life strategies

If you’re an extremely busy individual like most people are nowadays, you probably have a hard time finding time to read as much as you’d like.

30 % of people in developed countries haven’t read a single book in the past year. The number is probably even higher because people tend to lie when it comes to the quantity of reading, to seem smarter of course.

Here are two important facts based on research:

• Higher educated people read more – they’re more aware of the importance of lifelong learning
• People who earn more read more – they’re more aware of the power of knowledge

Especially if you immediately implement what you learn, there is not a single downside to reading. Actually, there are more than 15 benefits of reading. Most ultra-successful people read professionally and personally. And they read a lot.

But as mentioned, the biggest issues why people don’t read are usually related to time management. You simply run out of time and energy to read.

That’s why you need a strategy and a system for reading as much as possible every day, before your daily obligations run your batteries empty.

Don’t rely on your self-discipline when it comes to making time to read. Have a superior reading strategy and system.

In this article you will learn:

• How to set up your superior reading strategy and system
• Why you need triggers and an infostructure that supports your reading habits
• How to read more every day
• A few speed reading tricks
• Other useful tips to become a super reader

Be a proactive, not a reactive reader

Stephen Covey presented a very popular idea in management nowadays: the two ways of interacting with the world. One way is the reactive way and the other is proactive.

Reactive means that you have no system at all, no plan or rational decision-making system, you only react to events that happen to you and so outside forces are the ones setting your agenda. When you operate based on the reactive approach, you are always a step behind, usually seeing yourself as a victim of circumstances.

With proactive behavior, you take control of the situation.

You become aware that you always have a choice and that you can always select your unique response to a situation, you set your own goals and put systems in place, you anticipate what could happen in the future and carefully shape your reactions and, last but not least, you create opportunities, not wait for them.

As in many areas of life, you can be a proactive or a reactive person. In the same way, you can be a reactive or a proactive reader.

With reactive reading, you most often read poor quality articles (mental masturbation and entertainment), you don’t really read a lot, even if it may seem that way to you, and you may be throwing away money on books you never actually read. Trust me, I’ve been there.

If you want to read more, you have to become a proactive reader first of all.

As a proactive reader, you set your own reading goals, enforce new reading habits, create opportunities to read more and make sure you keep the quality of the content you consume. As a proactive reader, you have a set strategy, system and goals for reading, and you don’t get easily distracted.

If you want to read more, you have to be a proactive, not a reactive reader.

To better understand the difference between reactive and proactive reading, let’s look at a few examples of reactive reading behavior:

• You don’t proactively choose what you read, but only react to what appears in your social media newsfeed and you accidentally find interesting.
• You only read when you really have to, be it for a course you take or because your boss orders you to read a book for better completing a specific task.
• You only read under rare circumstances when you are really bored for example, because there is no TV show to watch or you are on holiday or traveling; and on holiday, all other people read, so you do it too.
• You get enthusiastic about a book, buy it and never actually read it. If you have a bunch of books to read in a queue, but you don’t really read many of them, that shows very reactive behavior.
• You prefer to read online articles with entertainment value rather than real books from which you would benefit in life.
• You don’t find the time to read, because you have so many other “urgent” things to do.

Now we arrived to the key question – how can you become a proactive reader?

Below is a strategy and a system with 17 rules I’ve set for myself to be a proactive reader. It’s not an easy strategy and system to follow, so to be completely honest with you, I follow it around 80 % of the time.

But it’s enough to be a proactive, not a reactive reader, and to get the most out of my reading experience. If you manage to implement half of them into your life, you will definitely convert from reactive to proactive reading.

1. Infrastructure to encourage proactive reading
2. Reading triggers and rewards
3. Setting reading limits
4. Superior time management tricks to create time to read
5. Timeboxing reading periods
6. Reading when you have more than 2 minutes to kill
7. Audiobooks
8. Book summaries
9. Reading marathons
10. Limiting reading-in-progress to not get overwhelmed
11. Properly segmenting content in your reading queue
12. A “read later” list for content that provokes reactive behavior
13. Increasing reading speed without losing comprehension
14. Go to the best knowledge there is
15. Stop reading if there is no value, and don’t read what you already know
16. Healthy lifestyle
17. Reflecting and applying knowledge

Following any of these rules will enable you to read more and get better results out of your reading investment. Now let’s go into detail for every one of them.

Infrastructure to encourage proactive reading

Your behavior and decisions are the consequences of your personality and the environment you operate in.

Yes, the environment has a great influence on you and your outcomes in life. The part of the environment you operate in that influences your reading behavior is called infostructure.

Infostructure is a system and a process of how you consume, manage and share information. In the creative society, a quality infostructure has become as important as a quality infrastructure.

Infostructure can be good or bad. Bad infrastructure leads you to feed your mind with shitty information and good infostructure invites you to feed your mind with quality content on a regular basis.

Examples of bad infostructure are:

• Television and radio
• News (print, online) and most magazines
• Entertainment, mental masturbation and trashy internet sites
• Social networks
• Pub debates

Examples of good personal infostructure are:

• Quality books
• Carefully selected blogs and some magazines (HBR for business, for example)
• Quality audiobooks
• Carefully selected podcasts
• Massive online open courses (MOOCs)
• Educational videos
• Seminars, lectures
• Carefully selected conferences
• Personal mentor or mastermind group
• Online and offline discussion groups

If you want to read more, you have to adjust your personal infostructure.

In that way, you decrease the transaction costs and discipline necessary to follow good reading habits instead of bad ones.

It’s the same difference as having crappy food or healthy food in your refrigerator.

On the practical level, adjusting infostructure from a bad one to a good one includes things like:

• Have an e-reader next to your bed
• Have a device with an e-book app like Kindle with you when you are on the go
• Install reading apps (Kindle, Audible, Feedly, Blinkist etc.) on your mobile phone and tablet, and put them on the first screen
• Set a system that enables you to listen to audiobooks in your car and on the go
• Always have headphones with you to listen to audiobooks when you walk, exercise etc.
• Rearrange your browser bookmark (add Udemy, Lynda, TED talks etc.)
• Throw out your TV, radio, and unsubscribe from the daily news (paper and digital)
• Ditch your smartphone if you can’t get disciplined enough to use it for the purposes of advancing in life, not for entertainment
• Minimize the time spent on social networks etc.

Reading triggers and rewards

The first thing you have to know is why you want to read more. There are many benefits of reading and you must find your own strong why that will ensure you stay focused and disciplined.

If you don’t have a strong why, you can stop reading this article. It can be anything, from becoming smarter, mastering domain knowledge, broadening your horizons, making more money etc.

Every habit consists of a reminder (trigger), routine and reward. When you have your why, you need triggers that will push you to the desired behavior or routine – that’s reading in our case.

The more triggers you have as a cue to open a book and start reading, the more you will read throughout the day.

These are all examples of potential reading triggers (aka reminders or cues):

• When you wake up
• After exercising, stretching or doing yoga
• While you eat
• When someone turns on the TV
• When you want to check your email
• When you sit on a bus or a train
• When you sit on the toilet
• When you have a break at work
• When you have 2 or more minutes to kill
• When you go to sleep

Find a few reading triggers that work best for you.

For a month or so, push yourself to start reading after a trigger fires, and soon it will become a new positive habit (you’ll do it automatically without any effort) in your life that will bring you many benefits.

Set reading limits

The best way to really follow your reading goals is to set hard limits (minimums and maximums) and metrics.

After you set your limits and reading metrics, you should really commit to them. I mean there should be nothing that can come between you and your daily reading goal.

There should be nothing that can come between you and your daily reading goal.

Limits should be set smart, not only as a number on a paper. It should be something you can really follow through and measure without any huge efforts and stress.

Nevertheless, without metrics you can easily lie to yourself about how much you actually read, and you will be way less committed.

Here are my reading limits and metrics:

1. Never go to sleep without reading at least one page of a book
2. Aim to read 20 – 40 pages per day (ideally 60 – 80 pages, which you should be able to complete in 1 hour)
3. Perform at least one reading marathon per quarter (reading 2 – 4 books in a row)
4. Read 50 books per year (that means nearly one book per week, which is a lot)
5. My maximum limit of mental masturbation activities like TV shows, browsing memes, useless articles etc. is set to 5 hours per week maximum.

Now think of limits that would work best for you.

Superior time management tricks to create time to read

“I don’t have time to read” is a cheap excuse and consequently reactive behavior. Making time to read is proactive behavior.

Actually, there isn’t a lot you have to do to gain 30 – 60 minutes in your day to read.

You just need to perform one little time management hack and you will have enough time to read every day. Here are examples of such hacks:

• Cancel a meeting
• Don’t open your email account
• Don’t open any social networks
• Don’t read daily news
• Don’t open any IM apps
• Work from home and save on driving time
• Don’t turn on the TV
• Don’t spend time worrying or hating that asshole (whoever they are)
• Turn off your phone
• Skip that party or evening gathering

There is a big probability that if you do only 2 out of 10 things listed above every day, you will create 30 – 60 minutes of time when you can read in peace.

What you missed by redoing your priorities, you can do a day after. And I guarantee you that you won’t miss anything really important.

The only thing you have to watch out for is that you don’t get distracted with any other new “urgent” things when you just cancel one of them.

Not enough? Here are a few additional ideas I practice to read more in life:

• If you can’t sleep, read
• If you catch a cold and can’t work, read
• If you’re pissed off, go exercise and then read
• Learn while you earn

Learn when you earn

“Learn while you earn” is a really cool concept that can help you a lot in progressing quickly in life. You spend 8 to 10 or even more hours at work.

Your work should always be slightly more demanding than your skills, so you have to learn while you work.

In order to learn and match your skills to the task, you have to do research, you have to read and upgrade your knowledge and competences.

So make sure you learn while you earn. Also make sure to work at a company that’s prepared to invest in your knowledge, if you aren’t your own boss.

Timebox reading periods

If you want to read more in life, you have to schedule more time to read. It’s as simple as that.

As we have seen, with appropriate time management you shouldn’t have a problem finding 30 – 60 minutes to really read a book in peace and quiet.

The best thing to do it is to put it in your calendar right away. Reserving time in your calendar for important things in life is called timeboxing.

You simply reserve a 60 minutes’ time block, for example, and you can write “time to read” in your calendar for that hour, instead of wasting time it on social networks.

All you have to do is decide when in your day – early morning, late afternoon, before you go to sleep, when you have a break at work etc., you will schedule that time to consume quality content.

And don’t forget to have a trigger that will lead you directly to your book or e-reader, and you will forget about everything else.

When you arrive at your timeboxed time for reading in a day, make sure that:

• You turn off your phone, tablets and other notifications
• Other people won’t distract you
• You don’t have to go to the toilet or are hungry
• You don’t have some important or emotional issue on your mind that will prevent you from concentrating and relaxing

Just enjoy a book. Take time for yourself. You deserve it. It’s for your future; and the future of your family; and the future of humanity.

Reading when you have more than 2 minutes to kill

One of the best productivity tricks ever is that if a task takes less than 2 minutes to complete, you do it immediately, without even thinking or hesitating. In the same way,

In the same way, when you have more than 2 minutes of idle time, open your reading app and start reading.

Here are only a few examples of when and where you can put this advice to use:

• Waiting in lines (grocery stores, post office, wherever)
• Waiting for a meeting to start
• Waiting at the doctors’ office
• Sitting on the toilet
• Traveling by plane or train
• While eating

There are at least 10 instances per day when you have 2 minutes or more to kill. If you decide to read at those points, you can squeeze 20 minutes or even more of reading time every day.

That’s around 20 pages every day, transforming waiting (as one of the biggest wastes in life) into something productive.

Audiobooks

If you aren’t using audiobooks yet, they are definitely one of the best ways to “read” more every day.

Unfortunately, audio books are still surrounded by some sort of negative stigma that only MLM and self-help enthusiasts exploit them for listening to ego boosting mantras and affirmations.

In reality, you have many different books available, from fiction to non-fiction, and audiobooks are really a great way to increase quality content consumption.

The best provider of audiobooks and software is definitely Audible. Try it for yourself and you’ll see that there’s actually nothing weird about it. Other people assume you’re listening to music anyway.

You can listen to audiobooks when you:

• Drive
• Take a walk
• Exercise
• Travel

By employing audiobooks, you really don’t have any more excuses to not be more in touch with books and enjoy the benefits of reading or, to be more exact, listening to audiobooks.

Book summaries

One way to read more is to read book summaries. Book summaries are one of the ways to get a general idea on what a book is all about and see if it’s worth reading.

I tried many different executive summary services and I wasn’t satisfied with any until I stumbled upon Blinkist. I’m a premium Blinkist member and read a summary or two per day.

Now, you must have realistic expectations regarding book summaries. It’s not the same as reading the whole book.

But reading book summaries has a few great benefits, here are mine:

• You get an overview of what a book is all about
• You can grasp many different ideas in a short period of time
• It’s easier to decide if you should buy and read the whole book
• You can easily refresh the knowledge from the books you already read

Reading book summaries is like somebody else reads a book and shares the main highlights with you.

Reading marathons

Even though I try to squeeze in maximum reading time every day, it’s still not enough to meet my yearly reading goals.

That’s why I also have reading marathons in my life.

I constantly apply the no-interruptions days and themed days/weeks concepts into my life, when I want to achieve something fast, and reading is no exception here.

These two techniques can really help you read extraordinarily big amounts of content in short periods of time. It simply means that you reserve a whole day or even a whole week in your schedule for reading.

You’re probably doing the same thing in the summer when you’re on holiday. For a week or two, you sunbathe on the beach while reading a bunch of books. The only question is why you’d do that only during summer holidays.

Have one Saturday in a month when you read the whole day. Have an extended weekend retreat together with technology detox and read a bunch of paper books.

Take a whole week off with the goal of reading 10 books on a specific subject. I know it sounds crazy but remember, only extraordinary actions can give you extraordinary results in life.

Properly segmenting content in your reading queue

Now you already know that if you want to read more, you have to be a smart reader. Only making time to read is not enough.

You must know yourself extraordinarily well and set a strategy that will work best for you in terms of when to read what.

If you’re tired and you try to force yourself to read demanding and complex content, you’ll give up fast, I guarantee it.

On the other hand, if you are well-rested and keen on learning something new and you just keep browsing low quality articles, you will soon become bored and start doing something else.

Knowing that, you should segment the content you consume based on:

• How much time you have
• How much energy you have
• Which medium is available to you
• Your competence development priorities

Here is an example of my strategy based on the factors listed above:

Time – Device – Content Type
2 – 10 minutes	10 – 20 minutes	20+ minutes	60+ minutes
Mobile – Blinkist Mobile – Reddit / MUO	Mobile – Pocket Mobile – Feedly	e-reader – Kindle book Audiobooks	e-reader – Kindle Tablet – Online Courses

And

Energy Levels – Device – Content Type
Low	Medium	High	Very High
Mobile – Reddit / MUO	Mobile – Pocket Mobile – Feedly e-reader – Easy books Audiobooks	e-reader – Kindle Book Online Courses Audiobooks	Online Courses

When I’m on the go, I always have my mobile phone with me. On my mobile phone, I have all the apps for all the different types of content (Blinkist, Reddit, Makeuseof, Pocket, Feedly, Kindle, Audible, Lynda, Udemy).

At home, I use an e-reader and a tablet. When I travel, I take the e-reader with me.

A “read later” list for content that provokes reactive behavior

No matter how good your infrastructure is, it’s almost impossible to completely avoid temptation for mental masturbation and wasting your time on low quality articles and content.

So you need a system to handle that distractions like this. Here’s what I do:

• If any interesting articles pop up on my social network feeds or I stumble upon them on the internet, I send them to Pocket or Evernote; and read them once a week on the weekends (sometime in the evening). When I send them to Pocket or Evernote, my desire to read them vanishes. It becomes a kind of do it later.
• I don’t read online through the day; I create things in the flow (research is the exception). I read something positive when I wake up and I read before I go to sleep as part of my morning kick-off routine.
• If I’m really too tired to even read, I do watch some interesting TV shows that motivate me (like Suits or Billions). I noticed that if I push myself over the limit, my reading motivation and discipline start to suffer a lot.

The main point is: you shouldn’t react to what comes into your newsfeed to the point where everything becomes a distraction.

Instead, you need a system to handle all the articles that may interest you, but aren’t a priority during the working day.

Limiting reading-in-progress to not get overwhelmed

One nasty thing that can happen to you with the information overload is that you try to read too many things at once and so you become overwhelmed.

You may, for example, have hundreds of blog posts in your RSS reader, dozens of books on your Kindle to read and still keep buying new ones, you’re constantly bombarded with new articles on the social media, and so on.

At the end of the day, everything may become overwhelming and so you just give up and decide to check out a few memes instead of reading; because you don’t even know where to start.

Again, you have to be smart about it, you need a system and a strategy.

Here’s what I do:

• I don’t have more than 10 books in the reading queue (already bought books, not wish list).
• I don’t read more than 3 books at the same time.
• At the same time, I’m usually reading one book from the topic I want to master (SEO, writing, personal development etc.) and one inspirational book or a book with completely new ideas about the world (biographies, bestsellers etc.). It provides me with enough diversity but it’s still not too much to handle.
• When I wake up, I read one book summary or positive article in Feedly; before I go to sleep I read e-books on my e-reader; and I read articles that pile up through the week on weekends or sometimes in the evenings on my tablet or phone.

I try to automate as much as possible and take out as many decisions as possible. I try to set my system to the point that I always know what I need to read when – which device to take, which app to open, which next page to turn.

You need a system that enables you to start reading the most quality content in a certain moment with a single click.

Increasing reading speed without losing comprehension

By knowing just a few speed reading basics, you can double your reading speed. That means double the amount of books you read in the same time.

There are many speed reading techniques you can employ to read more in a shorter period of time and we will talk about them a lot in the future. In the meantime, be curious and explore a little bit of speed reading techniques.

Below is just a short summary of different speed reading techniques (general, RSVP etc.), not to make this blog post even longer than it is.

Speed reading advice

Traditional speed reading is a very well-developed set of strategies and techniques. I’m not sure why they aren’t more popular.

In general, there are six rules you should follow in order to read faster and with some practice, you can learn them very easily. Here they are:

Previewing strategy

Before you start reading any material, you should take a minute or two to preview it. You preview it by going through the table of contents, diagrams, repeating trigger words, names, numbers etc.

With the previewing strategy, you capture the central idea of what you’re reading.

When you are executing the previewing strategy, you should also ask yourself questions like who, where, when, what, why and how.

Skimming and scanning

Much like you can preview what kind of material you will read on the whole book level, you can skim and scan shorter bunches of text such as chapters.

Skimming is nothing but a process of visually searching the sentences of a page for clues to meaning.

In other words, it means not reading every word. You can skim before you go into detail. You can also use skimming and scanning technique for the chapters and sections of a book that you find less interesting.

Word grouping and increasing eye span

The goal of the word grouping is that you don’t read single words, but process bigger chunks of words.

To achieve that goal, you have to increase your eye span, which is the number of words you take in at a glance.

Interestingly, word-by-word readers are the slowest readers, because they stop at each and every word. If you want to read faster, you have to avoid reading each word separately and start grouping them. Try it, it’s not that hard.

Meta guiding and hand pacing

Meta guiding means visually guiding the eye using a finger, pointer or pen in order for the eye to move faster along the length of a text passage.

The easiest and fastest way to read faster is by sliding the index fingers or a pointer across the page and below the sentence you’re reading.

Avoiding sub-vocalization

Sub-vocalization means the habit of pronouncing each and every word in your head when you read. That significantly slows down your reading speed.

If you learn how to avoid sub-vocalization or, in other words, if you learn how to avoid talking to yourself when you read, your reading speed will increase dramatically.

Eliminating regression

Regression is the expression for unnecessarily re-reading the material or, in other words, going back to what you’ve already read.

You should avoid bad reading habits like skipping back to words that you just read or jumping back a few sentences to make sure you read something correctly. Read it once and read it thoroughly the first time.

Besides traditional techniques, there are two more things you can try and experiment with for achieving faster reading speed:

Rapid Serial Visual Presentation and Spritz technology

We are reading on small screens more and more often. Traditional reading from left to right and top-to bottom is quite slow on small devices. Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) is the answer to that problem.

The main idea of RSVP is to display a sequential stream of words, one or more words at the time. With such an approach, saccades and eye blinks are minimized.

Spritz

Spritz took RSVP even a step further by optimizing the Optimal Recognition Point (ORP).

For each word you read, your eye first seeks a certain point, ORP, and when it finds it, it starts to process the meaning of the word.

With traditional RSVP, your eyes have a hard time finding ORP and so you move your eyes on a regular basis, which negatively affects reading time and comprehension.

Spritz, on the other hand, centers each word on its ORP so that you can stay focused while reading.

I use Rapid and ReadQuick apps for Spritz reading. The good news is that you can connect them to other apps (Pocket, Instapaper, ReadQuick, even to Evernote and Feedly), so I can use this technique to read the articles I’d read anyway.

I don’t use the Spritz reading technique constantly, but am switching between this and regular reading.

BeeLine Reader

One more technique that may help you read faster is the so-called BeeLine Reading Technique.

BeeLine Reader makes reading faster by using a color gradient that guides your eyes from the end of one line to the beginning of the next.

The human brain processes color more quickly than it can process words, and that is the advantage that the BeeLine Reader uses to make reading easier and faster.

Go to the best knowledge there is

It’s not only about how much you read, but also what you read. With the information overload, there is just too much low-quality information and too many cheap copies and fake gurus.

Even more, a great majority of information is unfortunately produced only for mental masturbation and entertainment.

You have to be extremely picky about what information you consume and what you read. It’s better to read one really good book than 1000 average blog posts.

There is a simple rule you should follow: go for the best knowledge there is.

It’s not hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. The knowledge you acquire should be eye-opening, it should change how you look at the world, your behavioral patterns, your values and beliefs.

The best knowledge should encourage you to apply it as quickly as possible. By acquiring and embracing the best knowledge, you should basically feel how your mind is being upgraded.

If you don’t change your behavior in some way, your brain was not upgraded by reading.

Go for the best (knowledge), forget the rest. Carefully chose what you consume.

Help yourself with reviews, summaries and sites like Goodreads before you really bite into anything.

Sometimes the best knowledge is a best-seller book, other times a blog post you find after hours of browsing.

Stop reading if there is no value and don’t read what you already know

Humans have a tendency to finish what we started.

So you may start reading a book, not even like it, but just can’t put it away and start reading the next one; instead you torture yourself, procrastinate and waste time by pushing yourself to read boring material.

It’s like watching a movie you find boring to the end. Why would you do that?

In the same way, it’s easier to read something that is already familiar to you. So you may be reading the same type of literature with the same type of ideas over and over again.

Diversifying reading material has important benefits for your brain and awareness. You don’t want to watch the same movie over and over again, just with slightly different colors.

Absolutely, if you liked the book so much you want to read it again with the goal of better implementing acquired knowledge, do it.

But if you are bored and you’re reading a book only to prove to yourself and to the world that you can finish it, stop it. You’re not doing anyone a favor; you’re only wasting time.

If you do good research before buying a book that shouldn’t even happen, but sometimes it does. And when it does, stop reading and move on.

Healthy lifestyle

Exercise and a healthy diet help a lot to read more and get out more of reading, even if it may not seem so at the first glance.

Healthy lifestyle doesn’t only mean that you are better disciplined, your brain also functions better because it’s being filled with oxygen and thus more alert and comprehensive for new knowledge.

Besides reading every day, also do something for your health every day.

Take a walk. Go for a run. Visit the gym. Stretch. Do yoga.

Not only your body, your mind will also appreciate these little things and will reward you with many things, including a better reading experience and remembering more.

In the same way, pay attention to your diet. Eat green veggies and healthy fats like nuts and olive oil.

Don’t consume too much sugar and unhealthy fats. Your brain will function much better. It’s actually not as difficult as it sounds.

Reflecting and applying knowledge

There is no use in knowledge if you don’t apply it through daily action.

The first step you should always take right after reading a new text is to reflect on the new acquired knowledge.

Reflecting is a very simple thing to do, you just ask yourself how to connect the newly acquired knowledge with what you already possess and then decide what you will start doing, stop doing and continue doing in life.

It’s easy to do self-reflection, the only problem is that people are usually too lazy to reflect on what they’ve learned, and even more when it comes to applying new knowledge. Don’t be one of them.

A few things that may help you to better structure, understand and connect newly acquired knowledge are:

• Write a summary of the book
• Write down notes (and make them into a blog post)
• Share quotes on social media
• Make mindmaps
• Talk to other people
• Post on online forums and Goodreads

After reflection, you have to implement the knowledge. Immediate implementation is the key to success.

You change yourself when you find a way to do something better. In order to change yourself, you have to change your behavioral patterns. You have to do things differently than you’ve been doing them until now.

To implement knowledge successfully, ask yourself:

• What will you stop doing?
• What will you start doing?
• What will you continue doing?

Changing yourself includes changing your activities, reactions to situations, tasks on your to-do list, habits, people you spend time with, and so on.

Actually, you can get action-oriented right now.

You’ve read this article. You probably got at least one idea how to read more day by day in your life.

Take action and implement it. If you aren’t sure what to do, go through ten ideas below in the summary and implement the one that you like the most.

How to read more? Take action and follow these 10 cool tricks

Now you have really good insight into how to set a strategy and a system for reading more every day.

Remember, it’s just a matter of priorities and how much you really want to be successful and educated in life.

Reading is absolutely one of the best accelerators of personal and professional success. There are many successful people out there as proof.

Here are 10 steps you can do right now, if nothing else do just one of them:

1. Don’t read what appears on your social media newsfeed, become a proactive reader.
2. Build a superior infrastructure. Do it now. Install new apps on your phone or tablet. Rearrange apps so all the reading apps will be the easiest to open. Buy an e-reader.
3. Find 2 – 3 reading triggers that work best for you.
4. Cancel one activity every day that will create 30 – 60 minutes of free time for you to read.
5. Listen to audiobooks when you drive, take a walk or cook food.
6. When you have 2 or more minutes to kill, read on your phone.
7. Schedule a reading marathon every quarter.
8. Get a reading buddy, join online forums, communities like Goodreads etc.
9. Have measurable reading goals and make sure you meet them.
10. Reflect on what you’ve learned and apply knowledge immediately.

Enjoy reading!

I never liked reading when I was young. I always liked computers. But in my early twenties, I decided to get fond of reading. My strategy was simple. Read every day. I followed the strategy through and today I love to read.

I have three simple rules. (1) The first one is to not go to sleep if I haven’t read at least one page of a book. It’s something you can realistically commit to. (2) The second rule is to read at least 50 books per year. And the (3) third one is that when I wait in lines or anywhere else, or when I’m in an idle state somehow, I read.

I can honestly say that reading is probably the number one thing that changed my life to the better forever. If there are only two things I have to recommend to anyone in this world, they would be exercise and reading.

I know it’s hard to find the time to read books. But with good time management techniques, it can be done. You just have to see all the benefits and be motivated enough.

My intention with this blog post is to encourage you to read more. But in addition to that, you will also learn:

• The number one reason why you should read every day
• Other benefits of regular reading
• How to become fond of reading
• My personal experience of how reading changed my life
• Reading metrics you should follow

If nothing else, read the paragraph below:

You have one of the most capable computers in your head available for use, a product of billions of years of evolution. Next to that, you have most of the knowledge ever created by humankind available only with a single click on the mouse. Why would you use your brain and the internet for browsing funny pictures of cats?

The most important reason for reading every day

The most important reason to read (non-fiction) every day is regular maintenance and updates for your brain.

Imagine your body is a piece of hardware and your brain is the organ that runs the software to operate your body and how you experience life – from making everyday decisions to how you feel about certain situations.

Even if the brain is a remarkably powerful organ, the software it runs among neurons is quite buggy. Extremely buggy, actually.

Brain bugs come from many different sources, like suppressed traumatic experiences, cognitive distortions, limiting beliefs, lack of awareness, false knowledge transmitted from others (the Earth is flat?), and so on.

Now here’s the awesome news. By reading, listening to lectures, talking to people, observing different situations, reflecting and other similar situations, you can update your software to be less buggy.

Updating your brains (learning) = Download + Process + Apply

You have the ability to make your software more powerful, more capable, more accurate and with fewer bugs. In other words, you become more intelligent when you regularly update and maintain your software.

Among all the ways of “downloading” knowledge to update the “software” that your brain runs, reading is one of the best and the most popular ones.

Reading opens new perspectives and angles to you, it enables you to familiarize yourself with how other people see the world, it enables you to acquire skills, improve your communication abilities and much more. You can understand the world and yourself much better.

That’s why most of the extremely successful people, no matter the industry, read; and they read a lot. Well, a few industries like the entertainment industry may be sometimes an exception. But you get the point.

Reading = One of the best ways to download knowledge

Now only (1) downloading knowledge makes no sense, if you don’t (2) process it and then (3) run it or apply it. It’s like downloading a program on your computer and not installing it, much less using it. That’s why you also need to process knowledge and put it to use.

Processing knowledge means reflecting on new information, connecting it to what you already know, analyzing what you’ll start doing and stop doing based on the new information, talking to other people and engaging in discussions, sleeping it over, and so on.

Applying knowledge means putting it to use. Starting to interact differently with your environment. Becoming a better version of yourself, in action. Practically, that means that you put to use a new skill you’ve acquired, stop procrastinating, undertake a new adventure, make better decisions, manage relationships better, and so on.

Downloading, processing, applying. That’s also why we know passive and active methods of learning. Passive methods of learning are the ones where you just “download” knowledge. As mentioned, reading is one of the most popular ones. Here they are:

• Listening to lectures
• Reading
• Listening to audio recordings and watching video materials
• Demonstration

Active methods are the ones where you don’t only download knowledge, but also process and apply it. Active methods of learning are:

• Group discussions (process)
• Real life experience (process, apply) – Validated learning – Practical knowledge
• Teaching after real life experience (process, apply)

Applying theoretical knowledge means gaining experience. With experience and gathering feedback comes even more practical knowledge. Experience is simply the best way to remember new knowledge. But a theory is what gives you the coordinates of where to start.

Reading is a great start. I’m trying to convince you to read more here. But reading is not enough. Thinking about it is not enough. Only reflecting is also not enough. You have to change your behavior in the end. Download, process, apply. But reading is where you most often start.

You have learned something new when you do things differently.

Regular reading doesn’t only mean fresh updates for your brain; it also means regular brain maintenance. Research has shown that reading improves your memory and greatly decreases the chance for cognitive diseases like Alzheimer’s.

It also helps slow down your cognitive decline with age. Reading is the workout for your brain. You have to take care of your body and your mind.

And here’s some more good news. The more you learn, the more synaptic pinpoints you have for the new knowledge to be at your disposal faster and more permanently. When you read, you’re making your hardware and software more and more capable. The benefits accumulate.

Reading is the workout for your brain.

Other benefits of regular reading

Now you know the main benefit of reading. Updated software. Reading changed the quality of my life forever. More about my personal experience later. Besides updated software, there are many other benefits of reading. I found more than 15 of them.

Some of them apply to non-fiction, others to fiction books, but most of them to both. I encourage you to read both. Now let’s go to the benefits. And here is the first one:

Seeing into the minds of other people

Many times, I ask myself how it would be to experience life as another person. Everybody has their own life story and individual experience and subjective interpretation of the World.

There are unlimited combinations of gender, cultural history, sets of beliefs, religious and political backgrounds, age, and so on. Everyone has their own individual experience and life story, and you being limited only to your own is a big deprivation.

A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one. R.R. Martin

By reading books, you can kind of see into the minds of other people and better understand a small fragment of what was/is their experience of the world – including the people who already passed away and thankfully decided to share their piece of the world through the written word.

Here are only a few things you can experience with reading:

• How other people perceive the world (alive and dead)
• Other cultural backgrounds and places without even traveling
• Human history and ideas about the future

Isn’t that simply awesome? By reading, you have the ability to enter the minds of other people. Don’t waste that ability.

Developing empathy

By understanding different ways of how life can be experienced, grasping different angles of looking at different situations and having more knowledge, you develop empathy.

Being empathic is one of the most important social skills. Reading is the thing that helps you enhance your empathy.

Especially by reading non-fiction books, you can enter more mental states, understand people better and thus cultivate more complex and deeper relationships. You can see more relationship dimensions and be a better friend. What an awesome benefit of reading.

Stimulating your imagination, creativity and ideas

When you watch a movie or a TV series, you have visual material in front of you. But when you read, especially fiction books, you have to imagine things. Imagination is unlimited.

You can imagine a situation or a thing you read in many different ways and with dozens of different mental pictures. You can play it over and over again in your mind by adding things and taking them away. It’s a big stimulation for your brain’s neurons.

By reading books, you’re making your own mental movie; or even many different versions of them.

Better imagination leads to more creativity and ideas. If I need more ideas regarding any subject in life, the first thing I do is to read as much as possible on the topic. When I read a critical amount of ideas, views and knowledge, new ideas start to pop up.

So, if you feel stuck with ideas at any time, start reading and reading a lot, and ideas will come naturally.

Better analytical skills

It’s not only your imagination and creative abilities that are stimulated by reading. Your analytical skills can also be improved. Every (non-fiction) book has a body of knowledge that’s structured in a specific way.

If, before reading a book, you analyze how the book is structured and why that is so, why the author decided to structure knowledge in such a way, it helps stimulate your analytical skills a lot; especially after you do that with hundreds of books. You learn how to structure things quickly and logically.

An even better method is to make a mindmap of the most important ideas after reading a book; or join online forums and discuss the book with others and defend a certain view on what the author meant with specific ideas, and so on. You know, you get out what you put in.

Curiosity

I also mustn’t forget curiosity. Curiosity is one of the most important values of intelligent people.

The more you read, the more you see what you don’t yet know, the kind of cool updates you can install to your brains and how unlimited your imagination is, the more you will want to read, the more you will want to know.

Stay hungry, stay foolish. Read.

Inspiration and mentorship

Books, especially biographies, can be a great deal of inspiration. Struggles, stamina, motivation, creativity and powerful life visions of other people can be a great source of inspiration for you to achieve your peak performance.

Biographies and advice books can also be a way of being mentored by successful people without even meeting them in real life.

Fictional characters also deserve a place at this point. They can be as motivational as biographies of real people. They can influence your style, the words you use, your hobbies and the things you like.

Their actions can be a great inspiration for you to act and realize your potentials. You know, especially if there is a bit of a nerd in you, think of all the action characters.

Developing communication skills and expanding your vocabulary

Outstanding communication skills are one of the most important skills in life. Being a good communicator helps you build strong relationships, assert yourself, express your thoughts and develop your verbal abilities.

Reading books exposes you to a much greater vocabulary than watching TV or talking with other people. Knowing more words means that you can better express yourself and better describe different situations in life.

Smart is the new sexy, right?

Better writing skills

An important part of communication skills are writing skills. You don’t have to be a blogger or a professional writer to pay attention to your writing skills.

Everyone writes today – emails, social media, slides for public presentations, etc. We are in the knowledge society, where it’s difficult to escape from writing.

By reading a lot, your writing will improve – from being better with words, expressing yourself more clearly, to making fewer grammar mistakes, and so on. And if you ever want to be a professional writer, reading a lot is even more important.

You become a more interesting person

By having a better imagination, outstanding communication skills, knowing how to express yourself and understanding different topics, you become a really interesting person. You can always find a topic to talk about and you always have something smart to say.

You don’t want to only appear intelligent; you really want to be intelligent, and you can achieve that by reading a lot.

And when you become an enthusiastic reader, you will also develop better listening skills because you can better understand the other person (remember empathy) and you become aware that you don’t have to learn only from books.

You can also learn from other people. There is always an opportunity to learn something new, as long as you keep your mind open.

Knowing more, being more educated or even being a walking lexicon will also help you with self-confidence. Make knowledge your type of an expensive car.

You can never be overdressed, overpaid and overeducated.

It’s a way to connect with other people

The easiest way to connect with other people is through common interests. A book is a great common interest for starting a new friendship.

You have hundreds of pages to discuss. All you have to do is to be proactive enough and reach out to people.

Online forums, online book clubs, real life book clubs, there are numerous ways of connecting with new people all over the world, exchanging views and making new friendships.

Make sure you reach out to people after reading every book. Take a step further. That’s what will make you successful in life.

Well, and if you feel lonely and need some company, book characters are always good to hang out with.

You’re never alone when you’re reading a book. – Susan Wiggs

Concentration abilities and focus

Reading, much like running or listening to music, can be a form of meditation. Even more, by reading regularly, you develop better abilities to focus and concentrate.

With all the distractions nowadays, people have really big problems with focusing and concentrating. Don’t be one of them.

The higher your power to concentrate, the better the position you’re in. You can more easily complete demanding tasks, you can work and create in the flow state for hours, and more easily set priorities in life.

Self-discipline and consistency

If you commit to reading every day, we can add developing self-discipline and consistency next to concentration abilities and focus.

If you read at least one page a day, self-discipline and consistency will help you do the same in other areas of life as well, from sports to meditation, and so on.

Getting to know yourself better

The first rule of a happy life is to know yourself really well. The best way to get to know yourself is the so-called search mode. You try to experience as many things as possible and see what fits you and what doesn’t.

But reading can also be a way to learn a great deal about yourself. If you reflect on experiences of other people in books, you can analyze which ideas you like and which ones you dislike.

You can also get many new ideas for what to try in life. Remember, there’s a lot of things for which you don’t even know that you don’t know.

That’s where reading can open you up to completely new perspectives and horizons. We can even say that reading can influence you to such a degree that it helps shape your personality.

You’re doing a great thing for your kids

If you love to read, there’s a much greater chance that your kids will love to read. That means that your kids will develop better communication skills, they will be more intelligent, will have a great head start in life, and so on.

Discussing a book can also be a great way to connect with your child intellectually. Remember, you have to be connected to your kid physically, emotionally, intellectually, materially and socially.

It’s relaxing

Reading is a great inexpensive relaxation – assuming you aren’t forced to read and aren’t reading any heavy texts (legal papers, etc.).

When you lose yourself in a book, you can simply forget all the daily worries and enter the creative world of imagination, creation and progress.

Reading just before sleep can also help you to enter the sleep state faster and to sleep better. Reading before bedtime is absolutely much better than watching TV. every time someone in your family turns on the TV, go on and start reading a book.

Every time someone turns on the TV, go on and start reading a book.

A way to practice technology detox

With all the screens you’re exposed to, from computers to smartphones and TVs, you have to take regular technology detox breaks.

One of the best ways to do a technology detox is to go to a mountain cottage for an extended week with a bunch of books.

You can also do mini technology detoxes through the day. As mentioned, instead of watching TV, wasting time on useless websites or numerous apps, simply take a book and read.

More money

By being more educated, a better communicator and having better analytical and creative skills, you gain the ability to earn more money. Don’t you want to earn more money? Well if you do, then read more.

It’s (almost) free

If you compare how much it takes to write a book to how much a book costs, the price of the book is ridiculously low.

Next to that, if you don’t want to spend money on books, you have libraries. So reading costs you nothing, except your time investment; and by reading, you’re investing into yourself, which is the best possible investment.

The best things in life are for free. Reading is one of them. Just try it.

You can do it almost anywhere

You can read almost anywhere and at anytime, like having sex. When you wake up. While you eat. When you wait in a queue. During boring meetings. To relax after you come home from work. Before sleep.

If you can’t sleep. On a plane or a train. There are numerous possibilities. Actually, I was wrong, there are many more opportunities for reading than for having sex.

How to become fond of reading

As mentioned before, when I was young, I disliked reading even though I was a good pupil. Like I hated exercising. And olives. But now I love exercising.

And I love reading even more. I also eat olives. There’s no romantic story or secret behind how I made the switch.

If you consistently do a thing, you develop a habit. It may be hard at the beginning but with time, your taste, values and preferences change.

You can start to love things that bring a better quality of life in the long term. The easiest way to develop a new habit is to develop morning or evening routines. And routines slowly turn to habits, where you need no effort to do an activity.

Read a few pages when you wake up or when you go to sleep (reading is part of my morning kick-off routine). Start with a topic that interests you the most.

And go straight to the best knowledge. Don’t read things for mental masturbation and entertainment (“10 potatoes that look like Brad Pitt” and “15 different ways to fart”). That doesn’t count. Read quality books. Quality fiction and non-fiction.

Build yourself a supportive environment. Put some books on your shelf and the night table. Use an app to measure how much you read. Join Goodreads. Find a reading buddy. Set a reminder that it’s time to read. Timebox reading time in your calendar.

And the most important fact: you must have a powerful why. You must know what you want to get out of reading.

Does it relax you, stimulates your imagination, do you want to grow and improve in life, be more successful, smarter or whatever. Even if I didn’t like reading, my why was so powerful that I had no problem sticking to my set routine and meeting my daily goals.

How reading changed my life – a personal experience why you should read a lot

My why that motivated me to read was pretty simple. I needed new software to download. First of all, I was raised in a socialist country, where being successful, rich or outstanding was forbidden.

I was also raised in a broken family with many toxic beliefs and brain bugs.

I needed new software that would lead to better decisions regarding health, wealth, relationships, happiness, productivity and other areas of life.

The only way back then to get new software was by reading books (back then, the Internet was not like it is today). So, I went to the library and started reading my first book.

The first book I ever read for my personal growth was Awaken the Giant Within by Anthony Robbins. I still remember that day.

I started to read a lot. I made notes in notebooks. I had dozens of notebooks with extracts, summaries and quotes from the books. I bought more than 1,000 books.

I donated all of them a few years back since I now only have eBooks as part of my asset-light living strategy.

I upgraded my software a lot since I read my first book. Today I have a completely different view on life than I had 15 years ago.

With that old software, I’d be stuck in a job I hate with an average income and abusive relationships, never taking care of my body or finding happiness.

Even if I upgraded my software a lot, I’m still at around 30 % of where I want to be. I still have many bugs that cause negative thinking and troubling emotions.

I still have many intellectual skills to develop, like programming, improving my English and sometimes, when I read something incredibly smart from other people, I just ask myself what else I don’t even know I have to learn.

So join me on a trip to become the best version of yourself. The best version of you should constantly have new upgraded software for your brain.

One way to achieve that is also with reading, and again, I mean reading a lot – every day. And applying knowledge, of course. Just make sure that you don’t lie to yourself about how much you read. Measure it and then manage it properly.

Reading metrics you should follow

Interestingly, when I talk to people, I’ve noticed that most have a problem admitting that they don’t read at all or read very little.

I guess you come up as more intelligent if you lie to yourself and others that you read a lot. It’s one of the brain bugs.

Make sure you don’t have this brain bug. You don’t want to only appear intelligent and fake intelligence; you want to actually be intelligent and smart.

Thus it may make sense to follow some basic metrics for how much you read in a specific period, and you should also set some limits (minimums) to make sure you do meet your daily, weekly and monthly goals.

You don’t want to only appear intelligent and fake intelligence; you want to actually be intelligent and smart.

Here are a few reading metrics you can follow:

1. How many books (and other texts) do you read per month (aim for 2 – 4)
2. How much you read per day (aim for 20 – 40 pages per day, but read at least 1 page no matter what)
3. How fast you can read (you can take a test online)
4. How long you can read without losing concentration (aim for 1h+ and you can also test your maximum abilities, for example try to read a book in one day)
5. Reading comprehension and vocabulary

And a few additional metrics:

6. How many books you discuss with other people (kids, spouse, friends, business partners,)
7. How many mindmaps did you make based on the books you read
8. The number of new things you learned and applied in real life (you can do that when you have self-reflection time and decide what you’ll start doing, stop doing and continue doing)
9. How much new knowledge you shared with others (social media, in your own book, lecturing,)
10. How many new people you meet and how many new friendships you made where a book was the icebreaker.

I hope I convinced you why you should read every day.