main benefit. My experience has shown me that the real benefit comes not from what you read but rather from the habit of reading. When you read a new book every week, you condition your mind to keep taking in new knowledge. Your thinking remains fresh and sharp. Your brain is always churning on new ideas, looking for new distinctions it can make. Every day you pour in more ideas, which your brain must find a way to integrate into your existing knowledge base. Frequent reading fires up your neural activity, even during the periods when you aren't reading.
- [2] Preferred sources: 1) My local library (which supports web-based requests), 2) Amazon's used marketplace, and 3) Amazon's new books. However, I've recently been exploring ebay's books section. I'd love to hear others' experiences buying from ebay...
- [3] Via personal correspondence.
- [4] See My Big-Arse Text File - a Poor Man's Wiki+Blog+PIM and Pickle jars, text files, and creative idea capture.
Reader Comments (64)
I found that reading in groups of books really helps me. For instance, if I have three books about one subject, I can read them all much faster, and learn more, if I tackle them one after another. I think it's because they use similar jargon, and probably organize information in the same way. Also, if I find that I know everything that one book has to offer, I can quickly skim it to find what I don't know, and put it aside.
I'd never thought about that before, RW. I often have one work of fiction going, which usually takes little brainpower, and 1+ non-fiction. I've had up to ~3 NF at once, but that was a stretch. However, they were on unrelated topics... I'll give it a try once my non-fiction brainspace frees up.
Reading while eating is a bad habit.
1. Decide, before you start, that you’re going to change three things about what you do all day at work. Then, as you’re reading, find the three things and do it. The goal of the reading, then, isn’t to persuade you to change, it’s to help you choose what to change.
2. If you’re going to invest a valuable asset (like time), go ahead and make it productive. Use a postit or two, or some index cards or a highlighter. Not to write down stuff so you can forget it later, but to create marching orders. It’s simple: if three weeks go by and you haven’t taken action on what you’ve written down, you wasted your time.
3. It’s not about you, it’s about the next person. The single best use of a business book is to help someone else. Sharing what you read, handing the book to a person who needs it... pushing those around you to get in sync and to take action--that’s the main reason it’s a book, not a video or a seminar. A book is a souvenir and a container and a motivator and an easily leveraged tool. Hoarding books makes them worth less, not more.
Effective managers hand books to their team. Not so they can be reminded of high school, but so that next week she can say to them, "are we there yet?"
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Thanks for the ideas. I'll leave the links to the company.
After reading your article,I know how to read books,now I have many books reading,but I don't know how to read,and I am working and when I get home I don't want to read it,but read your blog ,I know how to arrange my time to do it.Thank you for your advice,Ii like it very much.
I'm happy to have helped.
i have to agree
yes it is. but i'm guilty of this sometime. i do these when i read not so serious stuffs. you know those time when reading are substitute for watching tv.
Thanks for sharing..im not really a fan of books, I find it "time-consuming", but I will try the tips.. ;)
I've been trying to analyze my reading method to see why I've almost always been able to do this (well, I started reading at the age of 2 1/2; I don't think I was speed-reading back then, but I became aware I could read fast when I burned through eight "Sweet Valley High" books in one evening when I was about 9.) A lot of it has to do with my music background. I studied voice and piano fairly seriously during my elementary and high school days, and as such, I became very attuned to rhythm and cadence and voice. So what happens when I read is that I can "hear" the narrative and dialogue in my head, but what's odd is that I'm both aware of the book at, say, an LP rate (33 1/3 revolutions per minute) but in my head it translates to roughly a 78. I've tried to slow this down, but realized that my natural reading rhythm is freakishly fast when an author friend asked me to go through the manuscript of her soon-to-be-published book for continuity errors. I sat in the La-Z-Boy at my parents' house with a pencil, went through page by page making notes but also enjoying the book, and had the whole task done in about 3-4 hours.Also it has extremely helped my with my essay writing [ http://www.bookwormlab.com/ ]. This was a 350-page manuscript too, so roughly 80,000 words. Take away the pencil and the editor's hat and the reading speed would probably be close to 90 minutes. What also seems to happen is that I read a page not necessarily word by word, but by capturing pages in sequence in my head. The words and phrases appear diagonally, like I'm absorbing the text all in one gulp, and then I move on to the next sequence I can absorb by paragraph or page. It's like I'm reading from a whole-language standpoint instead of phonics -- that's the only way I can figure out how to explain it.