You’re reading wrong! 5 tips to become a better reader 📚

One of the common mistakes about reading is that aiming too much or focusing on numbers too much. I know reading tons and tons of books might feel amazing about yourself and even maybe feed your ego a little bit. But in those scenarios, you need to remember the reason why you are reading. When we are reading something, we want to either enjoy the process, maybe reading fiction books, or if you're reading non-fiction books, you probably want to learn something, right?

If you can read 10 books a month, and if you have time to do an effective output every single time after you read, that is amazing; like, good for you. But most of us don't have time to do an effective output every single time when we read something because effective output actually takes quite a lot of time. In order to absorb that information, you need to repeat that action, and those steps take quite a lot of time.

Instead of focusing on how many books you have read, focus on applying the lessons you have learned from the books to your life. So in today's video, I'm going to debunk some myths about reading, and I want to share some tips and tactics to learn effective reading. So let's get started!

One of the easiest ways to apply the lessons from the book you have learned is creating to-do lists. The book you have learned might be the most impactful or beneficial book you have ever read, but if you're not applying those lessons into your life, to be honest, it's pretty much meaningless. So don't forget: most of us already actually know what we have to do, but the difficult part is applying those things into our life, not learning about new information.

Creating a to-do list will help you with that because it actually requires you to take action. This to-do list can be about things you have learned from the book and want to apply to your life, or maybe things you want to change in your life. So let's say you have read a book about productivity; let's say there are like five tips you have learned about them, and you found them amazing. You know, maybe this can be the solution to my problems. But if you're not going to apply them into your life, it's pretty much meaningless, to be honest.

You know, tip one: just write that to the list. Maybe it's the five-minute rule, which basically means if a task takes you less than five minutes, do it right away; don't postpone. So for the to-do list, you write, "Apply the five-minute rule into your life every day." Follow this to-do list for a week and give yourself feedback after repeating a couple of times this, you know, to-do list. You know, after a couple of weeks, you probably have learned your lessons, so move on to the next book.

Another method that I can share is having always in your mind that you're gonna share it later on with other people. Most of us turn the pages for the sake of turning it, and oftentimes it's just an action to feed your ego. But how can we read deeply? If you want to, like, get the most out of a book, we need to read deeply. An easy way to do this is testing yourself. And what do I mean by that? If you can explain the general idea of the book in a minute, congrats; you understood the book.

It might sound easy, but if you have a book next to you, try to explain it in under a minute. If you already know that you need to summarize it under a minute after you read, each time before even reading the book, you will be more conscious about the highlights of the book because you know you need to summarize it. So you try to actively find the key points of the book, and you start to input less of the unnecessary information.

Another thing that is not really talked about enough in the book community is, I think, reading without a bias. When reading a book, it is important to input without any biases, especially when we are trying to learn something new from the book. We should read books about the same topic, but from different perspectives. It might be a bit uncomfortable, but don't forget: growth doesn't come from a place of comfort.

By reading books from different standpoints, you will allow yourself to expand your vision and deepen your understanding of this topic. When you're reading a book that you don't necessarily agree with, try to figure out why you don't agree and which points specifically you don't agree with.

It can be books about, like, maybe psychology, psychiatry, or maybe some books about politics or religion or anything. But when just reading about the same topics, try to read from different authors that have different opinions about them so that you won't get biased about one topic.

Books are a great way to learn new stuff, but if you want to get more creative and learn maybe a bit more interactively, Skillshare is the best choice for you. Skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of classes across 150 countries around the world who come together to find inspiration and take their creativity journey to the next level.

Have a specific skill you want to learn? Skillshare is the best platform to learn whatever you want to learn—from productivity videos to cooking videos to well-being. You can even find classes about playing the piano. If you want to find a new hobby without using social media, there are tons of classes, like learning how to draw using an iPad or with pen and paper, like classical methods.

Also, if you want to learn about productivity, you can check out Thomas Frank's and Ali Abdaal's courses, and maybe soon my class too. I'm planning to release language or either maybe Notion classes on Skillshare, so stay tuned! Now is the time to do the thing that you always wanted to do.

The first thousand people to use the link in the description below will get a one-month free Skillshare trial. Thank you, Skillshare, for sponsoring this video!

Okay, so now let's talk about picking the perfect book. Books are not cheap, not gonna lie. Especially if you're quite into reading, with time it can really add up. I don't know, $10-$15 for a book that you don't enjoy? Not only is it a waste of money, but it can also be a waste of time. So I think there is no reason for you to spend your time and money on books that you don't enjoy or that you don't find helpful.

Some of the ways to find the perfect books can be listening to the advice of people who you trust. If you know their taste and if you trust their recommendations, like picking a couple of—maybe it can be YouTubers, it can be some celebrities, it can be CEOs, like business people, or maybe it can be even your teacher—if you trust their opinions, if you respect them, and if they have a book recommendation, I think always checking out those types of books is quite important.

When, let's say, I like respect as some sort of a businesswoman or businessman, I try to read the books that they like so that I can learn the lessons that they learned from these books. Because most of the time, really successful people have a couple of favorite books of themselves, which really allow them to have the mindset that they're having these days.

So it is really important to check out those books and try to understand from their standpoints why they specifically like this book and what you can learn from that book. I think this is one of the greatest ways to pick a book if you're really into—I don't know, it can be actually non-fiction, fiction; it doesn't matter.

Another way to find a perfect book for yourself is watching book recommendation videos and reading the comments. Reading the comments is actually an important part because, for example, Jack Edwards, he does quite a lot of book review type of videos, and he explains why he liked it, why he didn't like it. And in the comment section, there are people discussing about it because for sure there are people who like this book too, or maybe people hate that book.

So by reading the comment section, you can read people discussing about the book, and maybe discuss something about a particular part of the book, which is quite interesting, in my opinion. So I highly recommend checking out BookTube. Is "booktuber" a word?

Okay, okay. Now let's talk about how to read books effectively. I hope you're not buying a book and starting from the first page and reading all the way. I hope you're not doing it. In order to read effectively and retain as much information as possible, you need to have a specific goal. The first step should be defining your goal of reading that book, and please write it down somewhere else.

It can be in your journal or it can be in your Notion. Then look into the table of contents and pick three titles that you're interested in. Always keep in your mind why you picked this book and read the book with that intention. I think picking three titles is a great way to start because if it's a really great book, I feel like there are so many pieces of information you would like to retain.

Rather than trying to retain all of them, just thinking into three maybe parts at a time is more sustainable than trying to remember like 20 of the tips that they are showing in that book. So just pick three titles that you will be focusing on, and then the reason why you want to read that book, and have that in mind while reading so that you won't get lost.

And last but not least, write a book summary and check whether you satisfy the reason why you wanted to read the book in the first place. I usually summarize the books in my notebook, and I just write some of the key points of the book so that I will be able to remember. When I open my journal and want to remember about a book, I just open a page and I look at the title, and I look at the key points and I was like, "Hmm, oh yeah, this book was about this. Oh, great!"

I hope all of these tips helped you guys. Maybe even one of them helped you; please, I hope so. And I hope more people will start to enjoy reading. So bye!