A Look Inside Cal Newport’s High Volume Reading System

00:00:00.000 | Cal Newport here. This is my fourth weekly update videos.

00:00:04.800 | These are the videos where I give you a look inside my life as a professional

00:00:09.680 | writer, professor, and podcaster and talk about my struggles to work deeply in an

00:00:16.240 | increasingly distracted world.

00:00:28.600 | Today I want to talk about reading. So in episode 220 of my podcast, which came out

00:00:35.920 | on Monday, I casually mentioned in response to a listener's question that

00:00:41.320 | in the last four days I had bought four new books which I plan to all finish in

00:00:47.280 | the next four weeks. This raised the natural follow-up question of well how

00:00:53.020 | do I actually structure my reading? How do I get all of these books actually

00:00:57.280 | consumed given all the other things that are going on in my life? So that's what I

00:01:00.240 | want to talk about in today's video. I'm going to break my reading into three

00:01:04.800 | categories. Books I read for writing or professional projects, books I read for

00:01:10.720 | just my own interest, and non-book media, so sort of miscellaneous media that I

00:01:16.240 | also consume. I'll talk about my strategies for all three. I then want to

00:01:22.200 | take you on location, so stick with me in this video. I want to take you on location

00:01:26.880 | to the very newest reading location in my life. You will hear about this more in

00:01:33.120 | a second, but I just had a natural gas fireplace installed in my house so that

00:01:38.160 | I could sit by a fire to read in the evening. I'll take you there and show

00:01:41.080 | that to you a little bit later in the video. Alright, so let's talk about the

00:01:45.000 | first type of reading I do, which is books that are relevant for research. So

00:01:50.440 | I need it for something I'm writing, for example. Typically my strategy with those

00:01:56.080 | is a one chapter a day baseline. So typically first thing in the morning, if

00:02:02.560 | I'm busy, maybe a little bit later in the day, but it's just my baseline. When am I

00:02:06.040 | going to get in my pages? Right now, for example, I just started reading Nick

00:02:11.280 | Bostrom's Superintelligence. I need this for an article I'm writing. It's about

00:02:16.840 | 300 pages long, 15 chapters more or less. Starting today I'm doing a one chapter a

00:02:23.360 | day baseline. I read my chapter this morning in the morning before I even

00:02:29.240 | took my kids to school. That's what I'm going to try to do most days that I'm up

00:02:32.760 | in time, and if not I'll grab the time a little later. What I then add in, because

00:02:37.880 | that's a reasonable baseline, but that's going to take me 15 days to finish

00:02:41.040 | that book, I then add in for these professional focus books, these books

00:02:45.880 | relevant to my professional life, extra sessions here and there. These will go

00:02:51.400 | right into my time block plan for the day. So maybe on Wednesday I'll put aside

00:02:56.560 | an hour after lunch, or maybe on Friday morning I'll put aside the time between

00:03:01.240 | two different meetings, and I'll have time block sessions just for reading. If

00:03:06.480 | you put aside a half hour or an hour in the middle of your workday, you're

00:03:10.480 | already in time block mode, you can blow through three, four chapters no problem.

00:03:14.880 | So now we put this together and you see how I'll finish this book relatively soon.

00:03:19.600 | I'm reading a chapter a day, if I do three sessions that's probably seven or

00:03:26.760 | eight chapters easy. So now one week of background reading with two or three

00:03:31.560 | time block sessions, each of them less than an hour, that book is done. So that's

00:03:36.640 | how I tackle my professional interest books. For books that I buy just for my

00:03:42.800 | own interest, so for example the book I bought this morning was John Meacham's

00:03:47.440 | new biography of Abraham Lincoln. I'll always get out of bed for a new Lincoln

00:03:52.720 | biography. I have a long bibliographic relationship with Lincoln. I'm really

00:03:57.800 | excited for this new one. There I have an opposite rhythm. The default reading of

00:04:03.440 | whatever non-commercial book I'm reading at the time, so a book just for my own

00:04:07.440 | interest, is at night. When I get in bed I read every night in bed. And so I do not

00:04:14.040 | want a book that has anything to do with any professional project before bed

00:04:18.440 | that's going to turn back on work mode, that's going to undo all of the

00:04:22.040 | advantage I get from doing a shutdown ritual. So I always want a book to read

00:04:26.040 | at night that is unrelated to my work. So that Lincoln book for example, I'll start

00:04:30.920 | reading that every night and that becomes my baseline. At the end of the day I have

00:04:36.320 | that baseline of reading. For these personal interest books I then add in

00:04:41.280 | other reading sessions, ad hoc reading sessions, as my schedule allows. I like

00:04:47.720 | reading to feel as a high priority default leisure activity when I don't

00:04:54.320 | have something to do. So there's a lot of different locations or settings in which

00:04:59.280 | I'll integrate this ad hoc reading sessions for my personal books. I made a

00:05:03.880 | list of it. My front porch, when the weather is nice I associate my front

00:05:07.760 | porch with an outdoor couch. I'll read there in the afternoon before dinner

00:05:12.160 | while the kids are running around and being crazy. There was a field I can

00:05:17.400 | reach with my morning walks. I was really big on this during the pandemic in

00:05:21.880 | particular. I would walk to that field and I would read under a pine tree there.

00:05:26.360 | Reading with lunch is a big thing for me with personal interest books. Get a good

00:05:31.760 | meal, get that book. 20 minutes, there's a chapter or two read right there. My study at

00:05:38.880 | home, I like to read in my study at home. This is where I just had installed a new

00:05:45.760 | gas fireplace looking ahead to the cold weather season it just started so that

00:05:50.040 | I'd be more tempted to do evening. We're talking after dinner writing sessions

00:05:55.720 | because I could have a nice crackling fire. I'm actually going to show you this

00:05:59.120 | fire in just a couple minutes so stick with me. That's how I do my

00:06:02.640 | personal interest reading. Rhythm at the night, ad hoc sessions in interesting

00:06:08.640 | locations occasionally throughout the day. That Lincoln book is about 400 pages.

00:06:13.960 | It'll probably take me about two weeks at this background to get that done but

00:06:18.160 | that's exactly how I'll be doing it. For both commercial and personal interest

00:06:24.160 | books or professional and personal interest books, I do one at a time in

00:06:27.920 | each of those categories. I'll finish my professional interest book at the

00:06:32.480 | moment before I move on to the next. I will finish superintelligence before I

00:06:35.680 | move on to whatever's next. I'll finish that Lincoln book before I move over to

00:06:39.520 | whatever personal interest book is next. I do it sequential. You have a sort of

00:06:43.480 | race to the finish line to get it done and then you switch on to what's next.

00:06:47.720 | Finally, non book related reading. As long-time listeners of my podcast or

00:06:54.640 | readers of my book know, I don't use social media. I don't consume a lot of

00:06:59.040 | online news. When I see that glowing computer screen and think about going

00:07:04.200 | over there to get information, I see time that I could be spending doing

00:07:08.160 | intentional deep things just being sucked out of my head. I'm very

00:07:11.080 | suspicious of that. So my non book reading is largely confined to physical

00:07:17.360 | printed things. I get the Washington Post delivered to my house every morning

00:07:22.520 | because I live in Washington DC and I will skim that each morning over

00:07:26.640 | breakfast. I'll look at the front page and I'll look at the metro section. The

00:07:31.120 | metro section so I can see local news of relevance. The front page will let me

00:07:35.680 | know what's going on in national news. I'll look at the sports page if the

00:07:39.360 | Nationals had a game and I want to see how the coverage is and that's about it.

00:07:42.680 | Maybe I'll read one or two articles per day. A couple things that seem

00:07:46.560 | interesting. Tell you what, that keeps me completely up to date as far as I'm

00:07:51.120 | concerned with what's happening in the world. That keeps me pretty up to date

00:07:53.800 | with interesting stuff happening in my region. No Twitter needed. I'm also as you

00:07:59.340 | might imagine a longtime subscriber of the New Yorker. My New Yorker magazine

00:08:05.520 | policy is always at least one article per magazine. So when the new magazine

00:08:10.400 | comes I always take out at least one article that seems interesting. I'll

00:08:13.360 | usually read it when I get home from work and I see it there. I'll find an

00:08:17.940 | article. I'll just read it. It takes 15 minutes but at least one article per

00:08:23.040 | magazine. That's always my rule. As I tell people you need an exception to that

00:08:28.080 | rule which is if there's ever a Cal Newport piece whether it's in the

00:08:31.920 | magazine or NewYorker.com that you always have to read. So let's just make that the

00:08:35.940 | baseline. And that's my reading. So that works out to about five books a month. I

00:08:40.800 | actually go through the books I read on my podcast each each month. So if you

00:08:45.280 | don't follow the Deep Questions podcast you should. You can get some more details

00:08:48.480 | there. That's why I keep up with the news. That's why I keep up with the

00:08:51.400 | interesting writing. It's not as much time as you think. It's much more about

00:08:56.280 | the regularity of it. Every day there's multiple different reading sessions

00:08:59.800 | going on even if they're short. That adds up to a lot of reading, a lot of

00:09:04.840 | intellectual stimulation, a lot of new information to try to structure into

00:09:09.400 | your understanding of yourself and your world. It's fuel for ideas. It's fuel for

00:09:13.960 | self-reflection. It's fuel for growth. It's fuel for creativity, hard ideas, print

00:09:20.000 | words tackled on the page day after day. It's worth it and that's how I do it.

00:09:25.800 | Alright I want to take you now we're going to jump over and I want to show

00:09:29.240 | you that brand new, the newest location in my secret reading location

00:09:33.960 | repertoire, my new crackling fire in my study. So let's go see that. Alright as

00:09:38.880 | promised here I am in my study at my house and I wanted to show you the

00:09:44.160 | latest feature that I had installed specifically to help induce me to get

00:09:50.560 | more reading done and that is this gas fireplace right here. I can turn this off

00:09:57.040 | and on with the press of a remote. It was a pain. We had to replace our meter. We

00:10:00.880 | had to retile this whole thing but it was worth it because I'm thinking ahead

00:10:05.040 | to those cold winter nights when all you want to do is stay warm and I think

00:10:09.480 | being in this study having it be dark, just my reading lamp on and a few of

00:10:14.320 | the library lights and hearing the crackling fire means I'm more likely to

00:10:17.960 | read and the more reading the better. We'll do a tour of this whole study in a

00:10:22.160 | later video but for now as promised I wanted to show off this latest feature

00:10:26.640 | that I added. Alright so that's it for this week's update video. We'll be back

00:10:33.000 | next week with my next update video and I will see you then.

A Look Inside Cal Newport’s High Volume Reading System | Weekly Update #4

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