The Correct Way to Read Books…
So you read your books, and you finish your books. It was a good read….
But you are still the same person, who can now say, “I read XYZ book” Then a few months later, you go back, read the same book or worse, you can barely remember what was in that book.
Knowledge can only serve you if you retain it and actively use it. Knowledge is of no use if you do nothing with it. So what might be the best way to read a book? How do you retain that information?
First things first, have a selective range of books. Books whose content actually interests you. Reading any and every book will fill in the room which was otherwise reserved for your curiosity. My advice would be to not read a book completely at all, rather get the book summaries and apply those to your day-to-day life. But I will admit, relying on other people to serve you information may be like scraping gold nuggets in front of an actual mine. There is a mine, get your pickaxe out and go digging.
So to solve this, rule 1 to be noted is, Only read a book, once. Or at least try your best to. Read a book once, jot down everything important, write a summary of the topics that interest you. What you are doing is clearing out the clutter and actually only keeping the information that you think is worthy. Write down EVERYTHING. Because you aren’t seeing that book again. The only thing you can now see is the summary you have written down. Check that summary time and again, create a routine to come back to the summaries you have written down. If you can, shorten that too. Write out very few lines that you could apply in your daily life.
Simplify the book, take the core principles and find places to make use of that knowledge. Books, just like any other content is made to be consumed, the core principles of a book can very well be summarized into 1/4ths of it’s original size. Books are cluttered with stories, experiences and many more things that the writer writes down to lead you to understand the start of that idea or that principle. Once you identify that the idea is important, you don’t need to be led down that understanding of the idea again or the justification of why that idea works and who it has worked for in history. The next step is to use that knowledge and make it useful.
You might have to revisit that book again, the idea here is not to become frugal about the time or the money, it’s to build an effective learning protocol, which makes sure you aren’t reading for entertainment, rather you are reading to gain wisdom and to create something off that knowledge. I myself am not an avid reader but I am sure that this protocol is the best way to learn. Dropping out of college, I realized I must keep up the habit of reading and learning. I choose to do that and I have laid out a protocol for myself to follow and I think it will serve well for my fellow brothers on the same path as me.
– ZamGodly
