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How You Can Make the Most of Summary Services Like Blinkist

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While they won’t make you smarter, you can still use them to your advantage.

Source: Canva

Because I read a book a week, people often ask me why I don’t use Blinkist instead.

Blinkist is a book summary service, similar to Shortform and getabstract. You find the key ideas of non-fiction books.

The tempting promise — you will gain more knowledge in less time.

While this is flawed for various reasons (e.g. because brains don’t work like recording devices and you don’t acquire knowledge by reading sentences), book summary services have even more strikes against them:

  • No cross-checking. When you read through summaries, you can’t check the quality of the book’s sources in its appendix. You won’t be able to judge whether books are light on the science and heavy on the anecdotal evidence part.
  • Additional subjective filters. Instead of you, the summary author picks what’s most relevant. You will never know whether you might have found other passages to be way more relevant than Blinkist’s selection.
  • Lack of complexity and context. It’s in the essence of summaries to compromise on depth and meaning. You’ll get the author’s conclusion without understanding their reasoning. Blinkist “eliminates the fluff” — but often, the fluff is what will invite you to deeper reflections and questions.

And while summaries often feel like a pale ghost of the real book, there is still a very valid use case for them. To understand this, let’s quickly recap the following concept.

Adler’s Four Levels of Reading

Mortimer J. Adler, an American philosopher and one of the brightest readers of the 20th century. In ‘How to Read a Book’, he explains the four reading levels.

Before I learned about these levels, precisely level two, I was among the people who’d dive straight into a book. I wouldn’t bother to read the table of contents or the preface. I started to read from front to back, unknowingly wasting a lot of time.

Basic Reader (Level 1)

If you can read and understand words you’ve mastered this level already.

Strategic Reader (Level 2)

Think of this as a quick chat you have with the author to determine whether you should read the entire book, a few chapters, or nothing at all.

Critical Reader (Level 3)

Effortless reading is like writing in the sand, here today and gone tomorrow. Reading a book is not the same as mastering the ideas behind it. Adler suggests you should take notes and answer questions while you read. What is the book about as a whole? What is being said in detail, and how? Is the book true, in whole or in part?

Synoptical Reader (Level 4)

This level is about relating different books on the same topic to master it fully. By deploying syntopical reading, you can compare the author’s arguments, explore research questions and draw a knowledge map.

“With the help of the books read, the syntopical reader is able to construct an analysis of the subject that may not be in any of the books. It is obvious, therefore, that syntopical reading is the most active and effortful kind of reading.“

— Mortimer J. Adler

How Blinkist Can Help You Become a Strategic Reader

Summary services support you in making an informed decision before investing time in reading.

Before I used the software, I set myself a time limit of 20 minutes and completed the following three steps for every time-intense non-fiction book I planned to read:

  • Looking at the cover and skim the preface to get a feeling for the book’s category.
  • Reading the table of contents to identify the most relevant chapters.
  • Identifying the main points by reading a paragraph or a whole page and figuring out if I want to read the book.

Now, this is where Blinkist can help you. Instead of doing the steps yourself, you can quickly browse through a couple of books within the same category.

By reading through the main points, you feel whether the book is worthy of your time.

New books are written and published every minute. Yet, you only have a limited number of books you can read in your life.

Not all books are created equal, and most books aren’t worth your time. But some books do have the power to change your life for the better.

Using summary services as a tool to identify them can help you on your path to health, wealth and wisdom.

“In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.”

— Mortimer J. Adler

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Four Principles That Helped Me Go From 0 to 56 Read Books a Year

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Simple mindset shifts I see not many readers following.

Source: Canva

Each January, people pledge it will be the year they will read many books. Each December, the majority wonders why they didn’t.

In 2016, I was among the millions of people who said they’d read many books — but I didn’t read a single one. Yet, in the years that followed, I gradually transformed from a reading-muffle into a book-binger.

How I went from 0 to +50 read books a year. (Source: Screenshot from Goodreads).

Books are the cheapest but most impactful way to gain more skills, meaning, joy, and contentment in your life. For an average of $9, you can receive years of someone’s wisdom, distilled to some hundred pages that can be read in a few hours.

Reading 50 books a year is way easier than you might think. You don’t need to compromise on sleep, relationships, or work. In fact, you can even elevate these aspects by reading more.

Caveat: Reading is often treated as an intellectual status symbol. The more books you read, the smarter you are thought to be. It’s tempting to focus on reading as many books as possible - but it comes at the cost of depth and enjoyment. This article doesn’t encourage you to speed up your reading practice. Instead, it's an inspiration to read more (and yet slow, joyful, and thoroughly).

1) Break Up With Your Perceived Hierarchy of Books

If you’re reading this, you likely grew up with a very narrow definition of knowledge.

The existing paradigm, also prevalent in schools, is left-brain centred. Logic, reasoning, and quantification are more respected than creative expression, imagination, or emotions.

We rate knowledge sources based on this binary scheme. Many people would agree that reading for knowledge is the best reason to open a book.

Of the 102 books Bill Gates recommended over eight years, 90 were non-fiction. And from the 19 books Warren Buffett recommended in 2019, 100% were non-fiction.

But this knowledge hierarchy comes with limits. Social critic Minna Salami wrote: “The idea that calculable reasoning is the only worthy way to explain reality through is one of the most dangerous ideas ever proposed.”

Books don’t exist in hierarchies. Non-fiction isn’t superior to fiction.

Again, Salami: “We need an approach to knowledge that synthesizes the imaginative and rational, the quantifiable and immeasurable, the intellectual and the emotional. Without feeling, knowledge becomes stale.”

Luckily, there are books that can make you feel and know.

When you read Tara Westover’s memoir, you’ll feel how it’s like to grow up in a Mormon family in off-grit Idaho. Elizabeth Gilbert’s latest novel helps you understand what it was like to break free from social expectations in the 1940s.

Through stories, you elevate your levels of empathy for people outside of your cultural community. You learn not only to see the world from the perspective of others but also to share their feelings of pain, fear, and joy.

What to do:

Expand your definition of ‘knowledge’ and break up with the fiction versus non-fiction hierarchy.

Pick the book that sparks your interest, and forget whether this book will make you ‘smarter’ in a traditional sense.

“….a good book can teach you about the world and about yourself. You learn more than how to read better; you also learn more about life. You become wiser. Not just more knowledgeable — books that provide nothing but information can produce that result. But wiser, in the sense that you are more deeply aware of the great and enduring truths of human life.”

― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

2) Read Books You Love Until You Can’t Stop Reading Because You’re In Love With Books You Read

The first book I picked up for my reading goal in 2016 was Kahneman’s ‘Thinking Fast and Slow.’ It was on top of any bestseller list, and my university professors praised it.

Yet, whenever I read a page, I fell asleep. Ultimately, I stopped opening it altogether. Kahneman’s pamphlet became my ultimate reading killer.

I was too proud to stop. I wish I could’ve told my younger self to stop forcing yourself through books you don’t enjoy.

If your goal is to read more, quit the books that slow you down.

You might have to quit several books before you open a book you can’t stop thinking about.

What to do:

Knowing what you want to read is essential, but so is its inversion — knowing what you don’t want to read.

You’re the only person who can judge whether what you’re reading is best for you now. Read the genres you cherish, the content you enjoy, and the authors you admire.

Don’t feel guilty to start with the ‘bad stuff.’ A few hundred books in, you will become a more critical reader and anyway gravitate towards the good stuff.

Better to waste 9$ than 4 hours of your lifetime. Books aren’t created equal — millions aren’t worth your time.

As a rule of thumb, remember the following: If you don’t look forward to continuing reading the book that’s on your shelf, skip it.

“Books are tangible objects of myriad textures — aged, hardback, hand stitched and so on. They are mentally stimulating, therapeutic, and they potentially transform your deepest thought patterns. They affect you entirely.”

— Minna Salami

3) Make your phone your reading-ally

Desired behaviour isn’t solely tied to your willpower. Self-control and self-discipline depend on your environment, as Nobel-prize winner Thaler discovered.

Phones hijack your self-control: The red notification badges, Apple introduced with its Mac OS X years ago; the pull-to-refresh slot machine mechanisms that we refresh in unconscious hope of a quick dopamine shot; the infinite scrolling design, that in Nir Eyal’s words, is “the interaction design’s answer to our penchant for endlessly searching for novelty.”

The average person spends over four hours a day on their device. If you spent half the time reading, with a reading speed of 250 words per minute and an average book length of 90,000 words, you’d finish more than two books a week.

When it comes to grabbing your attention, books can’t compete with phones.

The equation is simple: The less time you spend on your phone, the more you’ll read.

Tristan Harris said: “Once you start understanding that your mind can be scheduled into having little thoughts or little blocks of time that you didn’t choose, wouldn’t we want to use that understanding and protect against the way that that happens?”

What to do:

Disable all notifications. Use airplane mode whenever possible. When you start reading, put your phone in a different room.

Keeping your phone away from your bed is one of the hardest habits to break. But the work is worth it. I replaced my phone with an alarm clock and stopped taking my phone to the bed two years ago. In bed, I can either sleep or read.

This is what will give you plenty of time.

Make reading the obvious choice. Put your book on the pillow when you make your bed in the morning. Thereby, reading in bed becomes your default option. Not having to use willpower will set you up for a regular reading habit.

“Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.”

— Naval Ravikant

4) Have an Antilibrary

Do you ever feel guilty about the book staple you haven’t read? You shouldn’t — unread books increase your motivation and capacity to learn.

When you just read a few books in your life, you’re likely aware of what you don’t know. But once you’ve read through some hundred books, you tend to become ignorant.

You might be too confident, too sure, and less aware of the things you don’t know. That’s where antilibraries come into play.

The books you haven’t read (and will never read) assemble your antilibrary.

They represent unknowledge and are the best cure for overconfidence.

“You will never read all those books,” friends say when they look at my want-to-read list. The list grows by 2–3 books every day. They are right. Even if I continue reading 1–2 books a week, I will only get through some of them.

But that’s the point: My antilibrary is a constant reminder of what I don’t know. It helps me stay curious and humble.

Psychologist Adam Grant writes: “No matter how much brainpower you have if you lack the motivation to change your mind, you’ll miss many occasions to think again.”

When you’re convinced you know something, learning something new means you have to change your mind. The best motivator to continue reading your book is a long list of books you want to read after finishing.

What to do:

Don’t ever feel discouraged by the books you haven’t read. Instead, see them as a reminder to be humble and curious.

Whenever somebody recommends a book (and you should ask the people that inspire you the most for their top 3 book recommendations), add it to your reading list (if you haven’t one, check out Google Keep, Wunderlist, ToDoist, or Goodreads and settle on your favourite list).

“Read books are far less valuable than unread ones.”

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

In Conclusion

Reading is liberating. Freedom means choosing from a set of options. The more options you have, the freer you are. And that’s where reading kicks in. It helps you explore options you never knew existed.

No therapy session, university lecture, or coaching session has had a bigger impact on my life than reading books. Books change your life; they change the way you think in unimaginable ways.

While each of the above principles can change how you read in one way or the other, they only serve as inspiration, and you certainly don’t need to implement every single one.

Choose one or two you like, but screw the rest. Only one person should define your reading journey — you.

Want to feel inspired and improve your learning?

Subscribe free to The Learn Letter. I read a book and 50 articles a week, and each Wednesday, you’ll receive the best in your inbox. This newsletter will make you find tools and resources that help you on your path to health, wealth, and wisdom.

Five Common Beliefs About Learning That Are Actually Learning Myths

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Stop following them to save precious time and energy.

Created by the author via Canva.

In 2013, I studied for weeks for an undergrad test. Yet, I failed.

Research from different studies shows up to eighty percent of students never learn how to learn effectively. Even long after school and university, people waste time and energy with ineffective learning practices.

In the past five years, I’ve worked as a full-time teacher, completed a course on meta-learning, read 20 books on the science of learning. Each week I publish The Learn Letter — a newsletter that examines the best ideas around lifelong learning.

Again and again, I stumble upon beliefs around learning that are actually wrong.

Misunderstandings about learning waste your time. After reading this article, you’ll understand which common beliefs are learning myths so you can become a better learner.

1) Your brain capacity is limited

Some people fear lifelong learning can overload their brains. But, contrary to common belief, your brain is never full.

Learning is a virtuous circle. The more you learn, the more you can remember.

In this paper on the science of learning, scientists explain why storing information in your memory creates brain capacity. Rather than a library with limited shelves, your brain works like a growing tree.

The more knowledge you store, the more branches grow and connect. Instead of using brain space, learning creates additional opportunities for linkages and storage.

A research group around neuroscientist Henry Roediger and psychologist Mark McDaniel spent ten years bridging the gap between cognitive science and educational science. In their book, they explain:

“Learning depends on prior learning, the more we learn, the more possible connections we create for further learning.”

Remember Instead:

Your brain capacity is unlimited. The more you know, the easier you can hang up new information in your memory tree.

2) Rereading is an effective learning strategy

One of the most common learning myths is believing that reexposing yourself to something will burn the content into your memory.

Rereading feels productive because concepts sound familiar. But this feeling is an illusion of knowledge.

Roediger and McDaniel explain: “Rereading has three strikes against it. It is time-consuming. It doesn’t result in durable memory. And it often involves a kind of unwitting self-deception, as growing familiarity with the text comes to feel like mastery with the content.”

“Don’t assume you’re doing something wrong if learning feels hard.”

Remember Instead:

Rereading doesn’t lead to better retention. Effective methods include spaced repetition, interleaving, elaboration, self-testing, and free recall.

3) People learn better following their learning styles

Are you a visual or a verbal learner? While you might have preferences about the learning material, they don’t improve recall or retention.

No solid evidence from controlled experiments says that teaching in the preferred learning style improves learning.

“Tailoring instruction as suggested by the learning style approach can potentially have negative consequences for the learner,” psychologists explain in an evidence-based blog post.

Remember Instead:

The richer the learning material and the combination of styles, the better. The wider your mix of methods, the greater your learning success.

4) Rich environments enhance childrens’ brain

In ‘Understanding How We Learn,’ researchers looked for evidence for misunderstandings in learning. They examined 12 empirical papers with almost 15000 participants in 15 countries.

One of the biggest misconceptions about learning they found was the belief environments rich in stimuli improve the brains of pre-school children.

One reason why so many people wrongly believe this might be the following story of a misused teenager. Genie was locked by her father for 13-years. She was socially isolated. When she was found, she didn’t know how to talk.

True sensory deprivation can indeed lead to decreased learning. But under normal circumstances, the reality is enough for brain development. The researchers conclude:

“Even without decorated classrooms, children encounter sufficient information to enable their brains to develop normally.“

Remember Instead:

Children don’t need a stimuli-rich environment for healthy brain development.

5) 10,000 Hours of Practice Lead to Mastery

In 2008, Malcolm Gladwell introduced the ten-thousand-hour rule in his book ‘Outliers.’ He argued that it’d take 10,000 hours of practice to become a master in any field.

While this simple rule sounds appealing, it’s wrong in several ways.

Ericsson, one of the study’s authors that Gladwell used as the scientific foundation for his rule, debunks this learning myth. Ericsson lists several reasons why the rule is flawed:

  • There is nothing special or magical about ten thousand hours. A lot of world-class performers practiced less or more before they achieved mastery. Ten thousand hours was an average.
  • Gladwell didn’t distinguish how the hours were used (e.g., deliberate practice vs. ineffective practice).
  • Nothing in the study implied almost anyone could become an expert in a given field by practicing ten thousand hours.

Remember Instead:

10,000 hours of practice don’t guarantee world-class performance. The additional practice would lead to further improvement even if you crossed the 10,000-hour mark.

Final Words

Learning is a journey, not a destination. This meta-study on learning, memory, and metacognitive processes has shown that most learners hold outdated beliefs and commit errors that can even impair their learning effectiveness rather than enhance.

Reading more than 20 books on learning, I’ve noticed a recurring pattern: it’s less important what kind of brain you have — what matters is how you use it. To learn more effectively, here’s what to remember:

  • Learning is a virtuous circle, and your brain capacity is unlimited.
  • Spaced repetition and free recall are more effective than rereading.
  • Learning in your preferred style doesn’t lead to better cognition. Mix the methods instead.
  • Children don’t need a stimuli-rich environment for healthy brain development.
  • The 10,000 rule is a lie. How you practice is equally important to how much you practice.

This Learning Hack Helps You Remember More From Any Book You Read

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How writing book reviews fuels your learning.

Library in Vienna’s University of Economics and Business (Martino Pietropoli/Unsplash)

Reading gives you access to the smartest brains on earth. Learning from the greatest people is the fastest way to become healthy, wealthy, and wise.

Yet, reading per se doesn’t make you a better person. You can read 52 books a year without changing at all.

I’ve read about 20 books on learning in the past four years, and I’ve noticed a recurring pattern: it’s less important what kind of brain you have — what matters is how you use it.

I love my Zettelkasten and RoamResearch. But chatting with my newsletter subscribers, I understood that it’s tough to maintain these systems unless you’re a writer who can spend an hour a day reflecting on the books you read.

The best personal knowledge management systems are useless unless applied. Using the following learning hack can help you make the most of the books without wasting your time.

Why Writing Book Reviews Fuel Your Learning

We only recently started to understand how learning works. Learning science is a new field that combines the knowledge of neuroscience and social and cognitive psychology.

Books have been around for a long before learning science.

What we know now is that learning is a three-step process: acquisition, retention, and retrieval. In the acquisition phase, we link new information to existing knowledge; in the retention phase, we store it, and in the retrieval phase, we get information out of our memory.

Books were invented before these insights. It was Schopenhauer who already stated in the 1850s: “When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process.”

You don’t read a page and shelf it in your mental library. Instead, your brain stores new information in terms of its meaning to existing memory.

To remember what you read, you not only need to know it but also to know how it relates to what you already know. You can add this layer of meaning by interpreting, connecting, interrelating, or elaborating.

Elaborating means you explain and describe an idea in your own words.

Learning researchers Roediger and McDaniel write: “Elaboration is the process of giving new material meaning by expressing it in your own words and connecting it with what you already know.”

Elaborative rehearsal encodes information into your long-term memory more effectively. The more details and the stronger you connect new knowledge to what you already know, the better because you’ll be generating more cues. And the more cues they have, the easier you can retrieve your knowledge.

„Elaboration is thought to be one of the best ways to increase learning and memory among many memory theorists,” scientists write in the evidence-based book ‘Understanding How We Learn.’

Book reviews are an elaboration practice for reading. Spending 5-minutes every time after you finish a book with writing them will help you store and retain more from what you read.

“A good book can teach you about the world and about yourself. You learn more than how to read better; you also learn more about life. You become wiser. Not just more knowledgeable — books that provide nothing but information can produce that result. But wiser, in the sense that you are more deeply aware of the great and enduring truths of human life.”

― Mortimer J. Adler in How to Read a Book

How to write book reviews for maximum learning

The more you elaborate or try to understand something, the more likely you‘ll keep this new information in your long-term memory.

When you use book reviews as a learning hack, you don’t focus on the quality of writing (eloquence, succinctness, conciseness) or the quality of the content (originality, editing, research, quoting).

Instead, you answer meta-questions that invite you to recall what you read from your memory and store it in relation to its meaning. Here are a few questions you might want to answer every time you finish a book.

  • How would you summarize the content in three sentences?
  • What do you find interesting about this book? Which parts surprised you? Which arguments altered your understanding?
  • How does the content relate to what you know? Does it contradict or confirm something you previously read?
  • When would you like to stumble upon the ideas in the book again?
  • Which concepts or ideas from the book do you want to apply in your life? When and where will you use these insights?

You don’t need to answer every single one. Keep the prompts that work for you, and screw the rest.

When you write a book summary, you have to filter relevant information, organize it, and articulate it using your own vocabulary. Don’t transcribe the author’s words but try to summarize, synthesize, and analyze. That way, you will remember much more from what you read.

Where to publish your book reviews

Many people I know don’t share their work in public because they’re scared other people judge them. I shared this fear. Around 200 articles later, I know the upsides far outweigh any risk.

Since I publish my work on Medium and in The Learn Letter, I learn faster, meet interesting people, and job proposals from projects that fascinate me.

So if you dare, publish your book reviews online. You can share them on Amazon, Goodreads, Medium, your blog, or a digital garden.

Once you write book reviews, you not only help other people but also yourself.

You will be able to explain complex ideas during dinner conversations, recall interesting concepts and ideas when you need them, and create your personal library.

Want to feel inspired and improve your learning?

Subscribe free to The Learn Letter. I read a book and 50 articles a week, and each Wednesday, you’ll receive the best in your inbox. This newsletter will make you find tools and resources that help you on your path to health, wealth, and wisdom.

How I Built a Book Brain with RoamResearch

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Here’s how you can do it, too (templates included).

Image credit: Model-la.

Have you ever read a book only to forget the quintessence three weeks later? Human brains don’t work like recording devices. When we read things a single time, we’ll likely forget them. Even the densest non-fiction books become mere entertainment.

I read a book a week for some years now and encounter many interesting ideas. Yet, I often struggled to find the content when I needed it. Researching sources for my articles, my weekly newsletter, podcast interviews, or panel discussions was a long and frustrating process.

Building a book brain in Roam helped me find what I need within seconds. As a result, I no longer spend hours searching for ideas from books. Instead, I have everything at a single digital place ready for usage.

Whether you’re struggling to organize your thinking, want to make more of the books you read, or look for inspiration to organize your reading, this article is for you. Here are the exact steps you can follow to find what you need when you need it by building a book brain with RoamResearch.

The Setup

I built a book brain using my Kindle, Readwise, and RoamResearch.

Disclaimer: I'm not sponsored by Roam or Readwise. I pay $15/month for RoamResearch and $8/month for Readwise. Free alternatives to RoamResearch include TiddlyWiki, Obsidian, RemNote, Amplenote, and Org-roam. The only alternative to Readwise is importing highlights manually.

Kindle

I was an e-reading enemy until I read my first e-book. Before, I’d argue you can’t smell and dog-ear the pages, scribble your questions in the margins, or sketch out the concept you just learned.

And while these arguments still hold, technology-assisted learning makes most of them irrelevant. Now that I discovered how to use my Kindle as a learning device, I wouldn’t trade it for a paper book anymore.

Your Kindle Notes page shows all your book highlights (for books purchased via Amazon). This feature is essential for the process that follows.

The kindle notes page (screenshot by Eva Keiffenheim).

Readwise

Readwise is an online service that helps you retain books better. You can resurface your highlights through spaced repetition on their website. In addition, the program also allows you to tag, annotate, search, and organize your highlights.

The only Readwise feature I use is highlight syncing. You can sync your Kindle highlights to Evernote, Notion, and Roamresearch. Once it’s set up, Readwise syncs your highlights with notes automatically every day.

This is how I customized my Readwise to Roam integration:

Readwise configuration page (screenshot by Eva Keiffenheim).

Here’s the code I used for the page metadata. Feel free to copy or adjust it to your needs.

{% if category == "tweets" %}
#twitter 🐦
{% elif category == "books" %}
{{"{{"}}[[TODO]]{{"}}"}} #ToProcess create literature notes for this book
{{"{{"}}[[TODO]]{{"}}"}} #ToProcess create permanent notes for this book
{{"{{"}}[[TODO]]{{"}}"}} #ToProcess write a summary for my blog and publish it
{% else %}
podcast or article
{% endif %}
Author:: [[{{author}}]]
Tags:: #readwisesync
Full Title:: {{full_title}}
Type:: #{{category}}
Recommended by::
Import Date:: {{date}}
{% if document_tags %}Document Tags:: {% for tag in document_tags %}#[[{{tag}}]] {% endfor %} {% endif %}
{% if url %}URL:: {{url}}{% endif %}
{% if image_url %}![]({{image_url}}){% endif %}

RoamResearch

RoamResearch is an online workspace for organizing your knowledge. In essence, it’s a note-taking app that works in line with your brain.

To understand why RoamResearch is superior to most note-taking apps, let’s understand how our memory remembers things. Harvard researchers describe a three-step process:

  1. Through encoding, your memory learns new information, either visual (see), acoustic (hear), tactile (feel), or semantic (mean).
  2. Everything you encode is first stored in your short-term memory and then, through spaced repetition, in your long-term memory.
  3. Through retrieval, you can access and recall what you stored in your brain.

Hence, to retrieve and access what you learned, you first need to encode and store it in a way that helps with this process.

The more details and the stronger you connect new knowledge to what you already know, the better. By doing so, you’re generating more cues. Computer-scientist and lifelong learner Helmut Sachs writes in his book, “The more we know, the more information (hooks) we have to connect new information to, the easier we can form long-term memories.”

Networked note-taking encodes information into your long-term memory more effectively. It can be advantageous to relate the material to a personal experience or to something you already know, explaining the idea to someone else, and explaining how it relates to your life.

And this is where Roam comes into play. While traditional note-taking tools, such as Notion or Evernote, operate within a hierarchical structure for linear thinking, Roam was built around networked thinking. Through bi-directional links and the daily notes default, the platform is built for connecting and interrelating your book notes and ideas.

Created by Eva Keiffenheim via Canva.

The Workflow

One of the biggest hurdles in building a book brain is actually taking the time to do it. Unfortunately, it’s more tempting to start a new book than work with the one you just finished.

But whenever I rush to the next book without pausing to think and reflect, I won’t remember nor apply most of what I read. Hence, I block an hour each Monday to go through the book I just finished.

Within this weekly hour, I do three things: write literature notes, permanent notes, and publish a book summary. To make sure not to miss a book, the three steps show op in my Roam [[ToDo]] page. When I’m done, I tick them off. In case you want different ToDos or # to show up in your database, configure the code above.

Roam [[ToDo]] page (screenshot by Eva Keiffenheim).

1) Create Literature Notes

You might have heard of the Literature notes from the Zettelkasten method. But you don’t need to understand the complex system for knowledge management to create them.

Literature notes are brief, contain your own words, and sometimes bibliographic references. When writing literature notes from a book, I answer two questions:

  1. What is so interesting about this?
  2. What is so relevant it’s worth noting down?

First, I try to recall everything from my memory (an exercise that supports my memory in transforming information from the short-term to the long-term memory).

When I’m done with this brainwriting, I’ll go through the highlights from the book. Readwise synced the book’s highlights to my RoamResearch database, so I don’t have to pick up my Kindle. If I find something noteworthy I hadn’t thought of, I’ll add it to the literature note.

Three examples for my Roam literature notes (screenshot by Eva Keiffenheim).

2) Create Permanent Notes

While literature notes are your summary of someone else’s ideas, permanent notes are your own ideas. You combine what you read with your area of interest and focus. Literature notes serve as a stepping stone for your thinking.

While your literature notes are bullets and fragments, your permanent notes should sound like written prose. A reader of your permanent note (e.g., your future self) should understand it without reading the source that led to your idea.

These notes are called permanent notes because they’re supposed to be permanently useful to you.

Created by Eva Keiffenheim based on “How to take smart notes.”

3) Write a Summary to Learn in Public

Writing is one of the most effective ways to embed information in your mind. Before you write, you have to take several steps: filter relevant information, organize this information and articulate them using your own vocabulary.

In short: When you write, you have to understand and think for yourself.

Scientists call this the ‘Generation effect.’ In 1978, researchers discovered that information is better remembered if generated from one’s own mind rather than read. And while research is still unclear about why it works, it has been shown to accelerate learning and remembering information.

I committed to learning in public. Hence, I publish my book summaries on my website. This is a way to hold me accountable to show up each week and support people who want to become lifelong learners. And that’s it — the process I use to create a book brain in Roam.

In Conclusion

Books are incredible — you can learn about anything, travel in time and place, and become anyone you want.

With a book brain, you can remember and use anything you want from the books you read. If you’re new to Kindle, Readwise, and Roam, it might take a day to set it up. Yet, once in place, it can save you hours. Depending on how much you read, it will take you one to four hours a month to make the most of what you read.

Antilibraries Are the Better Libraries

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Here’s how they can accelerate your learning.

Photo by Pickawood on Unsplash

Do you ever feel guilty about the book staple you haven’t read? Polymath Nassim Nicholas Taleb says you shouldn’t:

“Read books are far less valuable than unread ones.”

Yes, you read it right. The pages you haven’t studied indeed add value to your life. Here’s why.

Antilibraries protect you from ignorance

When you just read a few books in your life, you’re likely aware of what you don’t know. But once you’ve read through some hundred books, you tend to become ignorant.

You might be too confident, too sure, and less aware of the things you don’t know. That’s where antilibraries come into play.

The books you haven’t read (and will never read) assemble your antilibrary.

They represent unknowledge and are the best cure for overconfidence. Nassim Nicholas Taleb writes:

“A private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool.”

Antilibraries help you overcome the biggest enemy

The illusion of knowledge — the things you think you know — is learning’s biggest enemy. The authors of the learning bible ‘Make it Stick’ write:

“The illusion of mastery is an example of poor metacognition: what we know about what we know. Being accurate in your judgment of what you know and don’t know is critical for decision making.”

Stuart Firestein, professor of Biology at Columbia University, adds an important point:

“We know a lot of stuff but of course there is more stuff that we don’t know. And not only is there more stuff that we don’t know — but the more we know, the more we increase the amount of stuff we don’t know, because there was all that stuff that we didn’t know that we didn’t know before. […]

An image I always like is of a circle of knowledge — but as the circle grows, as the diameter increases, so does the circumference that’s in contact with all that darkness outside the circle of light — that ignorance.”

When you’re convinced, you know something, learning something new means you have to change your mind.

People who don’t want to change their minds keep stuck in the same place. So overcoming our egos is one of the big learning challenges.

Antilibraries accelerate your learning

“You will never read all those books,” friends say when they look at my want-to-read list. The list grows by 2–3 books every day.

My friends are right. Even though I read 1–2 books a week, I will only get through some of them.

But that’s the point: My antilibrary is a constant reminder of what I don’t know. It helps me stay curious and humble. Psychologist Adam Grant writes:

“No matter how much brainpower you have, if you lack the motivation to change your mind, you’ll miss many occasions to think again.”

How to move forward

Don’t ever feel discouraged by the books you haven’t read. Instead, see them as a reminder to be humble and curious. Combined, they’re the essential ingredients for life-long learning.

Want to feel inspired and improve your learning?
Subscribe free to The Learn Letter. I read a book and 50 articles a week, and each Wednesday, you’ll receive the best in your inbox. This newsletter will make you find tools and resources that help you on your path to health, wealth, and wisdom.

3 Binge-Worthy Books for Life-Long Learners

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These resources can help you expand your brain.

Created by the author via Canva.

“Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life,” Mortimer J. Adler said. I disagree.

Books don’t magically make you live the good life. You can read a book a week without changing at all.

Reading doesn’t help you per se — it’s reading the right books that can make all the difference.

No life skill can earn you greater dividends than learning how to learn. After reading more than 30 books on learning, these three are my favorite picks on meta-learning.

Every single one will help you understand how your brain learns. By doing so, you’ll make better decisions and find yourself on your journey to wisdom.

1) Make it Stick

Did you know rereading and highlighting are the most popular yet the least productive learning strategies?

Revisiting concepts and ideas might feel like learning because you recognize some of them. But you’re not learning. You’re trapped in an illusion of knowledge.

Mastering a text is different from recalling or remembering what you read.

“People commonly believe that if you expose yourself to something enough times, you can burn it into memory,” the authors write.

They also why it’s not worth it: “Rereading has three strikes against it. It is time-consuming. It doesn’t result in durable memory. And it often involves a kind of unwitting self-deception, as growing familiarity with the text comes to feel like mastery with the content.”

I used to think learning should feel easy. Slow and difficult meant unproductive. Turns out I was wrong.

Effective learning must feel hard: “Learning is deeper and more durable when it’s effortful. Learning that’s easy is like writing in sand, here today and gone tomorrow.”

‘Make it Stick’ doesn’t stop after dismantling learning myths.

The research group around neuroscientist Henry Roediger and psychologist Mark McDaniel spent ten years exploring learning strategies. Their goal was to bridge the gap between cognitive science and educational science.

Here are some powerful concepts from the book explores:

  • Your brain’s capacity is unlimited. Contrary to common belief, our brains are never full. The more we learn, the more we can remember. Learning is a virtuous circle. The more cues we have, the easier it is to encode new information to these cues. As long as you connect further information to existing brain branches, you can store much more than you think.
  • To learn, you first need to forget. I always thought forgetting is a character’s flaw. But it isn’t. Forgetting is necessary for new learning. That’s why spaced repetition is among the most effective learning strategies. You allow forgetting to occur and thereby strengthen your memory.
  • The power of reflection. Reflecting leads to stronger learning. To reflect, you need to retrieve, connect, and visualize earlier memories. Often, you mentally practice what you’d do the next time differently. That’s why regular thinking breaks are so valuable.

Last but not least, ‘Make it Stick’ summarizes six evidence-based, application-ready strategies that help you learn better and store new knowledge in your long-term memory.

The six strategies include retrieval practice (recall something you’ve learned in the past from your memory), spaced repetition (repeat the same piece of information across increasing intervals), interleaving (alternating before each practice is complete), elaboration (rephrasing new knowledge and connecting it with existing insights), reflection (synthesize, abstract, and articulate key lessons taught by experience), self-testing & calibration (answer a question or solve a problem before looking at the answer and identify knowledge gaps).

“Mastery, especially of complex ideas, skills and processes, is a quest. Don’t assume you’re doing something wrong if learning feels hard.”

2) The New Science of Learning

This book should be mandatory for students, teachers, and anyone who wants to learn. It’s based on state-of-the-art science about how the human brain learns. It will help you make learning more effective and teaches how you can retain knowledge and skills for a lifetime.

Similar to the ‘Make it Stick,’ the authors reveal common ineffective learning methods. The authors agree on many levels: “New learning requires a considerable amount of practice and a meaningful connection to other information in order to become a more permanent part of memory.”

To learn effectively, you need to use new information to form meaningful connections to other information. That’s why a multi-dimensional learning experience that involves many senses is effective.

Listen, talk, read, write, and think about the new material at hand to make learning more effective. The more work your brain does, the more connections you establish. And as you know, more connections increase the chances that you remember what you learn.

But it’s not only the learning itself that can improve your memory:

  • Sleep. During sleep, your brain cells shrink, and fluid can wash the toxins out. Sleep is your brain’s way of keeping itself clean and healthy. While sleeping, you strengthen the learning of your day.
  • Movement. Various studies attest to the importance of exercise for learning ability. Move your body to learn better.
  • Environment. A distracted brain can’t study. Prepare your environment for maximum focus. Go to a study room, turn off your phone, and eliminate any other distraction.

“Learning and memory have two key components: the learned object itself and the retrieval cue to find the learned object.”

3) How to Take Smart Notes

Do you finish a book or an article and think you’ve found great insights but don’t know what to do with them?

I read a lot, but I struggled to manage the input and my ideas for creative output. While writing an article, I often remembered I read something related but couldn’t find the source.

As Ahrens writes: “Having read more does not automatically mean having more ideas.”

Taking smart notes is the fast track to improve your productivity and creativity. Yet, most note-taking systems are ineffective.

This is one of the books that has forever changed the way I learn. Before, I didn’t know the difference between note-taking, note-making, and note-hierarchies.

‘How to Take Smart Notes’ transformed the way I store and manage what I read. It helped me realize a learning workflow can turn into a virtuous circle.

The idea is not to hoard knowledge but to develop ideas, arguments, and discussions, and the method he describes is called the slipbox.

Niklas Luhmann, a social scientist, invented the slipbox. He wrote 73 books and almost 400 research articles on various topics during his life, including politics, art, ecology, media, law, and the economy.

When someone asked him how he published so much, Luhmann replied, “I’m not thinking everything on my own. Much of it happens in my Zettelkasten. My productivity is largely explained by the Zettelkasten method”.

The slipbox is a fantastic learning tool as it forces us to use all the strategies known for effective learning.

When you read the book, you’ll marvel at sentences like: “We learn something not only when we connect it to prior knowledge and try to understand its broader implications (elaboration), but also when we try to retrieve it at different times (spacing) in different contexts (variation), ideally with the help of chance (contextual interference) and with a deliberate effort (retrieval).”

I love how Sönke Ahrens describes Luhmann’s Zettelkasten method and embeds it into the science of learning. It’s like “Make it Stick” applied to note-taking. This book will forever change the way you take notes.

“To seek as many opportunities to learn as possible is the most reliable long-term growth strategy.”

Want to feel inspired and improve your learning?

Subscribe free to The Learn Letter. I read a book and 50 articles a week, and each Wednesday, you’ll receive the best in your inbox. This newsletter will make you find tools and resources that help you on your path to health, wealth, and wisdom.

How Better Non-Fiction Books Would Look Like

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Using learning design to make knowledge stick with us.

Ali Pazani/Pexels

By inventing the printing press in 1440, Johannes Gutenberg made books scalable. Since then, our means to record, store, and access text information haven’t changed much. The 1993 invention of PDFs and the 2010s commercialization of e-books didn’t innovate the medium itself. Books still consist of words forming paragraphs and chapters.

I love reading. In the past months, I explored evidence-based reading strategies and avid readers’ habits like Bill Gates, Richard Feynman, and Ali Abdaal. It wasn’t until I discovered Andy Matuschak’s blog that I grasped the limited nature of the medium itself.

Andy Matuschak is a software engineer, designer, and researcher who helped build iOS at Apple and led R&D at Khan Academy. He works on technologies that expand what people can think and do. After reading his evergreen note systems and his exploratory ed-tech solutions, you might agree with me on his humble brilliancy. The quotes in this article are from his essay on books.

Why Books Don’t Work

Books are designed on the flawed assumption that people absorb knowledge by reading sentences. Your own experience might show learning doesn’t work that way.

How much can you truly remember from your last read non-fiction book? What can you recall from ‘Thinking Fast and Slow,’ ‘Sapiens,’ or ‘Good Economics for Hard Times’? Andy describes what we often recognize in conversations about non-fiction books.

“But just as often, as I grasp about, I’ll realize I had never really understood the idea in question, though I’d certainly thought I understood when I read the book. Indeed, I’ll realize that I had barely noticed how little I’d absorbed until that very moment. “

He describes what cognitive scientists call the illusion of knowledge. Often, we feel like we understood something, while in truth, we barely grasped a concept. Many of us fail to connect the dots to facilitate deep understanding. Reflecting on his inability to remember content from non-fiction books, Andy writes:

“All this suggests a peculiar conclusion: as a medium, books are surprisingly bad at conveying knowledge, and readers mostly don’t realize it.”

So, Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett, Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey are wrong when they praise books’ power? Don’t we expand our minds by reading through pearls of wisdom of philosophers, business leaders, and humble geniuses?

We might. But we aren’t as effective as we wish.

When we look at how humans learn, we find books don’t work in our favor. Words on paper build on a concept called transmission — the idea that knowledge can be directly transmitted from pages to the reader’s mind.

No idea could be further from the truth. Our brains don’t work like recording devices, and we barely learn through consumption.

This isn’t the mistake of authors who don’t write great content — it’s the nature of the book medium itself. What helps us better understand and remember what we read?

How to Make Books Work For You

Thinking about thinking helps readers understand and better remember new knowledge. Here’s how meta-cognition while reading would look and sound like according to Andy:

“The process is often invisible. These readers’ inner monologues have sounds like: “This idea reminds me of…,” “This point conflicts with…,” “I don’t really understand how…,” etc. If they take some notes, they’re not simply transcribing the author’s words: they’re summarizing, synthesizing, analyzing.”

He describes a truth we often forget. Learning is not visible and works best when it feels slow and difficult.

Non-fiction books don’t have built-in learning mechanisms. Readers need to plan, execute, and monitor how they think and engage with the book’s ideas and principles. They have to do the meta-learning work on their own.

Thinking about thinking is challenging. It tasks time, practice, and effort. And as this peer-reviewed study shows, many people struggle to meta-learn while reading. Adults overestimate their reading comprehension. Andy states:

“When books do work, it’s generally for readers who deploy skillful metacognition to engage effectively with the book’s ideas.”

How Better Books Would Look Like

Books that work for us would build on existing insights from learning theory and cognitive science. How can we design mediums to nudge us into meta-learning habits?

We know that effective learning strategies include retrieval, elaboration, spaced repetition, interleaving, self-testing, and reflection. A better medium would design the user’s journey around it.

Andy’s book “Quantum computing for the very curious” is the first effort towards a better composition. Reading his medium doesn’t feel like reading a book. The explanatory text is tightly woven with brief interactive review sessions to exploit the ideas they introduced.

“Reading it means reading a few minutes of text, then quickly testing your memory about everything you’ve just read, then reading for a few more minutes, or perhaps scrolling back to reread certain details, and so on.

Here we have self-testing, a tool that helps you overcome the illusion of knowledge. Spaced repetition is also part of the book’s design:

Reading Quantum Country also means repeating those quick memory tests in expanding intervals over the following days, weeks, and months. If you read the first chapter, then engage with the memory tests in your inbox over the following days, we expect your working memory will be substantially less taxed when reading the second chapter.

Lastly, Andy’s book also includes the practice of interleaving — a switch of a topic before a completed task. Alternate working on different problems feels more difficult as it facilitates forgetting, a process needed to make information stick to our long-term memories.

What’s more, the interleaved review sessions lighten the metacognitive burden normally foisted onto the reader: they help readers see where they’re absorbing the material and where they’re not.”

While this is an interesting idea towards improving written information, the future of books is still unresolved. Current books don’t work in favor of human memory and learning. So, how do you change your reading game to make non-fiction books stick?

These 3 Practices by Bill Gates Will Change How You Read

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Reading gives you access to the smartest brains on earth. Learning from the greatest people is the fastest way to become healthy, wealthy, and wise.

Charlie Munger, self-made billionaire, and Warren Buffett’s longtime business partner, once said that he hadn’t known any wise person who didn’t read all the time. None, zero.

Yet, reading per se doesn’t make you a better person. You can read 52 books a year without changing at all.

It’s about what and how you read that will improve your life’s quality and enhance your mind.

I read a book a week for more than two years now and continue to look for ways to improve my reading. Recently, I listened to Bill Gates sharing his free, yet priceless lessons on how he reads books.

Here are his top three reading practices and how to apply them:

1. Take side notes

In our distracting world, it’s tempting to shift focus at light speed. When phones are within a hand reach, it’s easy to switch tasks without even realizing it.

Taking side notes in the margins is a simple yet effective way to stay present. With a pen in your hand, it’s your default option to engage with the book in front of you. You’ll find it easier to focus on the thoughts at hand.

Moreover, scribbling on the pages will make it easier for you to remember what you’ve read. You ensure you link the new knowledge to what you already know. This helps you to think hard about what’s in the book.

Gates always aims to connect new knowledge to what he already knows. If he disagrees with the written word, he will take even more side notes:

“If I disagree with a book it sometimes takes a lot of time to read the book because I am writing so much in the margins. It’s actually kind of frustrating. Please say something I agree with so I can get through with this book.”

How to do it:

Take a pen in your hand before opening your next book. Cross out what you don’t like and write down what to do instead. Jot down a question if lines are unclear. Scribble your thoughts on the margins and connect what you learn with what you already know.

How can you link the words in front of you to your own experiences?

Which example can you add to the page that contradicts this claim?

Do you have any memory that proves the point at hand?

Soon you’ll realize that taking notes not only helps you to concentrate but also to remember what you read. The more you write in the margins, the more you’ll remember.

In learning theory, this way to remember things is called elaborative rehearsal. You make an association between the new information in the book and the information you already know. The more you elaborate, or try to understand something, the more likely you‘ll keep this new information in your long-term memory.

2. Finish every book you read

Gate’s second principle is simple: get to the end.

Read books cover to cover. He says:

“It’s my rule to get to the end.”

Huh? Seriously? It’s tempting to skip this principle since productivity coaches advise you not to complete bad books. We have to be careful here.

Bill doesn’t sayyou should complete a lousy book.

Instead, his rule indicates to decide what you read before you start. Consider whether a book is worth your time before you open it.

By doing so, you’ll become as intentional on reading as Bill Gates. Because it’s his rule always to finish what he starts, he’ll think twice before he starts a book.

Finishing every book you read doesn’t mean you should force yourself through a bad book. Instead, pick carefully and then commit to complete the book. Even if it turns out to be hard, contradicting, or daunting.

How to do it:

The internet allows us to access the libraries of smart minds. For example, Obama’s tweeted his favorite books from 2019, and Bill shares his recommendations once a year.

Start a want-to-read list with every book you intend to read. To do so, you can use listing apps like Google Keep, Wunderlist, or ToDoist, or create a profile on Goodreads.

I love using Goodreads for my want-to-reads as I see the covers and the overall rating. Before bulk-ordering, I’d browse through my list to pick the next books.

3. Read for at least one hour at a time

To get your mind around a book, Bill says, you should block an hour at a time every time you read. Here’s what he says:

“If you read books you want to sit down an hour at a time. Every night I’m reading, I’m reading a little bit over an hour so I can take my current book and make some progress.”

While Bill’s advice is applicable for retired billionaires, I’d recommend adapting his rule to: “Aim for one uninterrupted reading hour a day and also take every additional minute you get.”

How to do it:

Make it non-negotiable to read before you sleep. To do so, replace your smartphone with an alarm clock and go to bed an hour earlier.

Schedule a smartphone alarm every evening at 9 PM, which reminds you to switch off all your digital devices. Schedule a second alarm for 9:20 PM as a hard deadline and stick to it.

My bedtime ritual is reading. In bed, I can either sleep or read. That’s how I read one book per week for two years. The sooner you shut off your devices in the evening, the more you’ll learn.

Bottom Line

Following Bill’s principles isn’t complex, long, or exhausting.

On the contrary: These principles make reading fun and worthwhile.

  • Take side notes to engage with what you read.
  • Pick intentionally, and finish all the great books you read.
  • Make reading a bedtime ritual to have an undistracted reading hour.

Instead of feeling discouraged by all the ideas about what you could do to improve your reading, enjoy experimenting at your own pace. Keep the principles that work for you and screw the rest.

Choose one or two new reading habits until you find a pattern that helps you on your journey to health, wealth, and wisdom.

Adler’s Four Levels of How to Read a Book Will Improve Your Reading

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Get the most out of your books.

Library in Stuttgart, Germany. (Source: Juan Urdaneta on Flickr)

Books give you access to the smartest brains on our planet. And learning from the greatest minds is your fast track to health, wealth, and wisdom.

But reading per se doesn’t improve your life. You can read a book a week without changing at all.

It’s about what and how you read that will improve your life’s quality and enhance your mind. Mortimer Adler, a famous philosopher, and prolific reader, used to say:

“In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.”

I read a book a week for more than three years now, and I always look for ways to improve my reading. Recently, I reread Mortimer Adler’s classic ‘How to read a book,’ where he shares great advice. Here are the four levels of reading and how to apply them:

Level 1: Read like a first grader.

This level of reading because it’s what you learned as a kid in elementary school.

How to do it:

If you can read these words, you’ve probably mastered the level of basic reading. Congrats!

Level 2: Become an inspectional pre-reader.

Think of this level as a quick chat you have with the author. Instead of devoting ten hours to a book only to discover it had not much to say to you, you can use inspectional reading to avoid it.

The goal is to determine whether you should read the entire book, a few chapters, or nothing at all.

Before I learned about these levels, I was among the people who’d dive straight into a book. I wouldn’t bother to read the table of contents or the preface. I started to read from front to back, unknowingly wasting a lot of time.

You don’t owe the author anything. Dare to skip pages or even chapters. A non-fiction book’s sole purpose is to help you grow by answering your questions or introducing valuable ideas.

And here’s where becoming an inspectional pre-reader can help you. You do this step before you start reading. The goal here is to decide within around 10 to 30 minutes whether a book is worth your time.

How to do it:

Set yourself a time limit of 10–30 minutes and complete the following four steps for every time-intense non-fiction book you plan to read.

  1. Look at the cover and skim the preface. When doing so, you’ll get a feeling for the book’s category.
  2. Read the table of contents. Which chapter is most relevant to you? Read a few paragraphs from the chapter to grasp whether the book meets your expectations.
  3. Identify the main points. After steps one and two, you have an understanding of the book’s most important points. Look at the pivotal chapter to the argument and check the structure and connection. Does it resonate with you? Read a paragraph or a page, and figure out if you want to read the book.

Level 3: Know how to analyze any non-fiction book.

Yay! You’ve found a book worth reading. Thereby, you moved past the quick chat from the second level and started an intense conversation with the author.

Once you chose your next great book, the effortful part begins, also called active reading.

When I first learned about this level, I sighed. Why would I put even more time into reading? Analyzing a book seemed like slowing me down.

But the opposite is true. Effortless reading is like writing in the sand, here today and gone tomorrow.

While reading, most people think they understand the texts they read. But understanding doesn’t work like this. As scientists write in ‘The science of successful learning’: „Mastering the text is not the same as mastering the ideas behind them. “

“The more effort the better.”

— Mortimer Adler

To really master the ideas behind a text you need to think about what’s being said. You want to deploy your metacognition. What does the author want to say? How does it relate to what you already know? What context can you think of to apply the arguments?

Take notes along the way. Expand on your notes the deeper you dive into the arguments. Make reading a conscious effort because that’s how you will remember most of what you read.

How to do it:

Answer these three questions every time you read a book.

  1. What is the book about as a whole? Look at the cover at the table of contents and write down the answer in your own words.
  2. What is being said in detail, and how? This is where you want to use your metaknowledge and rephrase the critical argument.
  3. Is the book true, in whole or in part? Critical thinking and constructive criticism will help you put the book into perspective. You could answer this question only if you mastered the previous two.

Level 4: Unlock the power of syntopical reading.

This level is pretty hard. I’ve only done it once so far, and it only makes sense if you want to explore a specific topic or research question in depth. Level four is not about a single book but about how the books you read relate to each other.

The aim isn’t to understand one single book but to understand an entire subject. By deploying syntopical reading, you can compare their arguments, explore research questions and draw a knowledge map.

“With the help of the books read, the syntopical reader is able to construct an analysis of the subject that may not be in any of the books. It is obvious, therefore, that syntopical reading is the most active and effortful kind of reading.“

— Mortimer Adler

From a learning perspective, this level is terrific. To learn something, you need the information itself and its relation to what you already know. So-called memory cues help you access information when you need it.

How to do it:

Determine the subject and collect all the books you read related to it. Then, find the relevant passages of the books and rephrase them in your terms.

While summarizing the key ideas, focus on your questions instead of the author’s answers. Only pick the arguments relevant to your questions.

Once you’ve collected the key points from all the different books, order them in relation to one another.

Lastly, analyze the discussion. Even if you’re not a writer, an article can be the best tool to do this.

Research shows the more you create, the more creative you become. The best ideas and connections will arise once you flow into the writing process.

Final Thoughts

Following Mortimer Adler’s levels seems complex. But these principles make reading worthwhile and help you get more from your books.

  1. Read at the elementary level.
  2. Use inspectional pre-reading to pick the best book for you.
  3. Become an effortful reader by answering the three key questions.
  4. Deploy syntopical reading whenever you want to dive deep into a topic.

Instead of feeling discouraged by all the ideas about what you could do to improve your reading, enjoy experimenting at your own pace. Keep the ideas that work for you and screw the rest.

Choose one or two new ideas until you find a pattern that helps you on your journey to health, wealth, and wisdom.

“Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.”

— Mortimer Adler

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3 Principles of Reading Most People Don’t Learn Until Later in Life

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As long as you’re reading, you are already on your way to wisdom.

Photo by Adil from Pexels

Do you ever close a non-fiction book and worry whether reading is a time-waster?

If you ever feel like the knowledge in a book can’t help you live a better life, it’s likely because you don’t know about key reading principles.

Reading non-fiction takes anywhere from six to nine hours — a significant time investment. These hours aren’t wasted if you read for entertainment.

But if you carve out the hours from a busy day to read books like Thinking Fast and Slow, you’re likely looking for something more than joyful reading time.

Whether you want to use books to advance your career or apply what you read to your life, this one is for you. Here are fundamental reading principles many people learn too late in life.

1.) Passive Reading Won’t Make Information Stick

It’s Sunday morning, and you’re on a walk with friends. The topic revolves around some serious non-fiction books you just read. First, you feel proud because you read it. But soon after, you feel dumb.

Because when the conversation goes beyond the main book themes, you feel lost. You discover you only remembered a fraction of the content.

This happened to me quite often. I could talk about the basic claims, but when a friend asked a probing question, I couldn’t answer it. I often thought reading didn’t work for me and considered quitting books altogether.

I didn’t have a basic understanding of how our brains work. Twelve books and hours of lectures later, I understand how we learn and remember.

Human brains don’t work like recording devices. The words on the pages don’t magically stick to our memory.

Learning is at least a three-step process: encoding of information in your short-term memory, consolidating knowledge in the long-term memory, and retrieving information when it’s needed.

To make reading effective, you need to factor in the two components of learning and memory: the learned information itself and the so-called retrieval cue that helps you find the material you learned.

“The person who says he knows what he thinks but cannot express it usually does not know what he thinks.”

— Mortimer Adler

What to do:

These three evidence-based steps will help you remember anything you want from the books you read.

First, elaborate. Explain what you read in your own words and relate it to what you already know. Stop after reading an interesting sentence and scribble your thoughts on the book’s page or your note-taking app.

Answer these meta-learning questions: “How does this relate to my life? In which situation will I make use of this knowledge? How does it connect to other insights I have on the topic?”

You can’t rephrase anything in your words if you don’t get it. By elaborating, you become an active reader and make new information stick.

Second, retrieve. We learn something not only when we connect it to what we already know (elaboration) but when we try to access it. Retrieval is powerful because when you recall a memory, you reinforce both it and its cue.

After finishing a book, summarize the content from your memory: “How can you summarize the book in three sentences? Which ideas do you want to keep in mind and apply? How does the book relate to what you already know?”

This is also the technique Nobel prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman used to remember what he learned. He mentally recalled all principles and main points he wanted to keep in mind. You can do the same. Unlock the benefits of retrieval by writing your summary after finishing a book.

Third, space out self-testing. The more time has gone since you read a book, the more difficult it is to recall it. That’s why you can’t remember concepts when you talk to friends. But forgetting isn’t a character flaw. It’s essential for learning.

After a week went by, think about the book you read. Recall your summary without looking at the sheet. After, check for your knowledge gaps. In that way, you strengthen your memory and cues for faster retrieval. Repeat the self-testing once in a while, and you’ll be able to recall a book’s content fast.

The entire process can feel slow and intense. But that’s how effective learning works — you have to do the work.

2.) Reading Isn’t About the Number of Books You Read

When I made reading a life habit, I set the intention to read a specific number of books a year. And while reading 52 books a year for three years certainly helped me get started, this mindset is counter-productive.

Focusing on a number of books accelerates the way you read. But speed-reading isn’t helpful. Different studies confirm when reading speed goes up as a result of speed-reading, comprehension goes down.

And as you know from the previous point, comprehension is only the start of proper knowledge acquisition. If you want to remember what you read, you need to use metacognition (meaning the questions you answer while and after reading).

If you want to expand your knowledge and learn deeply, read slower.

The better the book, the slower you should look at the words. Because all new information and concepts you learn need to be connected to your existing knowledge.

Before building my first business, I had read dozens of books for each stage in the business lifecycle. But when it came to starting, the biggest gamechanger was connecting it to my life by applying what I read.

“In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.”

— Mortimer Adler

What to do:

Don’t focus on the number of books you read. Instead, look for ways to include new ideas into your life. Quality matters more than quantity. Pay attention to what’s in front of you. Think about how you can apply it to life, then do it.

As Ratna Kusnur said: “Knowledge trapped in books neatly stacked is meaningless and powerless until applied for the betterment of life.”

When you read High-Performance Habits and learn about the power of morning affirmations, start to act. Record your own affirmations. After learning about the benefits of journaling through Stillness is Key, place a notebook with a pen on your nightstand and start journaling the same evening.

Whenever you stumble upon practical advice, pause and act upon it. Put an item on your To-Do list or place an action item on a specific spot. Reading a book isn’t a race — the more insightful the book, the more often you should pause to apply it.

3.) Mediocre Books Just Don’t Cut It

This is probably the most common disbelief that prevents people from unlocking a book’s power. Our desire to finish what we start is what makes reading feel meaningless.

Bad books are hard to read; good books almost read themselves. There are too many excellent books on this planet. Don’t waste your time reading the bad ones.

I got this wrong for years. I felt if I put down a book, I disrespect the author. Plus, I paid for the book. So why would I harm both of us?

Now first, the author won’t know if you put it aside. There’s nothing to worry about. You don’t do anyone good if you force yourself through a book you don’t like.

Second, there’s a sunk-cost fallacy that is ruining your decision. This psychological trap means you continue consuming something because you’ve invested time or money in it.

But if you carry on with a lousy book only because you paid for it and spend some hours reading, all you’re doing is digging a deeper hole. Better to waste $11.95 than four additional hours of your lifetime.

What to do:

When you like a book, you feel it. You love the writing style and marvel at the ideas. You can’t wait to read the next page. You look forward to reading it all day long.

Life is too short for bad books. Read the genres you love, the content you deeply enjoy, from authors you admire.

Start books quickly but also quit them fast if you don’t like them. Once you know, you can stop reading bad books without feeling guilty, your reading practice changes. Because once you quit a bad book, you open up the opportunity to read a great one.

Even if your best friend, a smart mentor, or Bill Gates said, you should read a book; you can quit it. Because the best person to judge whether you should finish a book is you.

Quit most books. Read-only a few. Re-read the best ones twice, thrice, or a hundred times. Books change as we do. You’ll be amazed at how many new things you can discover that you may have missed before.

Conclusion

Reading can be the fast-track to a happier, healthier, wiser life. But unless you get the key reading principles right, it remains mere entertainment.

Try all of the strategies but don’t force yourself through anything that doesn’t feel right for you. Do your research, add other techniques, skip what doesn’t serve you, and think for yourself.

Keep the steps that work for you and screw the rest. No matter which strategies you use, applying them will pay off. As long as you’re reading, you are already on your way to wisdom. Charlie Munger, self-made billionaire:

“In my whole life, I have known no wise people who didn’t read all the time — none. Zero.”

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This is Exactly How Reading 197 Books Improved My Life

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Naval Ravikant: “Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.”

Picture by Author.

Do you ever open a book and worry whether reading can really change your life?

If you feel like reading is a time-waster, it’s likely because you haven’t reaped the rewards yet. As Naval Ravikant once said:

“Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.”

You don’t see the desired results within weeks. If you stop too early, you’ll never get where you want.

But once you read for years rather than weeks, you see it’s the shortcut to get where you want without trial and error. You simply borrow the brains of the greatest minds and apply their nuggets of wisdom.

Through the 197 books I read, I learned from some of the best thinkers. Here are three specific ways reading has improved my life.

1.) Automating Your Path to Financial Freedom

Financial literacy is inherited. If your parents aren’t smart about money, you don’t learn the essential investing principles unless you read.

Books taught me wealth isn’t about how much you make. It’s about how much you save. Don’t save what is left after spending but spend what is left after saving.

Your paycheck won’t make you rich. Your investments will. Ramit Sethi uses 50–60% for Fixed costs (rent, utilities, debt), 10% for Investments (401(k), Roth IRA, ETF saving plans), 5–10% for saving goals (vacations, gifts, emergency fund) and 20–35% for guilt-free spending money (dining, drinking, movies, clothes).

Reading made me set up my investment plan. Right now, I invest 25% of my income. From my paycheck, 15% go to ETFs, 7% to cryptocurrencies, and 3% in lower-risk assets like bonds. On top of this, I sometimes cherry-pick stocks. But stock-picking is gambling. Here’s why.

Risk and return are interrelated. If you want to invest successfully, you can’t eliminate risk. The money market rewards investors with interest in the risks they take.

Smart investing isn’t about avoiding risks. Instead, it’s about diversifying your risks. But with stock-picking, you’re betting on a single company.

Here’s another insight that altered my path to financial freedom: You’re never going to get rich by renting out your time.

Wealthy people built systems that make money independent from time. They sell products with no marginal cost of replication — things like books, media, movies, and code. You can multiply your returns without working more.

As Nicolas Cole says:

“The way that people build true wealth for themselves is they see money differently than everyone else. They don’t see it as something they ‘have.’ They see it as something they deploy, and use to build and grow from there.”

2.) Cutting Workdays from 11 Hours to Five Hours

I used to work long hours. I worked hard to get what I felt was a success in life, including building my own companies next to a purposeful 9–5 job, my Master’s degree, a handsome fiancé, a specific amount of workouts and books per week, a number on the scale.

I was on an eternal quest for the next achievement. I never paused.

But one book after another, my life changed. Eckhart Tolle made me redefine success. John Strelecky revealed my life priorities. Brené Brown transformed my inner voice. Cal Newport helped me build deep work habits.

My workdays averaged 11 hours. Now, they‘re down to 5. The time spent is less. But my focus is higher. The equation for knowledge work is as follows:

High-Quality Work Produced = (Time Spent) x (Intensity of Focus)

The more hours your work, the harder it is to focus. Working 11 hours a day with zero focus leads to zero high-quality work. That’s why there’s a diminishing return on input working hours. Putting in more hours can worsen your results. And your life’s quality.

I get up around six. After an hour of meditation, yoga, journaling, and whatever feels good, I write for about three hours. Then I read and add notes to my Roamkasten. At 11, I workout. Then, I take a long lunch break with my partner. Only after lunch, I turn on my phone.

My afternoons vary. I go for a walk with a friend. I take a bath. I have another deep work session for one of my clients, record an interview or volunteer for my NGO. But whatever I do, I make sure my phone and computer are switched off at 8 PM.

I still have workdays where I work too much. But whenever I do, I keep Glennon Doyle words in mind:

“Hard work is important. So are play and non-productivity. My worth is not tied to my productivity but to my existence.”

3.) Learning How to Learn Anything You Want

Learning is the only meta-skill you need to master because all other meta-skills depend on your ability to learn.

If you know how to learn, picking up philosophy or graphic design, or coding is so much easier. If you don’t, learning new skills is a daunting path.

In the first years of my reading journey, I ignored learning. Whenever a conversation revolved around a book I read, I could never remember much. I thought forgetting is my personal flow. But it isn’t.

Forgetting is essential for learning. Spaced repetition, one of the most effective learning strategies, allows some forgetting to occur between sessions. Thereby it strengthens the cues and routes for faster retrieval.

We learn something when we try to access it at different times (spacing) and in distinct contexts (variation). We learn when we connect existing knowledge to what’s in front of us (elaboration) and when we recall what we learned (retrieval).

Here’s how to remember anything you want from books:

  • Elaboration. Think while you read. Pause to make notes on how and when you could use this new insight. How does it relate to anything you already know? Write it down.
  • Retrieval. After you finish a book, think about what you want to remember. Recall from your mind what you want to stick with you. Write it down in your favorite tool — a journal, GoodReads, Notion, or RoamResearch.
  • Variation. Share what you learned with your friends. Talk about your insights in a mastermind group or use the Feynman technique and teach it to somebody else.
  • Spacing. Browse through your old book notes. Look at the title and test yourself on what you remember. This process feels slow and frustrating, but that’s how meaningful learning works.

When I first learned about the process, I fear it’s a time waste. But it isn’t. In Sönke Ahrens words:

“Not learning from what we read because we don’t take the time to elaborate on it is the real waste of time”

Final Remarks

I could go on indefinitely because reading has also improved my life on so many levels (10-day fasts, slow sex, nose-breathing, psychedelic experiences, etc.). But I’ll stop for now and leave you with one powerful thought.

Reading is liberating. Freedom means choosing from a set of options. The more options you have, the freer you are. But most people don’t know about all their options. And that’s where reading kicks in. It helps you explore options you never knew existed.

“One cannot apply what one knows in a practical manner if one does not know anything to apply.”

— Robert Sternberg

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How You Can Make Reading an Ongoing Habit

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We make reading more serious than it needs to be.

Image by izoca from Pixabay

When you look at human history, the fundamental human problems are the same in all ages. No matter what problem we face, odds are someone has faced it before and written about it.

Carl Sagan states in ‘The Persistence of Memory’:

“Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.”

Through books, we can learn from citizens of distant epochs. The solution to every problem lies in some a book. That’s why reading is the key to a successful and happy life.

Over the last years, I transformed from reading two books a year to reading at least one book a week. If I can do this, you can too. These tiny shifts can help make reading a habit for life.

1) Buy the books you really want to read.

When I started reading, I followed celebrities reading recommendations and best-seller lists. If Charlie Munger, Melinda Gates, or the New York Times recommend a book, it’s a must-read for me.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

These lists are not where you want to start your reading journey. As Arthur Schopenhauer wrote in his essay on reading and books: “People read always only the newest instead of the best of all times.”

We shouldn’t read the book everyone talks about. Because the best person to judge whether you should read a is neither a billionaire nor a newspaper — it’s you.

“Read what you love until you love to read.”

— Naval Ravikant

How to do it:

Start with what sparks your interest. A few hundred books in, you will anyway gravitate towards the good stuff.

Depending on where you are in life right now and whether you want to read for fun or learning, ask yourself:

  • What are you most curious about right now?
  • Which life area (health, wealth, relationships, work) do you want to advance?
  • What’s a problem in life you really want to see solved?

Find ten-books that potentially satisfy your needs. Search for keywords or experts within the niche. Go to a bookstore and ask for timeless recommendations.

Then, scan through the book’s table of content. Read a few pages and see whether the words resonate with you. Buy three books that attract you the most.

Oh, and if a book doesn’t promise to deliver on your questions, quit it. There are too many great books waiting for you. Choose wisely, then, read thoroughly.

2) Create your ultimate reading environment.

“If we do not create and control our environment, our environment creates and controls us,“ Dr. Marshall Goldsmith wrote about triggers.

Desired behavior isn’t tied to our willpower. Instead, self-control and self-discipline depend much more on our environment, Nobel-prize winner Thaler discovered.

I bet if we compare a person who takes their phone to the bedroom with a person who doesn’t, the latter will almost always read more.

Resisting social media’s mechanisms is incredibly hard. You don’t want to be nudged to use your phone first thing in the morning and last thing in the evening.

Instead, you want to design your environment to make it work for you. As James Clear put it:

“You don’t have to be the victim of your environment. You can also be the architect of it.”

How to do it:

Keeping your phone away from your bed is one of the hardest habits to break. But the work is worth it.

I replaced my phone with an alarm clock and stopped taking my phone to the bed two years ago. Best-decision ever. In bed, I can either sleep or read.

As soon as you charge your phone outside of your bedroom, you have more time during the evenings and the mornings. Instead of newsfeeds, your environment invites you to read.

The less time you spend on your phone, the more you’ll read.

What also helped me is making reading obvious. I put my book on the pillow when I make my bed in the morning. Thereby, reading in bed becomes the default option. Not having to use willpower will set you up for a reading habit for life.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

3) Don’t eat the same dish for breakfast and dinner.

You don’t want to eat the same dish for breakfast and breakfast. Why would you read the same book in the morning and the evening?

Many people try to force themselves through a specific book at a specific time. Reading becomes joyless. Ultimately, they stop reading altogether.

Don’t feel like reading before you go to sleep? Chances are high it’s the wrong book on your bed table.

By reading different books simultaneously, you can take a break from whatever title you don’t want to read at that time. Books are patient. They’ll wait for you until you feel like picking them up again.

“Everyone I know is stuck on some book. I’m sure you’re stuck on some book right now. It’s page 332, you can’t go on any further but you know you should finish the book, so what do you do? You give up reading books for a while.”

— Naval Ravikant

Plus, reading different books at the same time can reveal unexpected connections between seemingly unrelated titles. As James Clear says: “The most useful insights are often found at the intersection of ideas.“

How to do it:

Start a new book before you finished the one you’re reading. Place your books in locations that remind you to read them at the right time.

Right now, I’m reading 12 books. In the morning, before journaling, I often read a page of ‘Meditations.’ The physical book is right next to my journal. I’ll dive into ‘How to Take Smart Notes’ right after writing to level up my reading practice. That’s why my Kindle is on my desk. ‘Leaders Eat Last’ lingers on my shelf since last May, but I’ll give it a second chance before I quit it. Before sleep, I want to dive into a new world, and I do this with a historical novel.

Don’t force yourself through a content-dense book before you start a new one. This slows down your reading practice and takes away any joy. Having different books for different situations will change the way you look at books.

4) Apply new knowledge to improve your life.

Reading lets, you borrow smart people’s brains. Yet, reading per se doesn’t make you a better person. You can read a book a week without changing at all.

If you only read but never act upon your new knowledge, reading can feel like a time-waster. Ratna Kusner said:

“Knowledge trapped in books neatly stacked is meaningless and powerless until applied for betterment of life.”

It’s about what and how you read that will improve your life’s quality and enhance your mind.

Social climber Dale Carnegie used to say knowledge isn’t power until it’s applied. And to apply what you read, you must take your reading game to the next level.

How to do it:

If you stumble upon useful advice in a book, act immediately. Put an item on your to-do list or place an action item on a specific spot.

By forming action items from your books, you’ll make the most out of any book. You’ll be able to apply knowledge from books to your life.

Don’t intend to read a specific number of books per year. Instead, take your time with the books that can transform your life. Reread them and act upon new knowledge.

When you witness how reading improves the way you go through life, you’ll gladly make reading a habit for life.

Final Thoughts

No matter who you are or what you do, reading can help you achieve your goals. But most of the time, we make reading more serious than it needs to be. Sometimes, tiny shifts can change the way we read.

  • Read the books you can’t stop thinking about.
  • In the bedroom, replace your phone with a book.
  • Be okay with reading different books at the same time.
  • Apply what you read to your life.

While each of these points can change how you read in one way or the other, they only serve as inspiration, and you certainly don’t need to implement every single one.

Choose one or two you like, but screw the rest. Only one person should define your reading journey — you.

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Arthur Schopenhauer’s 3 Ideas Will Improve the Way You Read

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Timeless advice on how to make the most of your books.

Photo by Suzy Hazelwood from Pexels

Books carry the wisdom of the smartest people who ever existed. Through reading, you find yourself on the surefire way to become happy, healthy, and wise.

Yet, books per se don’t make you a better person.

You can read every day without changing at all. It’s what and how you read that will improve your life’s quality and enhance your mind.

I’ve read a book a week for more than three years and always look for ways to improve my reading practice. Recently, I stumbled upon Arthur Schopenhauer’s essay on reading and books.

Schopenhauer was a philosopher whose writing on morality and psychology has influenced Einstein, Nietzsche, and Freud, among others. Here are his powerful reading insights and how to apply them:

1) Stop Reading Passively

In 1851, Schopenhauer got something right most people still ignore. Books are the arena of someone else’s thoughts, not our own. He writes:

“When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process.”

Human brains don’t work like recording devices. You don’t absorb information and knowledge by reading. Relying on highlighting, rereading, or, worst of all, passive reading is highly ineffective.

For my first 80 books or so, I was a passive reader. Whenever a conversation revolved around something I read, I could never remember much. I thought forgetting is a personal character flaw.

But it isn’t. Instead, it’s the way we read that’s flawed.

To get the most from books, we need to think for ourselves while reading. Active reading is the way we acquire and retain knowledge.

How to apply it:

Before opening your next book, take a pen to your hand. Scribble your thoughts on the margins and connect what you learn with what you already know.

While reading, think about questions like:

  • How can you link the words to your own experiences?
  • How can you use the author’s thesis to explain something else?
  • Do you have any memory that proves or contradicts what you read?

You store new information in terms of its meaning to our existing memory. To remember new information, you not only need to know it but also to know how it relates to what you already know.

And by scribbling down your own thoughts, you’re doing what cognitive scientists call elaborative rehearsal. You associate new information with what you already know.

Soon you’ll realize that taking notes not only helps you to concentrate but also to remember what you read. That’s how you transform yourself into an active reader.

2) Not Every Book is Worth Your Time

Books aren’t created equal. When looking at current best-seller lists, what Schopenhauer wrote some hundred years ago feels right on point:

“Nine-tenths of the whole of our present literature aims solely at taking a few shillings out of the public’s pocket, and to accomplish this, author, publisher, and reviewer have joined forces.”

A book’s sales numbers don’t say much about its quality. Best-selling authors are primarily great marketers.

When you look at human history, the fundamental human problems are the same in all ages: Justice, happiness, power, love, and change.

And through books, you can connect with people who mastered these areas centuries before. So why bother with the short-cycle of current books?

Again, Schopenhauer:

“A public that will leave unread writings of the noblest and rarest of minds, of all times and all countries, for the sake of reading the writings of commonplace persons which appear daily, and breed every year in countless numbers like flies; merely because these writings have been printed today and are still wet from the press.”

How to apply it:

Knowing what you want to read is essential, but so is its inversion — knowing what you don’t want to read.

Statistically, the chances are small that the best books are written in the current decade. So, look beyond best-seller lists to choose the books you read.

If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking. Instead, follow A.B. Schlegel’s advice, who had also been a guiding star for Schopenhauer:

“Read the old ones, the real old ones. What the new ones say about them doesn’t mean much.”

I love to find ‘the real old ones’ through Mortimer J. Adler’s book recommendations, starting page 175.

3) Develop Your System of Thought

Schopenhauer’s last advice concerns the way we systemize reading:

“Every one has aims, but very few have anything approaching a system of thought. This is why such people do not take an objective interest in anything, and why they learn nothing from what they read: they remember nothing about it.”

Knowledge isn’t power unless it’s applied. And to apply what we read, we must first remember what we learned.

Schopenhauer got right what Harvard scientists confirmed some hundred years later:

“It is only by reflection that one can assimilate what one has read if one reads straight ahead without pondering over it later, what has been read does not take root, but is for the most part lost.”

When we don’t pause to think and to contemplate, we keep circling in a limited sphere at a higher velocity. We can read a book a week to 10x our productivity and still lose the most important life lessons.

Like Mortimer J. Adler said: “In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.”

How to apply it:

Don’t focus on the number of books you read, but on your reading depth.

Use your margin notes to create a summary. Keep it brief and use your own words. Depending on your preference, here’s what you can do with it:

  • Keep your summaries analog in your journal.
  • Post them publically on GoodReads, Bookshlf, or your blog.
  • Create your personal knowledge database in Notion or Roam.

Summarizing, synthesizing, analyzing a book might feel like slowing you down. But the opposite is true. Learning works best when it feels slow and difficult.

The One Thing Schopenhauer Was Wrong About

While most of his advice is timeless, he holds one flawed assumption. In his words:

“One can overload and choke the mind by giving it too much nourishment.”

You can never over nourish your brain. The opposite is true. The more you learn, the easier it’ll be to remember. As cognitive scientists write in this paper:

“Our capacity for storing to-be-learned information or procedures is essentially unlimited. In fact, storing information in human memory appears to create capacity — that is, opportunities for additional linkages and storage — rather than use it up.”

Retrieval, the process of accessing your memory, is cue dependent. This means the more mental links you’re generating during stage one, the acquisition phase, the easier you can access and use your knowledge.

The more connected information we already have, the easier we learn.

Conclusion

Acting on Schopenhauer’s insights isn’t complex, long, or exhausting.

On the contrary: These principles make reading fun and worthwhile and help you get the most from books.

  • Become an active reader by taking notes while you read.
  • Know what not to read. Don’t waste your time on mediocre books.
  • Systemize your thinking by creating a personal knowledge base.

Instead of feeling discouraged by all the ideas about what you could do to improve your reading, enjoy experimenting at your own pace. Keep the ideas that work for you and screw the rest.

Choose one or two new principles until you find a pattern that helps you on your journey to health, wealth, and wisdom.

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How to Remember What You Read From Non-Fiction Books

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A guide for applying evidence-based learning strategies to reading any non-fiction book, and retaining what you read.

A woman sits at a desk while reading a book.
Christina Morillo / Pexels

At age 18, I felt most school lessons were time-wasters. To save future pupil generations from what I had suffered through, I decided to change the education system. And if that wasn’t naïve enough, I assumed studying business education would get me there.

Where, if not in an education program at university, should you learn how to learn?

I was wrong. There were no classes on learning or cognitive science. Being assigned dry, academic, self-promoted professor books, I hadn’t figured how the right books could teach you anything. Instead, I asked the best-performing fellow students about their learning techniques and copied their bulk-learning and memorizing. But after graduation, I felt dumb. I forgot almost everything from my classes.

A Bachelor’s degree taught me how to learn to ace exams. But it didn’t teach me how to learn to remember.

Different studies reveal most students never learn how to learn. Kornell & Bjork and Hartwig & Dunlosky, for example, show that 65% to 80% of students answered “no” to the question “Do you study the way you do because somebody taught you to study that way?”

From the ones who answered “yes,” some likely watched the most-popular Coursera course of all time: Dr. Barabara Oakley’s free course on “Learning how to Learn.” So did I. And while this course taught me about chunking, recalling, and interleaving, I learned something more useful: the existence of non-fiction literature that can teach you anything.

So I read—a lot. Since 2017 I have read about 150 non-fiction books about how our minds work, how children learn, and how education might solve global health problems, to name a few. I was fascinated by education and learning; I skipped the corporate career and became a Teach for All fellow to learn more about learning.

Yet, about 80 books into my reading journey, something felt odd. Whenever a conversation revolved around a serious non-fiction book I read, such as ‘Sapiens’ or ‘Thinking Fast and Slow,’ I could never remember much. Turns out, I hadn’t absorbed as much information as I’d believed. Since I couldn’t remember much, I felt as though reading wasn’t an investment in knowledge but mere entertainment.

I know many others feel the same. When I opened up about my struggles, many others confessed they also can’t remember most of what they read, as if forgetting is a character flaw. But it isn’t.

Forgetting most of what we read isn’t a character flaw. It’s the way we work with books that’s flawed.

Once I understood how we learn — through online courses, books, and Teach for All — I realized there’s a better way to read. Most people rely on techniques like highlighting, rereading, or, worst of all, completely passive reading, which are highly ineffective. It’s only logical most people forget almost anything they read.

Since I started applying evidence-based learning strategies to reading non-fiction books, many things have changed. I can explain complex ideas during dinner conversations. I can recall interesting concepts and link them in my writing or podcasts. As a result, people come to me for all kinds of advice. Plus, I was invited to speak at panel discussions, got paid for content curation, and have received high-level job opportunities. I finally feel like reading is a true investment in knowledge.

And if I, a former naïve clueless mouflon monster can do it, you can do it, too. But before you learn how this system works, let’s explore why it works. To become a truly effective learner, we need to understand the key aspects of human learning and memory.

What’s the Architecture of Human Learning and Memory?

Human brains don’t work like recording devices. We don’t absorb information and knowledge by reading sentences.

Instead, we store new information in terms of its meaning to our existing memory. And we give new information meaning by actively participating in the learning process — we interpret, connect, interrelate, or elaborate. To remember new information, we not only need to know it but also to know how it relates to what we already know.

That’s why memory and the process of learning are closely connected. Radvansky, a researcher for human memory and cognition, explains the connection in his book:

“Memory is a site of storage and enables the retrieval and encoding of information, which is essential for the process of learning. Learning is dependent on memory processes because previously-stored knowledge functions as a framework in which newly learned information can be linked.”

Three stages of human memory processing

Human memory works in three stages: acquisition, retention, and retrieval. In the acquisition phase, we link new information to existing knowledge; in the retention phase, we store it, and in the retrieval phase, we get information out of our memory.

The three stages of human memory processing: acquisition, retention, and retrieval.
Adapted by Dunlosky et al. (2007) based on Nelson & Narens’s (1990) framework for metamemory.

We use our memory to encode information, retain it, and then access and use our memory to make decisions, interact with others, or solve problems.

Here, we need to understand that the three phases interrelate. Retrieval, the third stage, is cue dependent. This means the more mental links you’re generating during stage one, the acquisition phase, the easier you can access and use your knowledge.

In the words of a research group around Bjork, a renowned human learning and memory researcher:

“To be a sophisticated learner requires understanding that creating durable and flexible access to to-be-learned information is partly a matter of achieving a meaningful encoding of that information and partly a matter of exercising the retrieval process.”

Now, the question is: how can we achieve meaningful encoding and effectively exercise the retrieval process?

Evidence-Based Learning Strategies, Why They Work, And How You Can Apply Them

We’ve established a basic understanding of how our human memory works (acquisition, retention, retrieval). Next, we’ll look at the learning strategies that work best for our brains (elaboration, retrieval, spaced repetition, interleaving, self-testing) and see how we can apply those insights to reading non-fiction books.

The strategies that follow are rooted in research from professors of Psychological & Brain Science around Henry Roediger and Mark McDaniel. Both scientists spent ten years bridging the gap between cognitive psychology and education fields. Harvard University Press published their findings in the book ‘Make It Stick.’

I applied their evidence-based learning techniques for reading. Since I use these techniques, I feel reading indeed is a true investment in knowledge. I can access what I want to remember and use it for writing, podcasting, conversation, or self-improvement.

The strategies presented follow in chronological order and apply to both physical books and e-readers. There are extra supportive capabilities for Kindles that I will explain afterward.

#1 Elaboration

Elaborating means you explain and describe an idea in your own words. Thereby you consciously associate material you want to learn with what you’ve previously learned. In the words of Roediger & McDaniel: “Elaboration is the process of giving new material meaning by expressing it in your own words and connecting it with what you already know.”

Why elaboration works: Elaborative rehearsal encodes information into your long-term memory more effectively. The more details and the stronger you connect new knowledge to what you already know, the better because you’ll be generating more cues. And the more cues they have, the easier you can retrieve your knowledge.

How I apply elaboration: Whenever I read an interesting section, I pause and ask myself about the real-life connection and potential application. The process is invisible, and my inner monologues sound like: “This idea reminds me of…, This insight conflicts with…, I don’t really understand how…, ” etc.

For example, when I learned about A/B testing in ‘The Lean Startup,’ I thought about applying this method to my startup. I added a note on the site stating we should try it in user testing next Wednesday. Thereby the book had an immediate application benefit to my life, and I will always remember how the methodology works.

How you can apply elaboration: Elaborate while you read by asking yourself meta-learning questions like “How does this relate to my life? In which situation will I make use of this knowledge? How does it relate to other insights I have on the topic?”

While pausing and asking yourself these questions, you’re generating important memory cues. If you take some notes, don’t transcribe the author’s words but try to summarize, synthesize, and analyze.

Elaboration applied by making notes in a book.
Elaboration applied: Remarks in ‘The Lean Startup’ (Source: Author)

#2 Retrieval

With retrieval, you try to recall something you’ve learned in the past from your memory. While retrieval practice can take many forms — take a test, write an essay, do a multiple-choice test, practice with flashcards — some forms are better than others, as the authors of ‘Make It Stick’ state: “While any kind of retrieval practice generally benefits learning, the implication seems to be that where more cognitive effort is required for retrieval, greater retention results.”

Why retrieval works: The more time has gone since your information consumption, the more difficult time you’ll have to retrieve it. Naturally, a few days after we learn something, forgetting sets in. And that’s why retrieval is so powerful. Retrieval strengthens your memory and interrupts forgetting and, as other researchers replicate, as a learning event, the act of retrieving information is considerably more potent than is an additional study opportunity, particularly in terms of facilitating long-term recall.

How I apply retrieval: I retrieve a book’s content from my memory by writing a book summary for every book I want to remember. I ask myself questions like: “How would you summarize the book in three sentences? Which concepts do you want to keep in mind or apply? How does the book relate to what you already know?”

I then publish my summaries on Goodreads or write an article about my favorite insights, like here with Ben Horowitz, Elizabeth Gilbert, or Brené Brown.

How you can apply retrieval: You can come up with your own questions or use mine. If you don’t want to publish your summaries in public, you can write a summary into your journal, start a book club, create a private blog, or initiate a WhatsApp group for sharing book summaries.

Whatever you settle for, be careful not to copy/paste the words from the author. If you don’t do the brain work yourself, you’ll skip the learning benefits of retrieval. You want to use your own memory, even if it feels hard. By thinking about the concepts and giving new information your meaning, you’re creating an effective learning experience.

Retrieval applied through a chapter-by-chapter summary.
Retrieval applied: Chapter-by-chapter Goodreads Summary (Source: Screenshot Author)

#3 Spaced Repetition

With spaced repetition, you repeat the same piece of information across increasing intervals. The harder it feels to recall the information, the stronger the learning effect. “Spaced practice, which allows some forgetting to occur between sessions, strengthens both the learning and the cues and routes for fast retrieval,” Roediger & McDaniel write.

Why it works: It might sound counterintuitive, but forgetting is essential for learning. Spacing out practice might feel less productive than rereading a text because you’ll realize what you forgot. Your brain has to work harder to retrieve your knowledge, which is a good indicator of effective learning.

So, spaced repetition prevents your brain from forgetting. Research shows repeating the same information ten times over different days is a better way to remember things than repeating the same information twenty times on a single day.

How I apply spaced repetition: After some weeks, I revisit a book and look at the summary questions (see #2). I try to come up with my answer before I look up my actual summary. I can often only remember a fraction of what I wrote and have to look at the rest. I’ll also evaluate whether I’ve applied the knowledge nuggets to my life and, if not, why I didn’t.

The process is quite time-intense, but whenever I feel it’s a timewaster, I remember Ratna Kusnur’s quote on the importance of applying theoretical non-fiction concepts: “Knowledge trapped in books neatly stacked is meaningless and powerless until applied for the betterment of life.”

How you can apply spaced repetition: You can revisit your book summary medium of choice and test yourself on what you remember. What were your action points from the book? Have you applied them? If not, what hindered you?

By testing yourself in varying intervals on your book summaries, you’ll strengthen both learning and cues for fast retrieval. If you read on your Kindle, there’s software to assist you with spaced repetition—more on that after the next two techniques.

Spaced repetition applied through self-testing on a book summary.
Spaced Repetition applied: Self-Testing one of my book summaries (Source: Author)

#4 Interleaving

In interleaving, you switch practices before completion. So, interleaving means mixing learning with different kinds of approaches, concepts, or viewpoints. By practicing jumping back and forth between different problems, you solidify your understanding of the concepts and promote creativity and flexibility.

Why interleaving works: Alternate working on different problems feels more difficult as it, again, facilitates forgetting. While our intuition tells us completing one topic should be more effective, researchers pointed towards interleaving benefits. Plus, the authors of ‘Make It Stick’ conclude: “If learners spread out their study of a topic, returning to it periodically over time, they remember it better.”

How I apply interleaving: I read different books at the same time. Between my reading start and finish of Harari’s content-dense world history, I read four other books. Mixing my reading with Brown’s vulnerability classic and the memoir of a Holocaust Survivor brought insightful connections between various concepts, similar to what James Clear once meant when he said: “The most useful insights are often found at the intersection of ideas.”

How you can apply interleaving: Your brain can handle reading different books simultaneously, and it’s effective to do so. You can start a new book before you finish the one you’re reading. Starting again into a topic you partly forgot feels difficult first, but as you know by now, that’s the effect you want to achieve.

The books that the author is currently reading while applying interleaving.
Interleaving applied: The various books I’m currently reading (Source: Author)

#5 Self-Testing

While reading often falsely tricks us into perceived mastery, testing shows us whether we truly mastered the subject at hand. Self-testing helps you identify knowledge gaps and brings weak areas to the light. In their book, the scientists conclude: “It’s better to solve a problem than to memorize a solution.”

Why it works: Self-testing helps you overcome the illusion of knowledge. “One of the best habits a learner can instill in herself is regular self-quizzing to recalibrate her understanding of what she does and does not know.” Objective instruments, like testing, or self-testing, help you adjust your sense of what you know and don’t know.

How I apply self-testing: I explain the key lessons from non-fiction books I want to remember to others. Thereby, I test whether I really got the concept. Often, I didn’t. After reading a great book on personal finance, I recorded a podcast episode where I explained how Exchange Traded Funds work.

I reworked my preparation four times until I felt it included everything the listener needs. But instead of feeling frustrated, cognitive science made me realize that identifying knowledge gaps are a desirable and necessary effect for long-term remembering. I keep Mortimer Adler’s words in mind, who wrote: “The person who says he knows what he thinks but cannot express it usually does not know what he thinks.”

How you can apply self-testing: Teaching your lessons learned from a non-fiction book is a great way to test yourself. Before you explain a topic to somebody, you have to combine several mental tasks: filter relevant information, organize this information, and articulate it using your own vocabulary.

When you explain the content from what you’ve read to another person, you’ll identify potential knowledge gaps, can reread the passages you want to double-check, and strengthen your understanding.

Self-testing applied through teaching via a podcast.
Self-Testing applied: Teaching what I learned in a podcast episode (Source: Author)

Additional Tweaks for Kindle Readers

Most people are e-reading enemies until they truly read their first e-book. I remained an enemy fifteen books in. You can’t dog-ear your favorite pages, scribble your questions in the margins, or elaborate on a concept you just learned. You can’t apply much of what I’d described above.

And while these arguments hold, technology-assisted learning makes most of them irrelevant. Now that I discovered how to use my Kindle as a learning device, I wouldn’t trade it for a paper book anymore. Here are the four steps it takes to enrich your e-reading experience.

1) Highlight everything you want to remember

Based on your new insights into human memory, it won’t surprise you that researchers proved highlighting to be ineffective. It’s passive and doesn’t create memory cues.

And while I join the cannon against highlighting as an ineffective learning tool, we need it to create your learning experience. Use your fingers to highlight any piece of content you find worth remembering. You’ll next understand why.

2) Cut down your highlights in your browser

After you finished reading the book, you want to reduce your highlights to the essential part. Visit your Kindle Notes page to find a list of all your highlights. Using your desktop browser is faster and more convenient than editing your highlights on your e-reading device.

Now, browse through your highlights, delete what you no longer need, and add notes to the ones you really like. By adding notes to the highlights, you’ll connect the new information to your existing knowledge. You might recognize this tactic as an effective learning strategy you learned earlier: elaborative rehearsal (see #1 elaboration).

3) Use software to practice spaced repetition

This part is the main reason for e-books beating printed books. While you can do all of the above with a little extra time on your physical books, there’s no way to systemize your repetition praxis. As you know, spaced repetition (see #3) helps you prevent your brain from forgetting and will strengthen your memory.

Readwise is the best software to combine spaced repetition with your e-books. It’s an online service that connects to your Kindle account and imports all your Kindle highlights. Then, it creates flashcards of your highlights and allows you to export your highlights to your favorite note-taking app.

Common Learning Myths Debunked

While reading and studying evidence-based learning techniques I also came across some things I wrongly believed to be true.

#1 Our brain’s capacity is limited

This is simply untrue. As the researchers write in this paper: “We need to understand, too, that our capacity for storing to-be-learned information or procedures is essentially unlimited. In fact, storing information in human memory appears to create capacity — that is, opportunities for additional linkages and storage — rather than use it up.” You increase your brain’s capacity for learning.

#2 Effective learning should feel easy

We think learning works best when it feels productive. That’s why we continue to use ineffective techniques like rereading or highlighting. But learning works best when it feels hard, or as the authors of ‘Make It Stick’ write: “Learning that’s easy is like writing in sand, here today and gone tomorrow.”

While techniques like retrieval, spacing, and interleaving can feel hard and appear as if the learning rate would be very slow, the opposite is true. As the researchers write in this paper: “Because they often enhance long-term retention and transfer of to-be-learned information and procedures, they have been labeled desirable difficulties, but they nonetheless can create a sense of difficulty and slow progress for the learner.”

In Conclusion

While these techniques stem from evidence-based learning strategies, their application is my preference. I developed and adjusted these strategies over two years, and they’re still a work in progress.

Try all of them but don’t force yourself through anything that doesn’t feel right for you. I encourage you to do your own research, add further techniques, and skip what doesn’t serve you. Instead of feeling discouraged by all the ideas about how you can improve your learning experience, enjoy experimenting at your own pace. Keep the steps that work for you and screw the rest.

If you’re unsure where to begin, or you’re overwhelmed by all the application strategies, I suggest you start with book summaries first. Writing down what you want to remember makes you think about and rephrase what you just learned.

You can then use it for future spaced repetition (#3) or as a reference guide if you want to teach your insights to somebody (#4). And to write the summary, you will soon realize it’s helpful to elaborate (#1) while reading. Doing it with several books simultaneously (#2) can be a level up once you feel comfortable with the implemented routines.

No matter which strategies you use, applying evidence-based learning strategies will pay off. It’s not a quick win and takes time and patience, but you’ll ultimately reap the benefits.

“In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.”

— Mortimer J. Adler

How Ali Abdaal Uses Tech to Remember Everything He Reads

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The seven-level system for books, podcasts, articles, and tweets.

Photo by Daniel Romero on Unsplash

As a UK based doctor, YouTuber, instructor, and podcaster, Ali Abdaal is one of the most productive people on the internet.

In one of his recent videos, Ali states that his additional income streams generate more than three times his income as a junior doctor in the UK’s National Health Service.

More than one million people follow his Youtube channel, and his e-mail list has more than 50.000 subscribers.

Despite his achievements, Ali remains a humble, reflective, fun person. Apart from Niklas Göke, he’s the one under 30 content creators I admire most.

In his recent video, he combines cognitive science with life hacks and shares the seven levels that lead to remembering (almost) everything we read.

Level 1: The way most people read

Many people are very passive while consuming content. They read through books and articles or listen to podcasts but don’t engage with the material. Soon, they forget what they learned.

Scientists call this our natural forgetting curve. We lose information over time when we don’t retain it.

Yet, many people continue to equate reading with learning. But this isn’t the case as my experience underlines.

Before building my first business, I had read dozens of books for each stage in the business lifecycle. Yet, as time went on, I forgot most of the advice I consumed. I was the perfect example of a level one reader.

At level one, we’re not using our brainpower. Reading in this way is mere entertainment.

Level 2: Take the next step after passive reading

At this level, you highlight everything you find interesting, either with a finger on your kindle, the trackpad on your browser or with a highlighter in your physical book.

While highlighting gives us the illusion of knowledge, it’s an ineffective learning method. Level two consumption still doesn’t improve your retention capacity.

As before, the natural forgetting curve will kick in, and as the days go on, you’ll soon have forgotten what you wanted to remember.

Yet, highlighting will become a great help if you use it as a learning strategy for levels three to five.

Level 3: Make your highlights work for you

Before we dive into how Ali does a systematic highlight revision, let’s see why it works from a learning perspective.

Our brain strengthens and consolidates memories of information it encounters regularly and frequently. With spaced repetition, you revisit the same information regularly at set intervals.

Science on learning has shown spaced repetition to be the most effective learning method to remember new content.

To use his highlights in a spaced repetition manner, Ali uses Readwise. It’s an online service that imports the highlights from your consumption tools. For blog articles, this might be Instapaper, for your podcasts Airr, and for your books, Kindle.

Once you’ve connected your inputs, Readwise sends you an email with 5 random highlights from your library. In one of his newsletters, Ali wrote:

“Since September 2018, the daily Readwise email is one that I’ve read religiously. Each day, I stumble upon wisdom that I chose to highlight in a previous life, and often I come across highlights from my favourite books that are spookily relevant to what’s going on in my life.”

I became a Readwise user a few months ago, but to be honest, I found the unorganized e-mail quotes pretty disturbing. Before diving into work, I don’t want to read my highlight from a book on slow sex. I unsubscribed to the daily email.

Yet, reaping the other Readwise benefits in level four kept me using this software.

Level 4: Find your holy storage palace

A highlight storage location is the golden nugget that can transform the way you read.

Remember that Readwise imports the highlights from your podcasts, articles, and books? Now you can export all the highlights into your favorite note-taking app.

By not only consuming but integrating the new knowledge into his working projects, Ali makes the most out of his time.

Here’s how I make Ali’s system work for me.

I connected my Readwise account to Medium, Twitter, Airr, and Kindle account. Every Sunday, I export the Readwise highlights to my Notion database. From there, I link the highlights to ideas for my podcast, articles, or business. In that way, I connect what I read to my current projects.

By sending your highlights to your Notion, Evernote, or Roam account, you’ll be able to work with the content you consume.

Level 5: Unlock the power of elaborative rehearsal

Elaborating means you explain and describe an idea in your own words. You consciously associate material you want to learn with what you’ve previously learned.

The more details and the stronger you connect new knowledge to what you already know, the better. By doing so, you’re generating more brain cues, and you’ll have an easier time retrieving new knowledge.

In his video, Ali says he regrets not elaborating on all the books he ever read. Here are the questions he now answers after reading a book:

  • How did you discover the book?
  • Who should read it?
  • How do you summarize the book in three sentences?
  • How did the book change you? (Life, behavior, thoughts, ideas that have changed as a result of reading the book)
  • What are your top three quotes?

Level 6: Become an expert for your content

Now, if you’ve reached level five, you’ll remember more than most content consumers. You’ll have evolved from a passive reader to a person who applies what they read.

If the content is excellent, and you want to take it one step further, you can write a literary summary. To do so, focus on the points that resonated. Your result will go as close to an entire book summary as it can get.

If you decide to go all-in, make sure to mentally recall what you want to remember instead of copy-pasting your highlights. By not recalling the information from your memory, you’ll skip the learning part.

What you want to do instead is to retrieve the concepts and ideas from your own memory. While writing your summary, try to use the simplest language you can. It was Albert Einstein, who said:

“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”

Level 7: Connecting the dots to a bigger picture

Information vs. Knowledge by @gapingvoid

So this level is pretty complex, and even Ali admits that he hasn’t fully started using it. I had to research Evergreen notes for some hours to understand the concept behind it fully.

Evergreen notes are the modern way to organize slip-box, “Zettelkasten” notes. Originally, this concept was from Luhmann, an extremely productive academic who published more than 70 books and 500 scholarly articles in his 40 years of research.

In the Evergreen system, you spend most of your time doing deep work, like creating content and connecting the dots. Your note organization takes care of itself. Here’s how education designer Andy Matuschak describes them:

“Evergreen notes are written and organized to evolve, contribute, and accumulate over time, across projects. This is an unusual way to think about writing notes: Most people take only transient notes. That’s because these practices aren’t about writing notes; they’re about effectively developing insight: “Better note-taking” misses the point; what matters is “better thinking”. When done well, these notes can be quite valuable: Evergreen note-writing as fundamental unit of knowledge work.”

If you want to dive deeper, this blog entry is a good starting point.

In Conclusion

You might wonder whether content consumption needs to feel hard, challenging, and time-consuming. It doesn’t. If you see reading and listening as forms of entertainment and leisure, it’s fine to stay forever in the comfort of level one.

If, however, you want to get the most from what you read and use it for your life, you want to reach level five with everything you consume.

  1. Passive Reading
  2. Highlighting
  3. Systematic Highlight Revision
  4. A Central Highlight Storing Location
  5. Summarizing Key Principles with Elaborative Rehearsal
  6. Writing Literary Summaries
  7. Organize Your Life With Evergreen Notes

Life is a learning journey. By following Ali’s levels to remember everything you consume, you’ll soon find yourself on your path to wealth, and wisdom.

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5 Things Prolific Readers Don’t Do

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Give up these bad habits to get the most out of your books.

Photo by Mark Cruzat from Pexels

While most people agree that reading leads to happiness and wisdom, only a few become prolific readers.

The majority feels discouraged when they learn Warren Buffett reads 500 pages a day, or Bill Gates retreats to entire reading weeks. They think they can’t make enough time to read.

Yet, these people commit a common thinking error. They confuse reading time with reading quality. Becoming a productive reader has little to do with the total hours you spend reading.

Over the last years, I became a book fanatic, and since 2017, I’ve read 173 books. And until this summer, I did so while working a full-time job and running a startup at +65 hours a week.

If there’s one thing I learned, it’s that prolific readers don’t focus on doing more of something, but rather avoiding common pitfalls. Here’s the complete list:

They Don’t Force Themselves Through Mediocre Books

We only have a limited number of books we can read before we die. While our life is ticking away, new books are published at light speed.

How many books will you read before you die?

This article uses a life expectancy calculator and data on US reading habits to calculate the numbers. A 25-year old voracious reader who finishes 50 books per year has only around 2950 books left to read in their remaining life.

The number alone might seem like a lot. But if you put it in perspective, you’ll realize it’s almost nothing. Because 2950 out of 129,864,880 books are around 0.000023.

And that’s why prolific readers don’t force themselves through mediocre books. They know not all books are created equal, and most of the books aren’t worth their time.

Patrick Collison, the self-made billionaire founder of Stripe, explains in a podcast interview:

At every moment, you should be reading the best book you know of in the world [for you]. But as soon as you discover something that seems more interesting or more important, you should absolutely discard your current book … because any other algorithm necessarily results in your reading ‘worse’ stuff over time.

Time is a limited resource, and if you waste your time with a mediocre book, you won’t have enough left for the great ones.

How to do it:

Stop reading mediocre books. Get comfortable with putting an unfinished book aside when you find a better one. Look out for and read the great books, the ones that hold the power to change your entire life.

Prolific Readers Don’t Forget What They Read

Ever wondered why the smartest people you know seem to remember everything they read? It’s because people who know a lot are also likely to remember more.

Scientists agree that we learn by relating new information to what we already know. And minds filled with previous knowledge have an easier time remembering new content.

Elon Musk once answered in an ‘ask-me-anything’ Reddit thread:

“Knowledge [is]… a semantic tree — make sure you understand the fundamental principles, ie the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang on to”

So the question is, how do you start building your knowledge trunk?

The learning theory answer is called elaborative rehearsal. You make an association between the new information in the book and the information you already know. The more you elaborate, or try to understand something, the more likely you‘ll keep this new information in your long-term memory.

How to do it:

The best way to do so is to connect the new knowledge to what you already know, and in the best case, apply it in real life. Take notes while reading. Instead of keeping your books look new, use them to the fullest. The more you write in the margins, the more you’ll remember.

Great Readers Don’t Focus On One Book at A Time

In March 2018, I didn’t finish a single book. It’s not that I stopped reading. Instead, I only managed to read five pages of Harari’s Sapiens before falling asleep every night.

That’s why prolific readers don’t read just one book at a time. You don’t want to eat the same dish for breakfast, lunch, and breakfast. Why would you read the same book at different times of the day?

Our brains can handle reading different books. In fact, spaced repetition, meaning revisiting some concepts with some days in between, is one of the most effective learning methods.

So, reading several books simultaneously can improve the way you remember what you read. Plus, you’ll likely find useful intersections between various concepts. It was James Clear who said:

“The most useful insights are often found at the intersection of ideas.”

How to do it:

Read a few books at the same time. Start a new book before you finish the one you’re reading. Pick a content-dense book, like Sapiens, for learning mode and a lighter fiction book for a nighttime session.

They Don’t Get Distracted By Technology

Our world is distracting, and we’re tempted to shift focus at light speed. When phones are within a hand reach, it’s easy to switch tasks without even realizing it.

Some 2000 years ago, Stoic philosopher Seneca summarized how bad even the most intelligent people are when it comes to protecting their time:

“No person hands out their money to passersby, but to how many do each of us hand out our lives! We’re tightfisted with property and money, yet think too little of wasting time, the one thing about which we should all be the toughest misers.”

The average person spends over four hours a day on their device. If you spent half the time reading, with a reading speed of 250 words per minute and an average book length of 90,000 words, you’d finish more than two books a week. The equation is simple:

The less time you spend on your device, the more you’ll read.

In truth, we knew long before the documentary The Social Dilemma about social media’s harming effects. Yet, we fail to act upon our knowledge.

I struggled to change my phone habits for an entire year. But the journey was worth it. Once I abandoned my phone from my sleeping room and left it shut until 10 AM, I didn’t need to skip any activities to read 52 books a year.

How to do it:

You don’t need to try the digital detox apps like Forest, and Freedom. Instead, read Deep Work and Digital Minimalism and conclude that your best option is to switch off your phone whenever you want to focus completely.

Smart Readers Don’t Aim For A Number of Books

Most people confuse reading with progressing. They think reading a specific number will make them happier, healthier, and wealthier.

But no idea could be further from the truth. Reading is no fast-lane to wealth and wisdom. Instead, reading can even limit your achievements.

I know because I made this mistake.

Before building my first business, I had read dozens of books for each stage in the business lifecycle. But when it came to really starting, the biggest gamechanger was just doing it.

At some point, reading distracts you from acting. You’ll achieve more if you bump along without any books than you ever will reading and not doing anything.

So, prolific readers don’t have the goal to read a specific number of books for the sake of reading.

There’s a subtle difference between book hoarders, focusing on the total number of books they read, and prolific readers. Whereas book hoarders judge themselves by the number of books they own, smart readers judge themselves by what they got out of them and applied in real life.

Mortimer J. Adler put it best when he wrote:

“In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.”

How to do it:

Don’t confuse reading with acting. When you finish the book, ask yourself what to do with what you’ve just read. Apply the knowledge and put what you’ve learned into action items.

All You Need to Know

Letting go of these things isn’t difficult or exhausting.

On the contrary: Avoiding these common mistakes makes reading fun and worthwhile.

  • Don’t force yourself through mediocre books.
  • Take notes to remember what you read.
  • Read several books simultaneously.
  • Leave your phone shut whenever you want to read.
  • Apply what you read to your life.

Instead of feeling discouraged by all the ideas about becoming a prolific reader, enjoy experimenting at your own pace. Keep the habits that work for you and screw the rest.

Choose one or two new reading habits until you find a pattern that helps you on your journey to health, wealth, and wisdom.

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The Feynman Technique Can Help You Remember Everything You Read

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How to use this simple principle for you.

Photo by Phyo Hein Kyaw from Pexels

Books give you access to the smartest brains on our planet. And learning from the greatest thinkers and doers is your fast track to health, wealth, and wisdom.

Yet, reading per se doesn’t elevate your life. You can read 52 books a year without changing at all.

Social climber Dale Carnegie used to say knowledge isn’t power until it’s applied. And to apply what you read, you must first remember what you learned.

Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman (1918–1988) was an expert for remembering what he learned. Bill Gates was so inspired by his pedagogy that he named Feynman, “the greatest teacher I never had.”

Why Most People Forget What They Read

Most people confuse consumption with learning. They think reading, watching, or hearing information will make the information stick with them.

Unless you’ve got a photographic memory, no idea could be further from the truth.

To protect ourselves from overstimulation, our brains filter and forget most of what we consume. If we remembered everything we absorb, we wouldn’t be able to operate in our world.

But most people act like their brains would keep everything. They focus on reading a specific number of books a year. By focusing on quantity, instead of learning, they forget anything they read. Ultimately, for them, reading is mere entertainment.

It was Schopenhauer who already stated in the 1850s, “When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process.” So to learn, we need to think by ourselves.

A person who reads without pausing to think and reflect won’t remember nor apply anything they read.

You can spot these people easily. For example, they say they’ve read a book, but lack the words to explain their takeaways. Likely, they haven’t learned a thing from reading it.

Mortimer Adler put it best when he wrote: “The person who says he knows what he thinks but cannot express it usually does not know what he thinks.”

Luckily, there’s a way out of it. We can indeed learn from what we read. And we’ve known so for a long time.

How You Can Remember What You Read

Teaching is the most effective way to embed information in your mind. Plus, it’s an easy way to check whether you’ve remembered what you read. Because before you teach, you have to take several steps: filter relevant information, organize this information, and articulate them using your own vocabulary.

Feynman mastered this process like no other. The people of his time knew him for being able to explain the most complex processes in the simplest language. They nicknamed Feynman “The Great Explainer.”

If you’re after a way to supercharge your learning and become smarter, The Feynman Technique might just be the best way to learn absolutely anything. You can think of it as an algorithm for guaranteed learning.

The Feynman Technique is one method to make us remember what we read by using elaboration and association concepts. It’s a tool for remembering what you read by explaining it in plain, simple language.

Not only is the Feynman Technique a wonderful recipe for learning, but it’s also a window into a different way of thinking that allows you to tear ideas apart and reconstruct them from the ground up.

What I love about this concept is that the approach intuitively believes that intelligence is a process of growth, which dovetails nicely with the work of Carol Dweck, who beautifully describes the difference between a fixed and growth mindset. Here’s how it works.

The 4 Steps You Need To Take

In essence, the Feynman technique consists of four steps: identify the subject, explain the content, identify your knowledge gaps, simplify your explanation. Here’s how it works for any book you read:

#1 Choose the book you want to remember

After you’ve finished a book worth remembering, take out a blank sheet. Title it with the book’s name.

Then, mentally recall all principles and main points you want to keep in mind. Here, many people make the mistake to simply copy the table of content or their highlights. By not recalling the information, they skip the learning part.

What you want to do instead, is to retrieve the concepts and ideas from your own memory. Yes, this requires your brainpower. But by thinking about the concepts, you’re creating an effective learning experience.

While writing your key points, try to use the simplest language you can. Often, we use complicated jargon to mask our unknowingness. Big words and fluffy “expert words” stop us from getting to the point.

“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”

— Albert Einstein

#2 Pretend you are explaining the content to a 12-year old

This sounds simpler than it is. In fact, explaining a concept as plain as possible requires deep understanding.

Because when you explain an idea from start to finish to a 12-year old, you force yourself to simplify relationships and connections between concepts.

If you don’t have a 12-year old around, find an interested friend, record a voice message for a mastermind group, or write down your explanation as a review on Amazon, Goodreads, or Quora.

#3 Identify your knowledge gaps and reread

Explaining a book’s key points helps you find out what you didn’t understand. There will be passages you’re crystal clear about. At other points, you will struggle. These are the valuable hints to dig deeper.

Only when you find knowledge gaps — where you omit an important aspect, search for words, or have trouble linking ideas to each other — can you really start learning.

When you know where you’re stuck go back to your book and re-read the passage until you can explain it in your own simple language.

Filling your knowledge gaps is the extra step required to really remember what you read and skipping it leads to an illusion of knowledge.

#4 Simplify Your Explanation (optional)

Depending on a book’s complexity, you might be able to explain and remember the ideas after the previous. If you feel unsure, however, you can add an additional simplification layer.

Read your notes out loud and organize them into the simplest narrative possible. Once the explanation sounds simple, it’s a great indicator that you’ve done the proper work.

It’s only when you can explain in plain language what you read that you’ll know you truly understood the content.

The Takeaway

We all know from our own experiences that knowledge is useless unless applied. But by forgetting what we read, there’s no way to apply it to our lives.

Montaigne pointed to this fact in one of his Essays where he wrote:

We take other men’s knowledge and opinions upon trust; which is an idle and superficial learning. We must make them our own. We are just like a man who, needing fire, went to a neighbor’s house to fetch it, and finding a very good one there, sat down to warm himself without remembering to carry any back home. What good does it do us to have our belly full of meat if it is not digested, if it is not transformed into us, if it does not nourish and support us?

The Feynman Technique is an excellent way to make the wisdom from books your own. It’s a way to tear ideas apart and rebuild them from the ground up.

Here are the four steps you want to remember:

  • choose a book, get a blank page and title it
  • teach it to a 12-year old in plain, simple language
  • identify knowledge gaps and reread what you forgot
  • review and simplify your explanation (optional)

Want to feel inspired and improve your learning?

Subscribe free to The Learn Letter. I read a book and 50 articles a week, and each Wednesday, you’ll receive the best in your inbox. This newsletter will make you find tools and resources that help you on your path to health, wealth, and wisdom.

This Is Why Fiction Should Move Up On Your Reading List

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Here’s what research says

Photo by Michael Dziedzic on Unsplash

Do you feel reading fiction is a waste of your time?

You’re in good company: The most prosperous leaders suggest we should focus on non-fiction. Of the 102 books Bill Gates recommended over eight years, 90 were non-fiction. And from the 19 books Warren Buffett recommended in 2019, a mere 100% were non-fiction.

So, when it comes to reading, we are bought into the idea that reading for knowledge is the best reason to do so. Scientists, however, suggest that reading fiction outscores non-fiction on various levels.

Increased Emotional Intelligence

There are better ways to increase your EQ than reading Goleman’s non-fiction classic. In a Harvard study, researchers asked participants to either read fiction, non-fiction, or nothing. Across five experiments, those who read fiction performed better on identifying emotions encoded in facial expressions than the other groups.

“If we engage with characters who are nuanced, unpredictable, and difficult to understand, then I think we’re more likely to approach people in the real world with interest and humility necessary for dealing with complex individuals,” this studies’ lead author David Kidd, said in an interview.

Even if we don’t like to think about it, many of our social interactions follow given norms that are based on stereotypes. Meeting a teacher puts her in your brain’s default option for how teachers are like. This compartmentalization goes beyond professions, age groups, gender, and cultural background.

When reading fiction, however, we often experience a disruption of our expectations. The book forces us to bend our minds to understand the feelings or thoughts of a novel’s character, mainly if the character’s actions go against our pre-built stereotypes.

A 2014 study supports this mind-bending effect of fictional literature. Here, they found reading fiction leads to increased levels of empathy for individuals outside of your cultural community: “Reading narrative fiction appears to ameliorate biased categorical and emotional perception of mixed-race individuals.”

As a regular reader, you’ll likely remember a book that opened up your mind towards other cultures. After reading Tara Westover’s memoir, you’ll exactly understand how it feels to grow up in a Mormon family in off-grit Idaho. And on the opposite end, Elizbeth Gilbert’s latest novel allows you to experience life from a rich kid growing up in the 1940s, fighting her way to break free from social expectations, and finding her way to sexual liberation.

Better Decision Making

Again, we might think digesting the latest non-fiction books on decision-making will help us make smarter choices. Yet also, recent findings on the link between cognitive-closure and non-fiction reading prove us wrong.

By following logical, step-by-step guidance, we “reach a (too) quick conclusion in decision-making and an aversion to ambiguity and confusion,” researchers from the University of Toronto write in this study.

Individuals with a strong need for cognitive closure rely heavily on so-called early information cues. They are fixed on their opinion and struggle to change their minds upon newly presented information. People with closed minds also stop thinking about alternative explanations, making them more confident in their own initial and potentially flawed beliefs.

Fiction can reverse this effect: “When one reads fictional literature,” the scientists state, “one is encouraged to simulate other minds and is thereby released from concerns for urgency and permanence.” Surprisingly, the attributed benefit doesn’t depend on the quality of a text, but rather on the overall genre of literary non-fiction.

Professionals whose trainings depend on non-fiction, like lawyers and doctors, benefit the most from this effect. A physician, with an entire medical encyclopedia in her head, might (too) quickly identify a specific malady when additional symptoms point towards another one. Here, reading fictional books can help.

In the words of the researchers, “Given the suboptimal information processing strategies that result from the premature need for closure, exposure to literature may offer a pedagogical tool to encourage individuals to become more likely to open their minds.” In short, fiction can help us overcome cognitive closure and thereby, improve how we make decisions.

Why You Shouldn’t be Reading This

Finding scientific evidence for doing the things we enjoy is yet another form of internalized capitalism.

What if we allowed ourselves to prioritize joy over productivity?

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4 Steps To Transform Your Kindle Into A Learning Device

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How to get the most from your e-reader.

Photo by Perfecto Capucine from Pexels

Most people are e-reading enemies until they truly read their first e-book. I remained an enemy fifteen books in.

Building on my education expertise, I’d argue you can’t interact with your Kindle as you can with your physical book. You can’t dog-ear your favorite pages, scribble your questions in the margins, or sketch out the concept you just learned.

And while these arguments still hold true, technology-assisted learning makes most of them irrelevant. Now that I discovered how to use my Kindle as a learning device, I wouldn’t trade it for a paper book anymore.

Here are the four steps it takes to enrich your e-reading experience.

1. Highlight Everything You Want To Remember

No worries, I know researchers proved highlighting to be an ineffective learning tool. In fact, I join the canon against highlighting as a learning technique.

And yet, highlighting your e-book’s phrases is the necessary first step to create your learning experience. Here’s why.

First, highlighting will slow down your reading speed. This is a good thing, as researchers from San Jose State University have shown that people tend to skim through the pages when reading from a screen. But you don’t want to skim. You want to deep read the words in front of you.

Plus, your highlights form the original material for your learning experience. And this is also why, against common wisdom, you shouldn’t limit your highlights to a specific number. Instead, move your fingers over any piece of content you find worth remembering.

2. Cut Down Your Highlights In Your Browser

After you finished reading the book, you want to reduce your highlights to the essential part. Visit your Kindle Notes page to find a list of all your highlights. Using your desktop browser is faster and more convenient than editing your highlights on your e-reading device.

Now, browse through your highlights, delete what you no longer need, and add notes to the ones you really like. By adding notes to the highlights, you’ll connect the new information to your existing knowledge. You’re engaging in what learning theory calls elaborative rehearsal.

Using the Kindle Notes browser app saved me about an hour per book. Before, I browsed through all physical book pages to locate the pages where I added my thoughts. While this practice was fun, it didn’t add up to my learning experience.

3. Write a Quick Review To Summarize Your Insights

Now, trimmed down your highlights and elaborated on the best ones. Ideally, you only have the quintessence with some personal notes left. You’re all set for the learning fun.

The first thing you want to do is writing a quick review, for example, on Goodreads. While it’s nice to show you’re friends what you’ve read, this exercise is about testing what you remember.

Here are the three questions you want to recall from your memory:

  • How would you summarize the book in three sentences?
  • Which three things do you want to keep in mind?
  • Which concepts will you apply in your life based on your new knowledge?

Watch out to not copy/paste your highlights or building on other user’s reviews. If you don’t do the brain work yourself, you’ll skip the learning benefits of self-testing.

What you want to do instead is to retrieve the concepts and ideas from your own memory. By thinking about the concepts, testing yourself, you’re creating an effective learning experience.

4. Use Spaced Repetition to Remember What You Read

This part is the main reason for e-books beating printed books. While you can do all of the above with a little extra time on your physical books, there’s no way to systemize your repetition praxis.

But before I show you how you can connect your Kindle to a spaced repetition software, allow me to explain why this learning technique is so powerful.

Spaced repetition helps you prevent your brain from forgetting. Research has shown that repeating the same information ten times over different days is a better way to remember things than repeating the same information twenty times on a single day.

By revisiting the same things regularly at set intervals over time, you make the new information stick to your long-term memory. And that’s what makes spaced repetition one of the most effective learning methods there is.

Readwise (no affiliate, no partnership) is the best software to combine spaced repetition with your e-books. It’s an online service that connects to your Kindle account and imports all your Kindle highlights. Then, it creates flashcards of your highlights and allows you to export your highlights to your favorite note-taking app.

Buy Your Next E-Book While Reading A Great Book

All of the above is only useful if you read the right book at the right times. Books that hold the potential to improve your understanding of self, the world, or your entire existence.

And to find these kinds of books, you need to plan what you e-read.

Buying a book on your Kindle when you just finished a book and desperately need a new one is like going into a grocery store while starving. Everything will look delicious, and you will end up buying shit.

Out of the 129,864,880 books, there are, most will be, not worth your time.

So instead of following your Kindle book recommendations and compulsively buying a bestseller, keep ownership of your book selection. Goodreads, Gatesnotes, Ryan Holiday’s booklist, and Mortimer J. Adler’s appendix are a great place to start.

In Conclusion

While many people use e-readers these days, only very few turn them into learning devices. By following these steps, you’ll enrich your e-reading experience and get the most from what you read.

  1. Highlight everything you want to remember.
  2. Use the kindle notes page to cut down your highlights to their essentials.
  3. Write a quick Goodreads review to summarize your key learnings.
  4. Use Readwise to remember what you read.
  5. Buy your next e-book before finishing your current one.

Instead of feeling discouraged by all the ideas about how you can improve your learning experience, enjoy experimenting at your own pace. Keep the steps that work for you and screw the rest.

Choose one or two new e-reading habits until you find a pattern that helps you on your journey to health, wealth, and wisdom.

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How to Apply What You Read to Your Life

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The best knowledge is useless unless applied.

Photo by Parth Shah on Pexels

In 2017, I read my first life-changing book. Since then, reading has become my favorite habit.

Yet, when I stumbled upon this quote by Ratna Kusnur some time ago, I started to question the power of books:

“Knowledge trapped in books neatly stacked is meaningless and powerless until applied for betterment of life.”

Admittedly, Ratna caught me right on the spot. Before building my first business, I had read dozens of books for each stage in the business lifecycle. But when it came to starting, the most significant impact was doing it.

Yes, reading can be the fast-track to a happier, healthier, wiser life. But unless you apply the lessons from the greatest thinkers to our lives, reading is mere entertainment.

Here’s a self-tested way to apply what you read to your life and thereby, lead a better life:

This advice doesn't apply to fictional books. It applies to reading non-fiction books for knowledge and practicality.

Choose the Right Book for Your Life Situation

“Knowledge isn’t power until it’s applied.”

— Dale Carnegie

You can’t apply irrelevant knowledge. By reading a book that has no connex to your current circumstances, there’s no way you can integrate new knowledge in your days.

I fell into this trap many times. I’d buy the books my mentors recommended reading. Back in 2016, I spent hours working my way through Ray Dalio’s Principles to realize that this book had no connection to my student life.

When you try hard to find applicable lessons, but you can’t find any useful advice, it’s not your fault. Instead, it’s either the wrong book or the wrong time for the book.

Bill Gates finishes every book he starts. Not because he forces himself through a bad book. Instead, he chooses with intent.

The clearer you know why you’re reading the book at hand, the more natural you find ways to integrate the learnings into your life.

How to do it:

Before starting any book, ask yourself:

Which big questions do you face in life, right now?

Which skills do you want to build?

If a book doesn’t promise to deliver on your topics, skip it. You won’t be able to use the lessons. Do your research before reading a book. Choose wisely, then, read thoroughly.

By picking the right content with the right timing, you’ll enjoy the words in front of you.

Create Action Items

“It’s not knowing what to do, it’s doing what you know.”

— Tony Robbins

Most persons on this planet read a book, have some “aha” moments and then, after finishing the book, forget everything they just learned.

Unless you think and act while reading, you’ll never integrate book lessons to your life. You will never revisit a specific concept later.

Yes, it does feel comforting to postpone action for later. But let’s be honest: By procrastinating your actions, you’re wasting your time.

Unfortunately, I write from experience. I’d say to myself: “Oh, what a great insight. I should do this. I’ll do it once I’m done with the book”. And then, the application part never happened.

Ouch.

Re-reading the same concepts again and again won’t improve your life. It’s the application of these concepts that will change your life forever.

If you don’t apply the knowledge you read at the same moment you read it, it will get lost. Unless you follow the advice from books and do something, even the smartest information is a waste of your time.

Once you started reading the right book, beware of procrastination. Instead, apply a book’s wisdom while you read. Stop at the page and integrate useful lessons into your life.

In High-Performance Habits, for example, we learn about the power of morning affirmations. I stopped during the chapter and recorded my own affirmations.

In Stillness is Key, Ryan Holiday explores the benefits of journaling. When he convinced me, I placed an empty notebook with a pen on my nightstand and started journaling the same evening.

How to do it:

If you stumble upon useful advice, create an environment that invites you to do what you’ve just learned.

Put an item on your to-do list or place an action item on a specific spot. If you read the 5 Languages of Love, try one out the same day. If you read Cal Newport’s Deep Work, start changing your work schedule tomorrow morning.

By forming action items from your books, you’ll make the most out of any book. You’ll be able to apply knowledge from books to your life.

Reread Life-Changing Books

“In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.”

— Mortimer J. Adler

Many people treat the number of books you read as the level of your wisdom. This logic is flawed. It’s not the number of different pages you can get through that will make you happier, wiser, and healthier.

When you focus on the number of finished books, you tend to rush through the content. With a goal of completion in mind, it’s easy to overlook meaningful passages.

By rereading a book, you can check which parts you applied and which sections you’ve forgotten. You can then focus your effort on the parts that need more application.

Ryan Holiday is an impressive example of the power of rereading. He read the same book 100 times over 10 years. Undoubtedly, this habit led to Ryan’s unparalleled understanding and three bestselling books.

How to do it:

Focus on the process of reading, not on the total number of books you’ve read. Revisit the books that have influenced you the most.

Books change as we do. You’ll be amazed at how many new things you can discover that you may have missed before.

Final Thoughts

Reading is the fastest way to expand your world view and improve your life.

Yet, don’t set your goal of reading a specific number of books per year. Instead, make sure you choose the right book for your life situation, create action items, and revisit life-changing books.

Mere reading expands your knowledge, but the application will change your life. Reading a few great books a year, with time for implementation, will make you happier, healthier, and wiser.

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How to Choose Your Next Great Book

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Stop wasting your time with mediocrity.

Photo by Jeroen den Otter on Unsplash

Bill Gates finishes every book he reads. No, that doesn’t mean he forces himself through a bad book. Instead, he only starts reading the great ones.

How you might ask, can you know whether a book exceeds your expectation before you even start to read?

Unfortunately, there’s no bulletproof formula. Yet, there are a few simple steps that, if applied, will increase the chances of you reading only the greatest books.

My reading time changed once I followed these strategies. I no longer needed to be 100 pages in to realize I wasted my time. I no longer struggled to put a lousy book aside. I finally loved most of the >50 books I read in a year.

Not all books are created equal, and most of the books aren’t worth your time. Yet, some books have the power to change your life and make you healthier, wealthier, and wiser.

By avoiding mediocre books and choosing the greatest books, you’ll find yourself learning from the greatest thinkers that ever existed.

Here is exactly how you choose the right book for you in chronological order.

1) Search beyond bestseller lists

Yes, there’s Goodreads, and Gatesnotes, and so many other great lists indicating if you only read a few books in 2020, you should read these.

And while these lists have their raison d’être, they are only a snapshot of our time. Most of these lists contain the books from authors with the best marketing strategy, or the widest social media reach.

When you look for a great book, you should go beyond mediocre listicles. Search, for example, search through the appendix of Mortimer J. Adler’s classic How to Read a book.

If you look at human history, the chances are small that the greatest books were created in the past decade. The fundamental human problems seem to be the same in all ages: Justice, love, virtue, stability, and change itself.

Another excellent source for book recommendations are people you look up to, not necessarily living in our time. I love browsing through Ryan Holiday’s reading list.

“We may succeed in accelerating the motions of life, but we cannot seem to change the routes that are available to its ends.”

— Mortimer J. Adler

Questions to tick:

Have you looked for inspiration beyond the standard recommendations?

Do you trust or admire the recommendation source?

Which 5 books trigger your interest?

2) Do a two-minute author background check

As said, not all books are created equal. There are so many of them written by people who have never done what they’re writing. Mortimer J. Adler once said:

“The great books are the most instructive, the most enlightening.”

An author’s first-hand experience always trumps if-then scenarios.

Nobody can give you instructive, enlightening examples of things he or she has never experienced before.

Instead of judging a book by its cover, judge a book by the author’s background check.

Questions to tick:

Has the author life experience that undermine the book’s topic?

Is the author living by what s/he is writing?

Do other thoughtleaders support what s/he’s saying?

3) Check the table of content

Most people have never heard about this powerful strategy. To be honest, I didn’t know about it either. Since I know, I browsed through the table of content every time before I buy a new book.

A book’s title triggers your interest, captivates your attention. The table of content is more profound. It gives you a sneak-peak on what’s to come.

Once you’ve narrowed down your search to five or fewer potentially great books, inspect the table of content.

Not looking through the table of content is like buying a jacket without looking at the inside’s material. You won’t know what you get without taking a closer look.

Reviewing the table of content is the fastest, easiest way to judge whether a book delivers on its title. Knowing what a book is about before starting to read it will increase the likelihood of greatness.

Questions to tick:

Did you read through the table of contents?

Does the content (not the title) spark your curiosity?

Are you interested in learning what’s behind the majority of the chapters?

4) Read a 5-star and 1-star review

Some years ago, I’d read every book that had more than a 4-star rating on Goodreads. I even forced myself through a lousy book only because I thought I didn’t get the message.

For example, a super-smart friend recommended me The Truth. Goodreads suggested a solid 4.17 rating from more than 5k people. I finished the book even though it didn’t resonate with me at all. I felt I was listening to an emotionally immature adult.

There will always be books that you don’t like, but most people love.

By reading through the reviews, you can find out which type of people like a specific book. Sometimes, a strong opinion in a 1-star review makes me want to read a book while the arguments in a 5-star review make me abandon the book.

Questions to tick:

Do you sympathise with the characters writing 5* reviews?

Do you find yourself contradicting the opinions of 1* reviewers?

Can you find credible arguments to read this book?

5) Trust your gut

If you only force yourself through books, you don’t like you’ll end up thinking you don’t like reading altogether.

Ultimately, you’ll stop reading. And, by not reading a book, you don’t have an advantage over an illiterate person.

“The great books are the most readable.”

— Mortimer J. Adler

Pick the books you like.

Even if the above criteria match but you don’t like the book, don’t read it.

Mark Twain once said the great books were those everybody recommends and nobody reads, or those everyone says he intends to read and never does. I’d say he’s wrong.

The great books are the ones you genuinely enjoy reading. The ones that are the most readable for you.

“The great books are not faded glories. They are not dusty remains for scholars to investigate. They are not a record of dead civilizations. They are rather the most potent civilizing forces in the world today.”

— Mortimer J. Adler

Questions to tick:

Do you like the tone of voice?

Do you like the language and the content density?

Do you like the narrative?

Bottom Line

New books are written and published every minute. Yet, our lifetime decreases with every minute. We only have a limited number left of books we can read in our lives.

To stop reading mediocre books:

  • Search for recommendations beyond bestseller lists
  • Research the author’s background
  • Read through the table of content.
  • Skim through 5-star and 1-star reviews
  • Trust your gut

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