How To Become A Serious Reader

00:00:00.000 | All right, next question is from Sambit.

00:00:02.480 | I have a strange relationship with books.

00:00:04.320 | I buy a lot of them, but I can't read them.

00:00:06.280 | After the first 10 to 12 pages, I feel bored and I stop reading.

00:00:10.160 | I can, however, listen to long podcasts with full attention.

00:00:13.440 | How do I become a reader?

00:00:15.960 | Well, Sambit, the key thing is you have an ambition

00:00:18.320 | to become a reader.

00:00:19.560 | So let's give that a checkmark.

00:00:21.320 | The second thing I want to point out here is you have inadvertently

00:00:24.480 | provided us, I think, a really good case study of one

00:00:27.280 | of the big ideas from the deep dive earlier in this episode.

00:00:30.640 | You can listen to long podcasts, no problem.

00:00:34.480 | But you're having trouble with books.

00:00:36.320 | That just emphasizes in my mind the exceptional nature of book

00:00:40.680 | reading when it comes to all cognitive consumption activities.

00:00:44.720 | I mean, podcasts are complicated.

00:00:46.640 | It's not like you can't pay attention to something.

00:00:48.560 | You're able to focus on a podcast.

00:00:50.240 | You're able to listen to me and what I'm saying.

00:00:51.920 | So it just goes to show you that there is a unique, complicated,

00:00:56.600 | but ultimately essential cognitive dance that

00:00:59.280 | happens when you're grappling with sentences written

00:01:02.120 | on the physical printed page.

00:01:03.520 | So it's a good case study that you're providing us here.

00:01:06.840 | All right, so what you need to do is train.

00:01:09.720 | I don't want you to despair.

00:01:11.480 | You're not-- there's no such thing as I'm not a reader.

00:01:14.120 | I am a reader.

00:01:15.600 | There is I have trained to read or I haven't.

00:01:18.680 | And if you haven't, how do you fix that?

00:01:20.360 | You do the training.

00:01:21.240 | It's just like I wouldn't say I'm not a runner because I just

00:01:25.440 | tried to run a 5K, having never jogged in my life,

00:01:28.280 | and didn't go very well.

00:01:29.480 | I would say I am not in shape to run a 5K.

00:01:34.400 | But I'm sure if I train within a few months,

00:01:36.480 | I could run these on a regular basis.

00:01:38.120 | So I'm going to give you a training regime, Sam,

00:01:41.600 | that I'm going to suggest about how you become a better reader.

00:01:44.520 | All right, so we're going to start with books

00:01:46.400 | that you are excited to read.

00:01:48.760 | So we want to take out of the equation early on the boredom

00:01:52.920 | factor or the comfort with intellectual discomfort.

00:01:56.960 | So this could be genre fiction.

00:01:59.800 | That's really exciting.

00:02:00.880 | You might even want to start with short stories.

00:02:04.040 | I recently read Ted Chiang's original short story

00:02:07.520 | collection of sci-fi short stories.

00:02:08.960 | It was excellent, right?

00:02:09.960 | But they're 20 pages each.

00:02:11.720 | They're really gripping, whatever.

00:02:13.480 | So it could be genre fiction or it could be nonfiction.

00:02:15.720 | Maybe pragmatic nonfiction, like the type of books I write.

00:02:18.120 | Like, yeah, I want to read digital minimalism

00:02:19.640 | because I'm really motivated to spend less time on my phone.

00:02:22.280 | And so you're motivated.

00:02:23.640 | I'll read Atomic Habits or memoirs.

00:02:26.040 | I'll read Goggins' memoir because I want to get fired up

00:02:29.800 | or get some discipline.

00:02:30.720 | So start with books you're excited to read.

00:02:32.360 | Forget about what they are right now.

00:02:33.920 | It's just about time on page.

00:02:35.920 | Number two, find a cool reading location or ritual.

00:02:39.280 | I talked about in the deep dive.

00:02:40.640 | It's going to help you here.

00:02:42.280 | Go into the coffee shop.

00:02:43.520 | 20 minutes while I finish this one cup of coffee,

00:02:45.640 | I'm going to the pub.

00:02:47.240 | Bring in the book with me.

00:02:49.280 | If you go to a pub, it has to be an English-style pub.

00:02:51.720 | And you need to wear a scarf or an ascot.

00:02:55.800 | You got to use your accent.

00:02:57.080 | And you got to use an accent.

00:02:58.280 | You got to come in with an ascot, preferably a beret.

00:03:01.800 | If you're going to wear a shirt, it

00:03:03.240 | should be striped like a French sailor.

00:03:06.840 | And you need to say, good day, barkeep.

00:03:11.560 | A pint of ale while I peruse my book by David Goggins.

00:03:21.600 | Talk like that.

00:03:22.560 | And they're like, look, this is like a member

00:03:25.120 | of the lost generation.

00:03:27.240 | Essentially, we have Steinbeck here.

00:03:31.680 | All right.

00:03:33.720 | Then I'm going to say-- so that's the setup.

00:03:36.920 | Scheduled interval training.

00:03:39.360 | Five days a week, you're going to read 10 minutes at a time.

00:03:43.040 | Do that for at least two weeks, then up at the 15 minutes.

00:03:46.680 | Do that for at least two weeks, up at the 20 minutes.

00:03:49.360 | If you're giving your mind support--

00:03:52.800 | I'm excited about the book.

00:03:54.160 | I have an awesome accent in a bar somewhere.

00:03:55.960 | Everyone just thinks I'm awesome.

00:03:58.120 | You're fighting the secretly beautiful but kind

00:04:02.440 | of nerdish women because they have the glasses on.

00:04:04.480 | When you take off the glasses, they're

00:04:05.360 | actually models that are just so attracted to the fact

00:04:07.160 | that you're clearly a serious intellectual

00:04:08.760 | because you're ascot and you're reading in the pub.

00:04:10.560 | You're fighting off women as you're trying to read.

00:04:12.440 | So you've given yourself-- you've set it all up.

00:04:14.040 | And now you're doing a very reasonable amount of time.

00:04:16.480 | 10 minutes at a time.

00:04:17.520 | You do it for two weeks.

00:04:18.200 | You can go up to 15 minutes.

00:04:19.120 | You're just pushing your mind's comfort actually

00:04:21.080 | reading beyond a few pages.

00:04:23.000 | And then once you get to 40 minutes, stop upping your time.

00:04:28.320 | Fix that as the time you're going to read four to five days

00:04:30.480 | a week.

00:04:31.240 | And what you're going to start upping

00:04:32.740 | is the complexity of your books.

00:04:35.000 | So you get really comfortable at reading

00:04:36.680 | most days for 40 minutes.

00:04:39.440 | And then you start upping the complexity.

00:04:43.400 | Slightly harder books, slightly more challenging books.

00:04:45.640 | And you sort of push yourself up the ladder.

00:04:48.280 | So maybe be a year or two of this,

00:04:50.000 | you can get to the point where you're

00:04:51.580 | ready to actually tackle classic books, really

00:04:53.720 | complicated books, books that require secondary sources.

00:04:56.400 | I'm going to read the secondary source first.

00:04:58.280 | Then I'm going to read the book.

00:04:59.920 | I'm telling you, one year, Sambit.

00:05:02.520 | You're going to be a reader.

00:05:04.240 | You just got to train.

00:05:05.160 | Now, why you have to do training, more training

00:05:06.640 | than other people is other people just inadvertently

00:05:08.720 | or through whatever circumstance or through inclination

00:05:11.080 | or how they were raised just got more of this training already.

00:05:14.120 | So they've already done the training.

00:05:16.320 | They grew up with a family of athletes.

00:05:18.880 | They ran every day.

00:05:20.040 | Arnold Schwarzenegger's dad in Austria

00:05:22.800 | made him do push-ups before he could get a meal.

00:05:25.160 | He had an advantage.

00:05:26.120 | By the time he got to the military

00:05:27.200 | and started bodybuilding, he was around it.

00:05:29.000 | OK, you didn't have Arnold Schwarzenegger's dad making

00:05:32.400 | you do push-ups in the cognitive realm.

00:05:34.240 | So you got a little more training to do.

00:05:35.160 | It'll take you a year.

00:05:36.080 | You'll catch up.

00:05:38.400 | Actually, you don't want Arnold Schwarzenegger's dad.

00:05:42.560 | Actually, his autobiography is good.

00:05:44.520 | Fantastic.

00:05:46.160 | I listened to it, but I love that.

00:05:47.840 | It's such a great autobiography.

00:05:49.160 | But his dad was from a generation of Austrian men

00:05:54.080 | who post-World War II were just depressed alcoholics,

00:05:57.920 | just trying to grapple with--

00:05:59.800 | it's not like he was a member of the Nazi party or something,

00:06:03.120 | but they were all sort of complicit in what was going on.

00:06:06.160 | And it just was so--

00:06:07.480 | it was just a destroyed generation of men.

00:06:09.200 | So advantage of Arnold Schwarzenegger,

00:06:13.960 | extra push-ups, disadvantage, depressed alcoholic,

00:06:17.680 | sort of Nazi collaborator dad.

00:06:19.040 | So I would say you could probably just figure out

00:06:21.320 | a push-up routine on your own.

00:06:22.640 | All right, that's kind of going so far.

00:06:25.360 | It is a really cool biography.

00:06:26.800 | You know what I like about that book is I love the fact

00:06:30.800 | that Schwarzenegger comes over here in weightlifting

00:06:32.760 | and basically becomes a millionaire before he really

00:06:34.920 | gets in the movies by just--

00:06:36.800 | he builds-- he does these businesses other people don't

00:06:39.000 | want to do, like Brick Lane and stuff like this,

00:06:42.760 | invest money in real estate in--

00:06:46.160 | not Santa Monica.

00:06:46.840 | Where was he investing?

00:06:48.320 | Venice Beach, I think.

00:06:49.480 | Yeah.

00:06:50.000 | Yeah, investing in real estate by the beach,

00:06:53.400 | just doing hard work.

00:06:54.280 | He had a mail order business.

00:06:55.160 | Yeah, he built up a fortune and then was like,

00:06:57.120 | oh, I'm going to get in the movies.

00:06:59.760 | So your answer to Sambit reminded me

00:07:01.840 | a couple of things about location.

00:07:04.120 | I went to the Library of Congress a couple of weeks ago.

00:07:07.040 | My friend gave me a tour, and that was pretty inspiring.

00:07:09.720 | Yeah.

00:07:12.120 | It's expired.

00:07:12.600 | I told Jesse I have a researcher card there,

00:07:15.080 | just because I like to go and work.

00:07:16.640 | You know where I would work when I go to the Library of Congress

00:07:19.300 | was not the big room with the desks that

00:07:21.240 | are all in a circle, but in the arts and industry library.

00:07:25.480 | It's pretty cool because it has these 1920s art deco light

00:07:29.880 | fixtures, and it's a cool place.

00:07:31.600 | Yeah.

00:07:32.320 | I told Jesse that I got to find a way

00:07:34.600 | to write a book at some point soon that requires me

00:07:38.600 | to access the collection at the Library of Congress

00:07:41.200 | just so I can spend days in that massive reading room

00:07:43.800 | and have people bring me-- because if you're an academic,

00:07:46.640 | you can get a researcher card, and they'll just

00:07:49.240 | have this awesome collection.

00:07:50.840 | And it takes them a couple hours,

00:07:52.320 | but you can basically get any book you want,

00:07:54.080 | and they'll bring them all to you in a cart to your desk,

00:07:55.880 | and you can work on it all day.

00:07:57.440 | And so I need a reason to do that.

00:08:00.000 | The other thing I do, thanks to you,

00:08:02.440 | is I put on my weekly plan every week just some of the stuff

00:08:06.160 | I want to get through, because I get a lot of magazines,

00:08:08.760 | and I have different books.

00:08:10.560 | You put reading on your weekly plan.

00:08:12.840 | Yeah.

00:08:13.340 | Specific though.

00:08:14.000 | And then if I have a pile of New Yorkers,

00:08:16.840 | I'll just get through a couple of them.

00:08:19.680 | So you might put Thursday afternoon,

00:08:24.080 | I'm going to do some New Yorker reading.

00:08:25.760 | Yeah.

00:08:26.260 | So I put what I want on, and then when I do my daily plan,

00:08:29.000 | I just put it in there.

00:08:30.720 | I'm going to read this.

00:08:32.440 | That's nice.

00:08:33.040 | You have a queue of what you want to read that week.

00:08:34.960 | Yeah.

00:08:35.240 | When you're doing daily plans--

00:08:36.240 | Otherwise, I couldn't keep track of it,

00:08:37.280 | and I'd forget about certain things.

00:08:38.760 | So now I just kind of--

00:08:39.680 | I like that strategy.

00:08:40.520 | So it's like, here's my reading queue for the week.

00:08:42.520 | And when you're doing a daily plan,

00:08:43.560 | you're used to putting aside time for reading.

00:08:45.160 | But now you can actually pull something from that queue

00:08:46.920 | and say, this specifically is what I'm going to read.

00:08:48.520 | Yeah, it's been working out.

00:08:49.640 | Yeah.

00:08:49.960 | And the other thing that I do, too,

00:08:50.960 | is especially after going to Library of Congress

00:08:52.920 | and looking online and stuff, it's

00:08:55.240 | like, you just got to be comfortable knowing that you're

00:08:57.600 | never going to read everything.

00:08:58.800 | There's so much stuff.

00:08:59.800 | And you just get through what you can,

00:09:01.400 | just kind of what you talk about, and it's slow.

00:09:03.720 | I'm surprised by how often--

00:09:06.040 | I'm a big library guy.

00:09:06.920 | We're a personal library person, and the next question

00:09:09.240 | I was going to get at this, I'm surprised by how often

00:09:11.560 | I'll get a book.

00:09:13.840 | Like, I just finished a book last night

00:09:16.520 | that I originally bought five years ago.

00:09:21.200 | But I kept it in my library.

00:09:22.400 | It's like, this is a book I want to read.

00:09:25.320 | And sometimes you have to wait till you're in the right mood.

00:09:27.920 | And it took five years.

00:09:29.480 | And I read it, and I finished it last night.

00:09:31.920 | And I'm surprised by how often that-- this is why I love

00:09:34.280 | libraries-- how often that'll happen.

00:09:36.360 | Sometimes I'll buy a book, and I'm not going to read this

00:09:38.600 | right now, but I want to own this,

00:09:39.960 | and I think I'm going to read this.

00:09:40.880 | I think it's an important thing to have.

00:09:42.400 | I get to these things.

00:09:43.320 | And it can take me years, but I cycle back to things.

00:09:47.760 | [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:09:51.120 | (upbeat music)

How To Become A Serious Reader

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