Reading has been around for generations because it works when everything else fails. It makes you more intelligent, empathetic, and self-aware. It keeps you entertained; what more could you ask?

“Books are the perfect entertainment: no commercials, no batteries, hours of enjoyment for each dollar spent. What I wonder is why everybody doesn’t carry a book around for those inevitable dead spots in life.”

— Stephen King

Almost everyone I meet wants to read more books than they do right now. They are fascinated by the idea that a CEO reads one book a week, and they should, too, but they never do.

You don’t have time to read 50 books a year. That’s a lot of books, and it seems excessive. You probably get bored, and maybe books put you to sleep. Maybe you think I would love to read books but I just can’t seem to read consistently.

If you don’t read any books, you wish you would read a few. If you read a few books, you wish you would read a lot more. If you read many books like I do, you know all the amazing stuff you don’t have the time to read.

I love reading all sorts of books and most of my writing work requires reading a lot.  I have read 105 books in 2019 and at least 50 books yearly. Developing a reading habit is not as difficult as it may seem.

When people hear that I squeeze in at least 50 books yearly, they ask me how I do it. So, I thought I would share some tips that have helped me become a better, consistent reader.

Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders read.

– Harry S. Truman

Don’t worry, I got you covered. In the next few minutes, you will learn how to read more and better books. You will become a better reader and know how to remember what you read. I promise it has nothing to do with highlighting or taking notes. Let’s dive in!

Cut the Inner Monologue

You probably don’t realize it, but when you read, there is a little voice inside your head that sounds every word you read syllable by syllable. Most people are not aware that this happens to them.

This happens because that’s how we learned to read growing up. We learned to sound out each syllable of every word when we were kids. We developed a mental habit of sounding each word clearly as we read them. Doing this was okay when we were small, but this method has one big problem: TOO SLOW!!

We don’t need to do so as adults. I am 29 years old, know how to say the words I am reading, and know what they mean.

We can learn to turn off this inner voice quickly. It will feel weird at first, but with some practice, you will soon be able to move through the text much faster than when you sounded out every word.

Read with Your Finger

You might feel weird doing this, but it’s very effective. When reading a book, use your index finger to guide your eyes as they scan the text. I get through the pages much quicker when I read with my finger. I use this method to read everything, whether it’s a book, something on my iPad, or computer screen.

Here’s why this works so well:

Our eyes are not completely stable. When we read texts in front of us, our eyes naturally jump around, and it takes mental effort to keep our eyes focused on each line. This is why, a lot of times, we lose our spot.

You forget which line you’re on, read the same line twice, or sometimes read a line, and your brain inserts the word from below into the sentence.

It’s because our eyes do not move perfectly horizontally. But if you put your finger below the words as you read, you give your eyes something to focus on and move with, stabilizing them. Surprisingly, this makes you read more quickly. You’ll notice when you try it.

Stop Reading Books You Don’t Like

I am embarrassed that I even have to say this one out loud. Some people believe that if they start a book, they have to finish it. Where does one get that idea, and why would you do that?

Think about it, if you watch a bad movie, would you finish it? If you started watching a 10-season-long TV show that you didn’t like, would you continue watching it? No, you would quit midway and watch something else.

Putting down a book you don’t enjoy doesn’t make you stupid, an idiot, or a failure. You just didn’t like something; it’s okay! It doesn’t make sense to do something you don’t like. If you don’t like heavy books, don’t read heavy books.

I think some of this comes back to our schooling. In school, you were graded based on how much of the book you read. To get a good grade, you must read the whole book and memorize the whole thing. Guess what? You are not in school anymore, and life doesn’t work that way.

This advice is especially true for non-fiction books. The average non-fiction book has two,

maybe three useful chapters in it. Most non-fiction books are glorified blog posts, repeated over and over and over for 200 pages. If I’m reading chapter one and I get the idea,

and then I get to chapter two, and the author is just restating the idea from chapter one differently, I skip chapter two and go to chapter three. Then if chapter three is repeating the same idea in another way, I skipped that one too.

In fact, most books aren’t dense with valuable information. If I realize that they aren’t, I just go straight to the table of contents and ask myself, which chapters look interesting? If I find something interesting, I will read those. If I find those chapters useful, I will find something else in the book; if I don’t, that’s fine. It’s time to move on!

I’d say half of the books I end up reading, I probably read half of the text in them, maybe less. You shouldn’t feel bad about this. The point of reading is to serve you, not for you to serve the book. Similarly, if a book is bad, put it down and move to the next one.

I have a personal rule. I always read at least 10% of a book before putting it down. If it’s a 200-page book, I give it 20 pages. But if I hit 20 pages and I’m not into it, I look at the table of contents. Nothing looks interesting, so I put it away.

Finally, when you start reading more, you’ll find that much nonfiction stuff repeats itself. In any field, a few concepts get repeated, such as the Marshmallow experiment in Psychology, the compounding effect in finance, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, etc. If I encounter topics I have read elsewhere, I skip ahead because I already know what’s coming in those pages.

You’ll find all the time that authors use similar anecdotes, they use similar examples, they use similar stories, and when you keep running into these things over and over again, just skip them. You already know what’s in them, so why read it again?

For some reason, out of these five tips, I always give this one, which is the most surprising

and most difficult for people. I don’t understand why people have so much emotional attachment or judgment based on how many words in a book they read.

If you read every word of every book in nonfiction, you’re doing it wrong. For fiction, it’s a completely different story—no pun intended.

If a fiction book’s good, you read every word. If a fiction book’s bad, you fucking stop and put it away.

[WOW! That was quite a rant! Got carried away there!]

Schedule Your Reading Time

Let’s address another popular excuse: TIME!

Everyone who wants to read more but just cannot says they are busy, they don’t have time or their schedule is hectic. You have probably heard a million times before at the risk of giving out cliche self-help advice: You don’t have time, but you can make time for important things!

Reading is one of the easiest, most portable, low-tech, and failproof activities. You can read a book during your commutes, listen to audiobooks when walking, driving, cooking, working out at the gym, or doing chores around the house, and read a book even if your internet is down or your mobile is out of juice.

I always carry a book with me wherever I go. I read a book or an article every opportunity I get. These are just some of the little things I do that I don’t even count in my scheduled time.

Even without scheduling anything, I can easily find at least 30 minutes daily to read. And then if you schedule time on top of that, it’s at least an easy 60 minutes. I’m not superhuman. My reading speed isn’t that much above the average reading speed. The trick is consistency.

Let’s do some math. The average person can read a page in roughly about two minutes. So if you read 60 minutes daily, that’s 30 pages daily. If you figure the average book is about 300 pages, you’re reading a book every 10 days or 37 books per year.

But if you’re being smart, and you’re putting away bad books and you’re skipping shitty chapters, then you’re going to end up reading way more than that. You’ll end up reading 40 or 50 books a year. That’s just by dedicating an hour a day.

Read More Than One Book at a Time

Contrary to what you may know or believe, reading two books at a time is easier than reading only one book at a time. Many feel that reading two books is twice as mentally challenging as reading just one book. They don’t want to start a new book until they finish the one they are reading. Why?

If you get bored reading the first book, you can start a second one that feels exciting. Then, when you get sick of the second one, you can return to the first one. That way, you are always excited about what you are currently reading.

I find this is the easiest way to sustain my attention and excitement for both books I am reading because I can jump back and forth between them. I usually read 3 to 4 books at a time.

• I usually read one book to research topics for articles on my website. These are often heavy subjects involving philosophy or unfamiliar subjects.
• The second one is usually a general nonfiction book for light reading. I sometimes re-read certain books when I want to revisit some topics.
• The third book is usually a fiction book or a memoir I read when I want to enjoy a good story. I like to go through these as audiobooks that I can listen to pass time or in the background when I am driving.

Now, I have more than 2000 books in my reading list, so I have no shortage of options. Whenever I get too bored with a book, I put it down until I feel ready to return to it in a few weeks or months. The idea is to be consistent and practical with the books I read.

So many books, so little time.

-Frank Zappa

Now that we have some practical steps about how to read more quickly and efficiently, how to be more ruthless about choosing what you read, and how to find time to read, let’s talk about how to remember what you read.

How to Remember What You Read?

This is another commonly asked question. People often tell me they can never remember what they read in a book and use that as an excuse not to read books. How do you take notes so you can remember what you read and use them when required?

The harsh truth is that no note-taking system can help you remember what you read. Honestly, why would you even try to remember everything? It is a waste of time and effort. I know I am saying that taking notes is pointless, which upsets many people. I don’t know why.

There is no reason to study a nonfiction book. We used to take notes and highlight specific sections of our textbooks in school because we were supposed to be tested on what we read. The point was to go back and study for a test. We are not in school anymore. Real life doesn’t work that way. You are doing more school in real life by highlighting and taking notes.

The point of reading a non-fiction book is to help yourself solve a problem or get ideas for improving a particular aspect of your life. The way you remember what you read is to apply those ideas in your routine. That’s how the human memory works.

Let’s say you read 5 AM Club by Robin Sharma. The book discusses implementing a routine that uses the early hours of the day to be more productive. The only way to remember the routine is to do the things and follow the advice espoused in the book. If you take a bunch of notes and highlight the entire book but continue sleeping until late, you will not remember any of it. We remember what we find useful and what we implement.

In many cases, non-fiction self-help advice is about concepts and principles that are somewhat abstract instead of step-by-step instructions that you can implement. Using such advice often means reflecting on what you read and applying those concepts to trigger a change in your mind. One example is using the idea that sometimes life sucks and not every day has to be great to change my idea of what a happy life means to me.

Sometimes, you can talk to people about the stuff you read in a book to remember it better. You ask people what they think about a topic and discuss what you read. For example, I ask people if they are passionate about their work. I then tell them about my definition of passion that I read in Cal Newport’s book So Good, They Can’t Ignore You. I have used concepts from that book to make decisions with excellent results so I share some experiences as well. The more I talk about it, the better I remember it, the more I use it and it becomes second nature.

The last thing I will say about remembering stuff is that you don’t have to remember every idea from every book you’ve read. You only have to remember what ideas are in every book.

Reading nonfiction is not an academic exercise where you remember many cool things and regurgitate them in front of your friends at some party to impress them with all the cool knowledge. That’s kind of lame if you think about it. Imagine if I was talking about reading 50 books yearly but never did so. Would you still be reading to this point without calling me out on my bullsh*t? No, you wouldn’t!

So, how do we feel about reading books now compared to 10 minutes ago? You want to implement these tips and commit to the process: Put down the number of books you want to read this year and the number of books you read. You will be surprised at how easy it is to close that gap.