RPF0673-How_To_Read_A

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00:00:30.720 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now,

00:00:37.700 | while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.

00:00:41.200 | I have got a great show for you today.

00:00:42.900 | Today, I am going to teach you how to read a book.

00:00:47.880 | Yes, I am going to teach you how to read a book.

00:00:52.340 | And this show, perhaps more than any show that I have done in almost 700 episodes of Radical Personal Finance,

00:01:00.420 | this show could be your key to financial success.

00:01:06.520 | This could be your key to financial freedom in 10 years or less.

00:01:13.800 | When we think of that old aphorism, "Give a man a fish and you'll feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and he'll have food for a lifetime,"

00:01:20.500 | that applies best in this area more than anything, because I am going to teach you how to achieve your goals and solve your problems,

00:01:28.880 | even if you don't have somebody close to you to help you, somebody close to you to mentor you.

00:01:35.920 | For the first five minutes, I am going to try to change your view of reading.

00:01:39.520 | Between minutes 5 to 10, I am going to give you some ideas about books and reading that I think will fundamentally change how you read for the rest of your life.

00:01:47.800 | And then towards the end of the show, I am going to talk to you and share with you how you can get a copy of my recommended reading list.

00:01:53.940 | So stay tuned for that towards the end.

00:01:56.440 | We begin today with books.

00:01:59.480 | Why books?

00:02:01.080 | Why are books important?

00:02:03.220 | I am going to give you a five-minute sales pitch here on books, because in the modern world, when so many of us know how to read,

00:02:12.020 | it seems that fewer and fewer of us are actually reading.

00:02:16.620 | And I myself, as a lifelong reader, have found it challenging to stay a lifelong reader in today's world.

00:02:25.940 | You, I am sure, know how to decode the text of a book.

00:02:29.580 | But man, books are not nearly as fun and as exciting as a really well-done YouTube video, as a really well-done social media session, right?

00:02:38.680 | That stuff is so shiny and flashy, and it engages us.

00:02:41.680 | It often feels difficult to sit down and read.

00:02:46.600 | It feels boring to sit down and read, even to the best of us.

00:02:51.300 | And yet it shouldn't feel that way.

00:02:53.920 | It should not feel that way, because books are some of the most valuable tools to help you achieve what you want to achieve in your life.

00:03:03.200 | And so they should be an absolute priority for us in our lives.

00:03:08.880 | If you sit around and passively consume entertainment, be it in the form of beautifully well-done movies, beautifully well-done videos,

00:03:18.240 | beautiful social media arguments all day long, wonderful, inspiring information, if you just simply sit around and absorb that,

00:03:26.720 | you will spend your entire life as simply a consumer, and you will never start to make the progress in your life that you're hoping for.

00:03:35.600 | And you'll get fat and lazy and just consume, consume, consume, consume more, because it's so hard to gain wisdom in those ways.

00:03:42.600 | Now, I'm not against using those tools.

00:03:44.520 | They have a place.

00:03:45.560 | The most recent show I did, I talked about the value of the multimedia, et cetera.

00:03:50.280 | But books are so much more important for you to achieve your goals faster.

00:03:56.080 | Books, here's why, five reasons.

00:03:57.800 | Number one, books are the most synthesized information that you can possibly get.

00:04:02.760 | Books are researched, they're edited, and they're pithy.

00:04:07.360 | More time and effort goes into the writing of a book by an author than any other form of media.

00:04:15.600 | Way more than a good video.

00:04:18.120 | Way, way, way, way, way more than a good podcast.

00:04:21.400 | Way more than anything else.

00:04:23.720 | Books are researched.

00:04:25.400 | That process takes at minimum months, usually years and frequently a lifetime.

00:04:30.840 | Books are researched carefully.

00:04:32.760 | They are wrestled over where an author says, "I only need to put the most important ideas in here, and how do I restate these ideas in the most impactful way?"

00:04:41.520 | Then they're carefully edited where all the extraneous fluff is pulled out, and you are left with a pithy, concentrated repository of information and ideas, all in the space of a few hundred pages.

00:04:55.000 | Books are the most carefully researched and edited information that you can get.

00:05:00.000 | Number two, books are timeless.

00:05:02.960 | You can't go and listen to Ben Franklin's podcast, but you can read his words.

00:05:09.680 | And by the way, there's a podcast idea for one of you.

00:05:12.000 | Somebody should probably take all his books and turn them into podcast form.

00:05:15.640 | The free business idea.

00:05:16.480 | I'm not going to do it, but you might.

00:05:18.040 | You can't go and engage with the audio that Ben Franklin recorded.

00:05:22.040 | You can't go and have a video chat with Julius Caesar, but you can read their words.

00:05:28.040 | And this is the thing that makes books so incredibly valuable.

00:05:31.560 | Books are the most timeless form of communication that we have.

00:05:36.040 | Since the invention of the written word, we have a connection to millennia of human history.

00:05:47.840 | That is amazing.

00:05:48.920 | And you can access it with the skills that you already have.

00:05:52.960 | Many people are frequently complimentary to me about the breadth of knowledge that I've

00:05:58.280 | developed, perhaps some of the points of wisdom that I work to share with you.

00:06:03.280 | There are many reasons for that.

00:06:05.480 | First, I believe that the fear of God is the beginning of all wisdom.

00:06:09.000 | That is the single thing that sets everything else in an intellectual life aright.

00:06:14.440 | But then as you go and you accumulate experience, you don't have to be stuck accumulating your

00:06:21.240 | own experience in your own life.

00:06:23.880 | Rather, you can accumulate the experience of the lives of others.

00:06:28.880 | So you can take a book written by a man who's 85 years old, who sits down at the end of

00:06:34.800 | his life and shares carefully the lessons that he learned across those 85 years with

00:06:41.680 | you.

00:06:42.840 | And you, in the course of three days to read the book, you can gain the benefit of those

00:06:48.680 | 85 years of wisdom.

00:06:50.880 | And when you do that over and over and over and over and over again, it matures your thinking,

00:06:56.640 | it matures your ideas, it matures your perspective, it matures your wisdom in a way that nothing

00:07:02.240 | else can.

00:07:05.120 | Books are timeless.

00:07:06.920 | And that is so valuable because then it allows you to pull out from the arc of history.

00:07:11.900 | And instead of being stuck in the current world saying, "Well, this is the way things

00:07:14.880 | are and this is the way things always have been," you can see the trends and the flows

00:07:18.400 | and have a grasp of history that minimum is basically go to about 4,000 years of recorded

00:07:24.720 | human history and have a pretty good idea of the last 4,000 years.

00:07:29.640 | Now as you look forward over the next couple dozen years, it's not so intimidating if you

00:07:34.080 | have that understanding of what has happened over the last 4,000 years.

00:07:39.760 | Next number three, books are simple to create.

00:07:43.440 | Not easy, but they're simple to create.

00:07:45.120 | Thus, they're accessible to almost any creator.

00:07:48.480 | You can today sit down and with nothing but a 58-cent composition book and a couple of

00:07:55.920 | pens from a free giveaway, write a book.

00:08:00.920 | Throughout human history, the vast majority of books have been simply written down in

00:08:06.360 | a notebook.

00:08:07.680 | There was no skill with Adobe Premiere Pro.

00:08:12.600 | There was no skill with Audacity.

00:08:15.360 | There was no skill needed with a desktop publishing program.

00:08:19.080 | You needed a pen and a paper and you could write a book.

00:08:24.240 | And the vast majority of books in human history have been written in exactly that way, with

00:08:29.640 | somebody with a pen and a paper.

00:08:33.160 | And so what this means is you can have access to the minds of people that you'll never gain

00:08:38.880 | access to with modern media, normal, common, ordinary people who simply had the self-discipline

00:08:47.760 | and wisdom to sit down and write.

00:08:49.920 | When I was a kid, one of the jobs that I had, I actually typed an autobiography for a friend

00:08:54.280 | of ours and he sat down and he wrote it.

00:08:57.480 | He retired from his work.

00:08:58.480 | He was a teacher.

00:08:59.480 | He sat down with a stack of yellow legal pads and he wrote his book.

00:09:04.320 | And this is how most books have been written throughout history.

00:09:06.560 | I just finished reading the Laura Ingalls Wilder series to my children.

00:09:11.280 | And I read the previous series.

00:09:13.360 | I hadn't read the final book in the series called The First Four Years when I was a kid.

00:09:16.880 | And I was reading in the introduction of it that that book was published posthumously.

00:09:21.120 | But Laura had sat down, she had these orange colored notebooks and she wrote the books

00:09:24.720 | just with a pen and paper.

00:09:26.600 | And so that means that throughout history, since the invention of written language, of

00:09:32.600 | the printed word, since the invention of vocabulary, of the alphabet, you have access to simple

00:09:42.440 | ordinary people.

00:09:43.440 | And then throughout history, there have been people who have verbalized and spoken their

00:09:48.360 | books to a scribe.

00:09:49.900 | For example, one of the most important writers of the New Testament is the Apostle Paul.

00:09:55.440 | The Apostle Paul wrote all of his letters by dictating them to a scribe.

00:09:59.780 | And yet you have this treasure trove of history in printed form that's 2,000 years old.

00:10:07.420 | So that's an incredible thing.

00:10:09.600 | Books can be... so you have access to almost any creator.

00:10:11.720 | And even still today, I get all kinds of wacky, random books from normal people.

00:10:18.520 | The vast majority of books aren't bestsellers.

00:10:21.300 | And so books give you the access to normal people, which really helps when you're looking

00:10:25.640 | at your ability to understand life.

00:10:29.440 | Number four, one of the most important things, books can be consumed in a non-linear format,

00:10:37.040 | which means you can consume them in a fast and effective way.

00:10:42.400 | What's wrong with this podcast right now?

00:10:46.240 | One of the things that's wrong with it is there's no way for you to listen to the end

00:10:51.400 | of my show without listening to me go word by word.

00:10:56.400 | Now I teased you a little bit a few minutes ago.

00:10:58.520 | I told you some of the things that I'm going to talk about because I'm trying to get you

00:11:01.440 | to stay listening, but you don't have any way to reliably skip ahead.

00:11:05.800 | I've got this show packed so full of pithy information that you know if you just skip

00:11:09.400 | 30 minutes in, you're going to miss a whole bunch of really good stuff.

00:11:12.400 | So you have to sit here and listen word by word, sentence by sentence.

00:11:17.520 | And it's the same thing with other forms, video, audio.

00:11:21.040 | Those forms of information can only be consumed in a linear format.

00:11:26.560 | Otherwise you might miss something important, but that's not true for books.

00:11:30.080 | I was recently asked by a listener to give my comments on what books they should read.

00:11:37.480 | And my answer was, it's not a matter of a book or a handful of books.

00:11:41.960 | What you do is you read all the books.

00:11:44.640 | I have for years read a couple of hundred books per year.

00:11:49.000 | Now when I write that, I put read in quotes because I'm not sitting, I don't sit there

00:11:53.920 | and read from the introduction to the end, but I have legitimately for years read a couple

00:11:59.880 | of hundred books per year.

00:12:03.240 | Because you can do that with books.

00:12:05.640 | And as we get to it, we talk about how to read a book.

00:12:08.720 | You can do that especially with certain genres of books, certain types of books as they apply

00:12:12.760 | to your life.

00:12:13.760 | You don't need to sit there and spend the 15 hours on a book in order to consume it

00:12:18.240 | cover to cover.

00:12:19.480 | You can look at it and today I can read any financial book in about 15 minutes.

00:12:23.720 | And then I could give a lecture on it.

00:12:25.400 | And I'll talk about where that skill comes from.

00:12:27.840 | But that's only possible with books because of the physical format of a printed book where

00:12:32.600 | you can sit and you can do a quick overview of it and get the main ideas very, very quickly.

00:12:38.320 | And here I should note we're talking about nonfiction books.

00:12:41.920 | That means that your ability to consume is so much bigger.

00:12:47.360 | Your ability to learn is so much bigger than anything else.

00:12:51.440 | Half of my audiences right now listening to me speak at 2x speed.

00:12:55.840 | That's great.

00:12:57.160 | But you can read at 15x speed.

00:13:01.040 | That's wonderful.

00:13:02.120 | You can't skim anything else other than the written printed text.

00:13:08.440 | Now there are downsides of books, but only a few.

00:13:11.040 | The biggest one is storability.

00:13:12.040 | Where do you put them?

00:13:14.400 | That's a downside, but that can be solved with digital books.

00:13:17.200 | I created a show on Radical Personal Finance talking about how I digitized my entire library.

00:13:22.240 | As I record this show, I'm looking at the screen of my laptop and I have my current

00:13:26.240 | library with 2,261 books in it, all accessible right here in front of me.

00:13:33.240 | And that's powerful.

00:13:34.440 | That gives me a tremendous tool because now, and in fact it's much better than having it

00:13:38.280 | all in a home library, now I have access to it wherever I am.

00:13:42.300 | If a listener calls, and a lot of times on a Q&A show, somebody calls and asks me a question,

00:13:46.800 | sometimes I don't know it.

00:13:47.920 | And so while I'm starting my answer, I grab my library, I think of the book where I know

00:13:51.920 | the answer is, and I immediately go there.

00:13:54.160 | And it's invisible to you.

00:13:56.120 | But so there are benefits to a digital library.

00:13:58.400 | You can solve the downside of the storability.

00:14:02.000 | The only real downside of reading a book is the inability to multitask.

00:14:07.080 | You can multitask and run, jog, drive, walk the dog, whatever you're doing, doing tedio

00:14:13.160 | repetitive tasks while you're listening to my words.

00:14:15.520 | It's a wonderful benefit of podcasts and audio books, et cetera.

00:14:19.600 | But you can't multitask when reading.

00:14:22.440 | That's the only downside that I know of to reading.

00:14:25.720 | So let's talk about how to read.

00:14:28.900 | And the first thing that you need to know in how to read is not decoding the text, but

00:14:37.440 | knowing how to choose the books that you're going to read.

00:14:42.480 | Now one element is, of course, in choosing the books to read, knowing what your reading

00:14:47.760 | level is.

00:14:49.000 | If I give my six-year-old an advanced 800-page book on tax planning, he can't even scratch

00:14:58.060 | the surface of it.

00:14:59.680 | That does him no good.

00:15:01.880 | So yes, there is an element of skill.

00:15:05.300 | But the most important thing about reading is to read the right books, to select the

00:15:11.000 | books that you're reading based upon your goals.

00:15:17.160 | Only a tiny percentage of the population reads.

00:15:21.720 | I've heard statistics that two-thirds of high school graduates, after they graduate from

00:15:27.260 | high school, never read another book in their life.

00:15:30.160 | Half of college graduates never read another book in their life.

00:15:33.200 | I don't know if those things are true or not.

00:15:34.840 | I don't doubt them.

00:15:36.880 | I do know that the vast majority of people never read much, and if they do read, they

00:15:41.280 | read a couple of books a year.

00:15:43.900 | So the first thing is reading any book is going to help you.

00:15:48.880 | But if you really want to turbocharge your results, you filter what you read based upon

00:15:55.060 | what you want to accomplish.

00:15:58.200 | So you start by making a list of your personal goals.

00:16:02.880 | Those of you who started following me on Instagram know I've been doing a goal series where I'm

00:16:06.140 | teaching on Instagram how to set and achieve goals.

00:16:11.880 | And it starts very simply.

00:16:13.160 | Go Instagram.com/JoshuaSheets.

00:16:15.240 | Follow me there, Joshua Sheets, S-H-E-A-T-S.

00:16:17.460 | But it starts very, very simply.

00:16:19.000 | It starts with a blank sheet of paper, ideally a notebook, and a pen.

00:16:25.080 | And you write at the top, "Today's date," and you write, "I write Joshua's goals," and

00:16:30.600 | then you make a list and you start writing.

00:16:33.240 | And you write down what your goals are.

00:16:36.620 | That's where you start.

00:16:38.160 | You don't need any other prompts other than that.

00:16:40.900 | Now, if you want more prompts, we can give them to you, but just write down what your

00:16:44.220 | goals are.

00:16:45.580 | And here's the thing.

00:16:46.580 | They're your goals.

00:16:47.580 | They're not my goals, and their goals can be anything you want them to be.

00:16:51.300 | Now, if you do nothing more than sit down with a piece of paper and write down what

00:16:56.220 | your goals are, you will automatically move yourself from the bottom 80% of society to

00:17:01.340 | the top 20% of society, because you're going to become somebody who's actually going after

00:17:06.620 | something, somebody who actually has a goal, somebody who's actually making progress.

00:17:10.620 | You don't actually have to do anything that I'm telling you the rest of this show.

00:17:13.780 | If you just do that, it'll transform your life, because now you'll have an idea of what

00:17:18.580 | you're looking for.

00:17:20.020 | But of course, you can turbocharge your results if you go a step farther.

00:17:24.420 | So after you start to get a clear idea of what your goals are, whether you write them

00:17:28.300 | down one day or you write them down every day for a month or whatever you do, then the

00:17:32.420 | next thing is you start to make a plan.

00:17:35.260 | You say, "How can I achieve this goal?

00:17:39.900 | What do I want to do, and how can I actually achieve this goal?"

00:17:44.260 | When you start to make plans, you start to see how you can accomplish goals.

00:17:49.060 | Now, in your plans, the next step is you say, "What skills do I need to develop in order

00:17:57.680 | to achieve this particular goal?"

00:18:02.980 | When you get to the skills, you get to your reading list.

00:18:06.740 | Let me give you an example.

00:18:08.660 | Let's say that you say, "I hear Joshua every day.

00:18:11.100 | He says, 'Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to helping you build a rich

00:18:16.740 | and meaningful life now while providing you with the knowledge, skills, insight, and ..." I

00:18:21.780 | just messed up my own line.

00:18:23.460 | Anyway, financial freedom in 10 years or less.

00:18:25.700 | You'd think I could get that right.

00:18:27.400 | Financial freedom in 10 years or less.

00:18:28.400 | You know what?

00:18:29.400 | I would like to be financially free in 10 years or less.

00:18:34.220 | How can I do that?

00:18:35.700 | Well, you think.

00:18:38.420 | One good question would be, "Why am I not financially free yet?"

00:18:43.300 | Ask yourself that question and start writing answers to that.

00:18:47.700 | Perhaps you answer that question, you say, "Well, I'm a bad money manager.

00:18:51.580 | I don't manage my money well."

00:18:53.140 | You know that.

00:18:54.400 | If you stink at managing money, you already know that.

00:18:59.920 | What you do is you convert it into a skill.

00:19:02.340 | I need to become more skilled at managing my money.

00:19:07.860 | I need to become more skilled at managing my money.

00:19:11.300 | Now that you have a skill, you think about a reading list.

00:19:18.880 | How can I learn to be more skilled at managing my money?

00:19:23.860 | You start looking for books that will help you to become more skilled at managing your

00:19:28.420 | money.

00:19:29.420 | Now, perhaps your answer is, "Why am I not financially free yet?"

00:19:32.700 | is, "I don't have a plan."

00:19:35.180 | So you think, "How can I develop the skill of building a plan for financial freedom?"

00:19:40.740 | Start looking for a book on that.

00:19:42.360 | Or maybe you say, "You know what?

00:19:43.780 | I just don't believe good things about money.

00:19:45.700 | I have limiting beliefs on money."

00:19:47.900 | So you look for a book that will help you develop the skills of developing new beliefs

00:19:52.240 | about money.

00:19:54.260 | Or maybe you say, "I'm not financially free because I'm just not earning enough.

00:19:57.620 | I make a low income.

00:19:58.700 | I'm not earning much money."

00:19:59.900 | Well, what skills do you need?

00:20:02.500 | I need to earn more money, which means I need to develop a financially valuable skill.

00:20:05.420 | I need to do a better job at my—better work at my job.

00:20:08.900 | So how can I do better work at my job?

00:20:10.920 | Maybe I'll take a book on how to be a better employee.

00:20:13.840 | Maybe I'll take a book on how to work harder.

00:20:15.420 | Maybe I'll take a book at how to be a better salesman.

00:20:18.260 | Something.

00:20:19.420 | Maybe you look and say, "Why am I not financially free yet?

00:20:21.700 | Because I'm paying too much in tax."

00:20:23.420 | Well, now the skill is I need to become a skilled tax planner so that I can reduce my

00:20:29.100 | tax bill.

00:20:30.400 | Now we know what you need to read.

00:20:31.980 | Or maybe I don't know how to invest my money, so now I need to get a book on investing my

00:20:35.580 | money.

00:20:37.780 | The magic of reading is when you read books that will help you develop the skills and

00:20:44.380 | knowledge that you need to achieve your goals.

00:20:48.580 | The people who do that get on the fast track.

00:20:51.780 | The people who read randomly are in the top 20%.

00:20:55.660 | But the people who read to their skills that they need to accomplish their goals are the

00:21:01.060 | ones who are in the top 4%, which is the top 20% of the top 20%, which is where 67% of

00:21:08.660 | the income, 67% of the wealth always comes.

00:21:14.660 | Right now, if you turn off this podcast and you just take that idea and you start with

00:21:22.340 | goals and then you ask yourself, "What skills do I need to develop to achieve these goals?"

00:21:28.720 | and then you start reading books to help you acquire those skills, you can be on the fast

00:21:35.700 | track.

00:21:38.220 | So you must read the right books.

00:21:42.740 | And the right books are not the books that have influenced another person the most.

00:21:49.860 | Those may be good books, but the right books are the books that help you acquire the skills

00:21:57.300 | that you need to achieve your goals.

00:22:03.100 | Now there is benefit in reading other books.

00:22:08.020 | There is benefit in exposing yourself to other things.

00:22:11.780 | That's a benefit.

00:22:12.780 | I do think you should read widely, but you don't have to.

00:22:17.540 | The biggest benefit from reading widely is a diversity of ideas and a diversity of perspectives

00:22:25.660 | that you can start to develop.

00:22:28.600 | Your basic tools here are a library and/or a bookstore.

00:22:35.240 | Because what will happen is your Amazon recommendations are going to be curated to the things that

00:22:39.540 | you're searching for.

00:22:40.540 | But a library and a bookstore allow you to go in and simply browse.

00:22:44.860 | Libraries are the best because you can take all the books home.

00:22:46.940 | I was a homeschooler when I was a kid and homeschoolers max out their library card every

00:22:51.380 | single week.

00:22:52.380 | They always limited us to, I think it was 50 books.

00:22:54.500 | And so whenever I went to the library, I would take a duffel bag and I would get 50 books.

00:23:00.620 | Now I didn't read 50 books in a week cover to cover, but I did read 50 books in a week

00:23:08.500 | cover to cover.

00:23:10.920 | It wasn't word by word, but it was enough to expose me to ideas.

00:23:15.480 | And one of the wonderful things about that is when you can walk into a library and you

00:23:19.020 | know you can have 50 books from there, you just wander the aisles and anything that looks

00:23:23.300 | interesting or sounds interesting, you grab it.

00:23:25.920 | So that's where you read 10 books on architectural design.

00:23:28.860 | I read books on flying helicopters and sailing and hunting and anything that piqued my interest.

00:23:34.300 | Read books on automotive repair, et cetera.

00:23:36.800 | And what those things do is they expose you to ideas.

00:23:41.160 | The thing that I have seen most stark recently when mentoring a young man that I've known

00:23:46.780 | for a very long time is how unimaginative he is about life.

00:23:53.580 | He's not a reader by the way, but the reason he's unimaginative is he has no exposure.

00:24:00.480 | He's lived such a sheltered life and never been exposed to the opportunities that are

00:24:05.440 | out there in the world that he can't imagine anything other than doing the same work that

00:24:10.280 | his dad has done his entire life.

00:24:13.080 | That is ineffably sad.

00:24:18.200 | Get yourself a library card, get a duffel bag, go to the library and check out 50 books.

00:24:22.640 | Won't cost you a dime.

00:24:25.360 | You don't need a plan.

00:24:26.400 | You don't need to do anything except wander the aisles and grab things that look interesting.

00:24:31.060 | Take them home, spend 15 or 20 minutes flipping through them, stop and read a page here and

00:24:35.340 | there if something grabs your interest.

00:24:38.040 | Do that every week for a year and you'll have now a little bit of diversity in your thinking,

00:24:42.280 | a little bit of diversity in your ideas.

00:24:45.280 | That's the kind of diversity that matters.

00:24:47.620 | Diversity is a strength when it's a diversity of ideas and perspectives.

00:24:52.080 | That's the diversity that you need in your brain.

00:24:56.900 | Now to the process of reading.

00:25:00.100 | The first thing that you need is the ability to decode language.

00:25:05.400 | That's step one.

00:25:07.440 | To begin at the beginning, if you don't have the ability to read, you need to learn.

00:25:11.980 | You need, in English, you need phonics.

00:25:14.460 | You need the ability to sound out the letters in order to become a skilled reader.

00:25:20.600 | English is a weird language because it's a Germanic language with a Latin vocabulary.

00:25:25.240 | It's a Germanic language with a Latin vocabulary.

00:25:29.200 | That's why it is challenging to learn.

00:25:31.600 | But there are only, what is it, 70, 80 basic sounds in the English language and then various

00:25:36.820 | combinations that make those sounds.

00:25:40.720 | Anybody can be taught to read within a few months if you sit down and you work your way

00:25:45.360 | through a good phonics program.

00:25:47.960 | Many people have that basic scenario, where they have that basic understanding, but they

00:25:52.640 | struggle to figure out, "Well, I don't read quickly.

00:25:54.880 | I read really slowly."

00:25:57.080 | In my experience, your reading speed itself is going to be based on two things.

00:26:01.200 | Number one, your experience reading, the amount of time that you've actually spent decoding

00:26:07.560 | the letters and sounds of words.

00:26:10.560 | And number two, your familiarity with the topic at hand and your grasp of its vocabulary

00:26:15.820 | of words and vocabulary of ideas.

00:26:20.720 | The first one is the important one to start with, the actual ability that you have to

00:26:27.440 | decode the letters.

00:26:29.120 | What I would recommend to you is what I recommend to children, what I did when I was a child,

00:26:34.240 | is simply this.

00:26:35.800 | Find words that are part of books and stories that you like to read.

00:26:40.760 | Now I think this is less of a problem than it was in the past because for all of the

00:26:44.320 | downsides of digital consumption, I think the modern person is reading many more words

00:26:50.200 | on a daily basis than the average person 50 years ago.

00:26:54.180 | You can't flip through your social media streams without reading constantly.

00:26:58.960 | And so I think, although I can't prove it, I think there's probably actually an increase

00:27:02.840 | in the number of words being read and consumed today versus the past.

00:27:07.980 | But the key is to find something that you like reading.

00:27:10.360 | And for here, I would recommend to you fiction.

00:27:13.480 | A good fictional story, a good story will grab you in a way that nonfiction won't.

00:27:19.260 | Now for reading to your goals, to your skills, you're going to need to read nonfiction.

00:27:24.640 | But for reading for your basic ability to read, read fiction.

00:27:28.400 | And so figure out the kinds of stories that you like and start reading them.

00:27:32.500 | Now that may be dragon stories, it may be romance stories, it may be detective adventure

00:27:38.960 | stories, I don't know.

00:27:40.360 | But figure out what stories you like to read and start reading them.

00:27:44.560 | A few dozen novels under your belt over the next year will massively improve your ability

00:27:51.000 | to decode the sounds of the language that you're reading.

00:27:55.800 | So if you're not a reader, don't try to start necessarily with Joshua's hardcore books,

00:28:02.200 | start with some novels and develop the love of reading a novel.

00:28:07.920 | Now once you have a base in a certain, and you have a basic level of ability to read,

00:28:14.120 | if you can read a couple of paragraphs out of a novel smoothly without struggling, now

00:28:19.480 | you're ready to go to that other discussion of reading speed.

00:28:24.920 | A note on speed reading, I don't speed read in the sense of processing words any faster

00:28:30.800 | than other people.

00:28:31.800 | There are people who do that, they seem to, their brains seem to work in a different way.

00:28:35.680 | I don't have any particular skill.

00:28:37.480 | I've read some books on speed reading, I've tried some of the techniques, I never found

00:28:41.200 | those particular strategies that were taught in the speed reading books to be helpful to

00:28:45.640 | me.

00:28:46.640 | I don't think that speed reading is necessarily a key skill that is necessary.

00:28:52.600 | At least if it is, I developed it organically, not with practicing some kind of technique.

00:28:58.440 | What I have learned for myself is that my reading speed is going to be based on my familiarity

00:29:04.360 | with the topic and my grasp of its vocabulary.

00:29:09.160 | The reason I can read a financial book in 15 minutes is that I know the language and

00:29:15.720 | I know the vocabulary, the vocabulary of the words and the ideas.

00:29:20.520 | I'm not stymied when I read qualified plan.

00:29:23.400 | I know what a qualified plan means.

00:29:25.480 | That has a specific technical definition that I understand and so when I read the words

00:29:30.280 | qualified plan, I don't say, "Huh, what is that?"

00:29:35.240 | I know what a mutual fund is.

00:29:37.960 | I know what a closed-end mutual fund is.

00:29:40.200 | I know what an open-end mutual fund is.

00:29:42.200 | I know what a guaranteed investment contract is.

00:29:44.600 | I have a grasp of all of these basic ideas.

00:29:48.120 | But if you don't have that grasp of the ideas, when you read that word, it won't put a picture

00:29:52.560 | in your head.

00:29:53.680 | The information won't flow into its proper category.

00:29:58.320 | Based on reading syntopically over the years in the world of finance, I have mental cubbyholes

00:30:04.840 | for most concepts.

00:30:06.680 | Now every now and then a new concept will come along and that's extremely valuable,

00:30:10.960 | but I have enough familiarity with the subject to know where those concepts are and when

00:30:14.560 | they see them, they jump up on the page at me.

00:30:17.640 | I've described that.

00:30:18.640 | For example, the best, I did a show on the math, the shockingly simple math of early

00:30:23.680 | retirement, best blog that Mr. Money Mustache ever wrote, Jacob Lund Fisker with his book

00:30:29.080 | Early Retirement Extreme.

00:30:30.600 | When I ran across that concept, it was a fundamentally new idea for me.

00:30:35.560 | I didn't have a cubbyhole for it.

00:30:37.720 | And so immediately it just blew off the page and I said, that's a new idea.

00:30:42.720 | And the same thing will happen with you, with your field of interest.

00:30:45.760 | Now if I go and read a book, a medical textbook, or even just a popular level, not a professional

00:30:52.000 | level, a popular level book on health, I struggle sometimes because I don't have the concept.

00:30:58.760 | For example, I don't know what an amino acid actually is.

00:31:02.840 | I know what the word is.

00:31:04.360 | I know what it means.

00:31:05.360 | People throw it around, but I don't know what an amino acid actually is.

00:31:10.000 | And I don't understand how an amino acid works.

00:31:14.880 | I understand what an endowment life insurance contract is and how it works, but I don't

00:31:19.120 | know what an amino acid is.

00:31:20.280 | I know it's important.

00:31:21.280 | I know it has some function, but I don't have the vocabulary for it.

00:31:25.380 | So when I read a book on health and nutrition, I struggle much more.

00:31:30.200 | I can't read one of those books in 15 minutes because I don't have all the cubbyholes.

00:31:34.600 | Now that's not to say I shouldn't do it, but I'm pointing out that it's based upon your

00:31:38.160 | familiarity with the concepts.

00:31:41.160 | Now if you're reading to your business, say you're reading about marketing, you're going

00:31:44.760 | to have a mental map of all of the concepts of your trade.

00:31:53.200 | And so you're going to be consuming books on marketing and you're always looking for

00:31:55.720 | new idea, new idea.

00:31:57.040 | You don't need the old ideas.

00:31:58.900 | You will recognize the basic application of certain ideas.

00:32:04.900 | When I read personal finance books, I've got decades, meaning I've been reading them for

00:32:10.140 | decades, but I've got decades and decades worth of the concepts built up.

00:32:14.260 | So I've read the books from the 50s.

00:32:15.540 | I've read the books from the 70s.

00:32:16.540 | I've read the books of the 90s.

00:32:18.060 | And so I can see how the concepts are just a slight change, a slight adjustment.

00:32:22.460 | Yeah, that tax rule no longer applies, but here's this other one, et cetera.

00:32:26.860 | And so on a popular level, over time you'll build the skill and the knowledge of the vocabulary

00:32:31.620 | that should be encouraging to you because what it means is you can get better.

00:32:35.460 | And then once you're better, you can stay current on a subject without investing that

00:32:39.300 | much time.

00:32:41.380 | You might go at a deeper level.

00:32:42.580 | I have complex books on estate planning.

00:32:45.640 | When I read those, I cannot read them quickly.

00:32:47.780 | I have to go slowly because I didn't work for years and years in the field of estate

00:32:52.140 | planning.

00:32:53.140 | I have to stop and think, okay, all right.

00:32:55.180 | Is this a lead trust or an annuity trust?

00:32:58.700 | Okay, it's a charitable lead trust.

00:33:00.660 | That means that this is left and I have all these mental triggers to bring out the definition,

00:33:04.820 | but I'm not conversant in it in the same way I am at the popular level.

00:33:08.220 | So there's always a growth in your reading skills.

00:33:10.980 | So don't worry about reading quickly.

00:33:13.580 | Worry first about reading the right books.

00:33:15.480 | And if you're reading the right books that are going to give you the skills that you

00:33:18.060 | need towards your job and you've chosen those books carefully, then it's worth it to work

00:33:23.820 | your way through them slowly, systematically, little by little.

00:33:27.860 | It's worth it to take them a few pages at a day and to grapple with the concepts because

00:33:32.300 | they're to your goals.

00:33:34.140 | If they're not to your goals, don't bother reading them if they're hard.

00:33:36.580 | If it's not going to help you, just get rid of it.

00:33:39.020 | There's no reason to waste the time.

00:33:41.660 | The next big challenge we have to work out is having time to read.

00:33:47.100 | Many people say, "I don't have time to read."

00:33:49.100 | Well, that's of course a stupid and erroneous excuse.

00:33:52.940 | Of course you have time to read.

00:33:54.900 | You have 24 hours in your day.

00:33:56.420 | I have 24 hours in my day.

00:33:58.340 | We all have exactly the same time.

00:34:00.100 | So you have time to do anything that you want to do.

00:34:03.300 | So it's a stupid and wrong excuse.

00:34:05.020 | Of course you have time to read.

00:34:07.460 | The accurate statement would be, "I haven't made time to read."

00:34:11.900 | Or "I haven't decided to dedicate time to reading."

00:34:15.300 | "I haven't chosen to read."

00:34:17.340 | Those are all accurate statements if you're struggling with, "When should I read?"

00:34:21.940 | But you do have to decide, "When are you going to read?"

00:34:25.780 | I just say, "Read whenever you want, but make time to read."

00:34:29.460 | What I do is I read in the morning.

00:34:31.500 | And I find that that works effectively for me because I can get up, I can read, my brain

00:34:37.420 | is calm, I'm focused, and that's my time of thinking.

00:34:42.020 | Most of the time I try to get up long before my children do.

00:34:45.580 | These days I don't set alarm clocks because my biggest challenge in the past has been

00:34:50.460 | not getting enough sleep.

00:34:51.460 | You get super excited and get up early and then all of a sudden my body gets run down

00:34:54.140 | because I don't get enough sleep.

00:34:55.460 | So as long as I can discipline myself to get to bed on time, then I know that when my body

00:35:00.460 | is done sleeping, I will wake up in the morning.

00:35:03.100 | Especially that's important if you're a parent.

00:35:04.380 | You know as well as I know that you don't get the same quantity or quality of sleep

00:35:08.140 | that you got when you weren't a parent.

00:35:11.660 | When you could just go to bed, and I always went to bed, slept, and woke up.

00:35:15.140 | Of course now at this point, you've got the baby waking up, sometimes your children wake

00:35:19.500 | up, and so your sleep is much lower quality.

00:35:21.940 | So I don't set an alarm clock.

00:35:23.020 | I just simply allow my body to be done sleeping when I'm done sleeping.

00:35:26.660 | But still usually I've gotten to a point where as long as I go to bed at the proper time,

00:35:31.020 | I wake up early in the morning, 5 o'clock, 4.30, something like that.

00:35:35.460 | And then I try to have that hour, hour and a half of reading, quietness, journaling,

00:35:41.100 | thinking, praying, studying, etc. that comes in the morning.

00:35:45.660 | For some people that doesn't work.

00:35:47.220 | Some people read at night.

00:35:48.380 | Some people read on their lunch break.

00:35:50.060 | Doesn't matter when you read.

00:35:52.100 | It simply matters that you read.

00:35:54.420 | The key is to figure out a trigger that's going to cause you to read.

00:35:59.100 | So for me, if I take out my phone and I go on social media in the morning, I'm going

00:36:04.740 | to lose all my reading time.

00:36:06.820 | But if I leave my phone in airplane mode, so there's no notifications, nothing comes

00:36:10.620 | in, and I start with a cup of coffee and a book and a notebook, then I'm in a situation

00:36:16.260 | where I can really make progress.

00:36:17.900 | Then I'm in a situation where I can improve things and I'm not distracted by those things

00:36:23.660 | that seem easier than reading.

00:36:25.380 | And then once I actually start the process of reading, I make progress very, very quickly.

00:36:32.180 | We've talked about reading to your goals and reading to develop the skills that you need

00:36:37.940 | to reach your goals.

00:36:40.020 | Next, you have to get a book that you want to read.

00:36:44.220 | So you have to choose that.

00:36:46.420 | Now you can choose that a number of different ways.

00:36:48.460 | The first thing and most important thing is simply to start.

00:36:52.080 | If you said, "I want to get a book on learning how to make money, how to earn more," you

00:36:58.020 | can just go to Amazon and type "how to earn more money" or go to your local bookstore

00:37:02.140 | and pick any book.

00:37:04.060 | Because in the beginning, your ability to grow will be so huge that any book that you

00:37:11.420 | can get your hands on will help you.

00:37:14.420 | Realistically, you're going to find a handful of ideas in any book because you're only going

00:37:20.820 | to be able to implement a handful of ideas in any book.

00:37:24.660 | That's not to say that a book is not full of dozens and dozens and dozens of good ideas,

00:37:28.900 | but very rarely do we ever have the ability to mine any one book for dozens and dozens

00:37:34.780 | of ideas.

00:37:35.780 | We just can't do that many things at once.

00:37:38.000 | So it doesn't really matter what book it is because you're just going to need a couple

00:37:44.520 | of ideas from that book.

00:37:46.940 | The process of improvement, the process of reaching goals is an iterative process.

00:37:51.740 | You don't start with the perfect plan and then execute it.

00:37:55.120 | You start with the plan that you've got and you incrementally iterate.

00:37:59.140 | You incrementally make progress and improvements with one idea here, one idea there, one piece

00:38:05.340 | of knowledge here, one piece of knowledge there.

00:38:08.480 | If you think that somehow there's one magical book that's going to solve your problems,

00:38:12.340 | you're mistaken.

00:38:13.580 | If I gave you that magical book that could solve all your problems, if I gave you Joshua's

00:38:18.380 | book on financial manual that's going to solve all your problems, you could not possibly

00:38:24.780 | gain all the things from it because you're not at a place where you can gain all the

00:38:28.580 | things from it.

00:38:30.180 | There are beginner ideas, there are intermediate ideas, and there are expert level of ideas

00:38:35.580 | that come in books.

00:38:36.940 | But you will not see the expert or intermediate ideas until you've passed through the beginning

00:38:42.940 | stages.

00:38:45.220 | Years ago I played basketball briefly in high school.

00:38:48.980 | The problem with my choosing to play basketball briefly in high school was that I didn't play

00:38:52.620 | basketball before deciding to ever go and play basketball in high school.

00:38:57.540 | And so I went and I tried out for the basketball tryouts and they were shooting layups.

00:39:04.820 | And to my shame or whatever, you can laugh at me, I had never shot a layup.

00:39:08.860 | I didn't know how to shoot a layup.

00:39:11.340 | Here I was at 16, 17 years old, I was a senior in high school playing basketball my first

00:39:16.780 | year and I didn't know how to shoot a layup.

00:39:19.620 | And so the assistant coach took me to the side of the court and taught me how to shoot

00:39:24.340 | a layup.

00:39:26.340 | Now the question is, would there have been any use whatsoever in trying to teach the

00:39:33.300 | 17 year old Joshua some intricate advanced basketball concept?

00:39:40.100 | I don't know what those advanced concepts are, it's not my interest.

00:39:43.380 | But there would have been no point.

00:39:44.380 | What you need is, hey, let's see if you can shoot the ball.

00:39:47.100 | Let's teach you how to shoot a layup.

00:39:48.180 | You need the basics.

00:39:49.820 | And so the same thing happens in every other industry, every other skill area.

00:39:56.100 | You have to learn the basics.

00:39:58.060 | I cannot see basketball strategy.

00:40:00.940 | Now I learned a lot in my first year of playing, I won an only year of playing.

00:40:07.300 | But prior to that, I didn't know what a zone defense was.

00:40:10.140 | I didn't know what a man-to-man defense was because I hadn't been playing.

00:40:13.820 | I never watched basketball, never played basketball, just decided to play my senior year.

00:40:18.460 | That's the way it is in life.

00:40:20.020 | You wind up putting yourself in situations and you can't see what's happening.

00:40:24.060 | So in finance, when you become an expert, you can see what's happening.

00:40:28.300 | You can see the commonality, you can see the threads, but you won't see those at the beginning.

00:40:34.600 | So you have to build your way to it.

00:40:36.420 | So for that reason, it almost doesn't matter what book you read because any book is going

00:40:42.180 | to have a few concepts in it that you can take and apply to your life.

00:40:46.940 | So get a book that you want to read, choose a book, any book, then make it yours.

00:40:56.340 | One of the major mistakes that people make is they don't make their books theirs.

00:41:03.300 | And this is where I don't like libraries.

00:41:08.020 | You are choosing to read this book for a reason.

00:41:13.620 | The reason you're choosing to read this book, nonfiction book, I always get novels from

00:41:17.300 | libraries, there's no point in having novels, no point in paying for them unless you just

00:41:21.140 | want to for convenience, but for nonfiction books, you're choosing to read this book because

00:41:26.540 | it's going to give you knowledge and ideas that you can use to develop your skills, which

00:41:32.980 | will lead to your accomplishing your goals.

00:41:35.620 | The only way that will happen is if you can transfer that knowledge and those skills from

00:41:41.700 | the book into your life.

00:41:45.340 | You need to take what's in that book and you need to get it into your brain and into your

00:41:50.620 | body.

00:41:51.620 | And this is going to require from you work.

00:41:55.700 | You're going to have to grapple with the ideas and the concepts in the book.

00:42:00.700 | We're not reading fiction.

00:42:02.620 | It's not a nice story that's going to make you feel good when you're done with it.

00:42:05.640 | We're reading to accomplish your goals.

00:42:08.620 | So you have to make it yours.

00:42:10.260 | And to do that, you're going to destroy the book.

00:42:13.820 | Now that destruction is going to result in you actually grasping the concepts, but you've

00:42:18.460 | got to transfer the ideas from that book into your head.

00:42:23.780 | And in so doing, you are going to destroy that book for anyone else.

00:42:28.020 | That book must become yours.

00:42:31.120 | So should you get books from the library?

00:42:32.740 | Sure, but not serious books.

00:42:35.640 | You should use the library for browsing, for exposure, et cetera.

00:42:39.360 | But if you get a book from the library and you're flipping your way through it and you

00:42:43.180 | say, "You know what?

00:42:44.180 | This book is really good," immediately buy that book or just go pay the library for it.

00:42:50.900 | If it's that good, just destroy it and say, "Sorry, I lost it.

00:42:53.700 | Here's $25," and buy the book.

00:42:55.620 | Buy the book because it would be a poor use of time and money for you to consume that

00:43:02.800 | book and not to make it yours.

00:43:07.700 | You'll only get a little bit out of it.

00:43:09.700 | Make the book yours.

00:43:12.500 | You don't have to read all the books you buy.

00:43:14.660 | That's the other thing.

00:43:16.460 | But you do have to buy the books you're going to really learn from.

00:43:22.620 | They need to be yours.

00:43:24.300 | Books have never been cheaper than they are today, especially the used book marketplace.

00:43:30.820 | The greatest boon to readers right now is Amazon used books.

00:43:34.900 | Almost any book you go on, it'll be one penny plus $3.49 shipping.

00:43:40.980 | You can get any book in the world for basically four bucks, five books.

00:43:44.640 | If the used market has the book for 30 bucks, get it anyway because now you know it's a

00:43:48.460 | good book.

00:43:49.860 | But almost any book for four, three, four, five books.

00:43:53.360 | So make it yours.

00:43:55.380 | First thing you do when you get a book, you take a big juicy pen, you write your name

00:43:59.900 | inside the front of it, and you write the date that you read it.

00:44:06.820 | Month and year.

00:44:07.820 | Why?

00:44:08.820 | Well, first, don't lend out your books.

00:44:11.300 | If you want to lend a book to somebody, buy another copy and give it to them, ship it

00:44:15.020 | to them.

00:44:16.020 | But don't lend out your books.

00:44:17.020 | You will never get them back and the people will never read your books.

00:44:20.580 | They don't do it.

00:44:21.580 | If somebody doesn't care enough about a subject to take your recommendation to buy the book

00:44:26.060 | themselves, they're not going to do anything with it.

00:44:28.500 | But if you still feel guilty and you want to actually help them in some way, then give

00:44:32.020 | them the book.

00:44:33.300 | But don't lend out your books.

00:44:34.780 | This is your book.

00:44:35.780 | It has your name on it.

00:44:37.980 | Write your name and the date so that you can have an idea of when you read that book.

00:44:43.880 | Now when you go to read, here's what you do.

00:44:45.580 | You first need to have the tools of reading.

00:44:49.060 | And the tools of reading are most importantly a pen.

00:44:54.100 | You have to have a pen when you're reading.

00:44:57.780 | Secondly, a highlighter.

00:44:59.860 | A highlighter is good.

00:45:01.660 | Third, a ruler.

00:45:04.100 | Now throughout my lifetime what I've always liked is blue pens and yellow highlighters.

00:45:09.100 | I like yellow highlighters because they allow you to highlight the things that you want

00:45:12.280 | to highlight without being so disruptive to the reading experience like pink and green

00:45:17.180 | and blue.

00:45:18.640 | I have over the last few years stopped using highlighters and gone exclusively to pens.

00:45:22.900 | And the reason is that I scan all my books now.

00:45:26.340 | So if I read a physical book, I begin with a pen and when I scan it, one of the things

00:45:32.700 | that's important is of course you can scan the book in color.

00:45:34.840 | So I sometimes scan books in color and the color scan version will show the highlighter,

00:45:41.540 | it'll show the yellow and the blue, etc.

00:45:43.860 | The problem is it's not as easy to read a color scan because the paper will always have

00:45:48.900 | that slight off-white tint to it.

00:45:52.060 | So it shows up but it's not quite as nice.

00:45:54.140 | Whereas when I scan books, I put it on to black and white.

00:45:56.340 | And when you put a scanner on to a black and white setting, then it turns everything to

00:46:00.500 | black and white which means that you lose your yellow highlighting.

00:46:04.160 | You don't lose green and blue and pink highlighting but it becomes dark and it's hard to read

00:46:08.460 | it.

00:46:09.460 | So because I now scan, I've stopped using highlighters in favor of pens.

00:46:13.060 | So I underline, that's what the ruler is for, I make notes, etc. so that all those notes

00:46:18.000 | will remain once I scan the book.

00:46:20.600 | So you can consider doing that as well.

00:46:22.620 | But you've got to have those tools of reading.

00:46:24.980 | You've got to write the book.

00:46:26.740 | You've got to write in the book because you're going to engage with the arguments of the

00:46:30.580 | author.

00:46:31.580 | And as you're consuming a book, the book may have 300 pages, there's only going to be a

00:46:34.620 | few key ideas and so you've got to actually be able to engage with those ideas.

00:46:40.840 | Make sure you have the tools of reading ready.

00:46:43.820 | Now this point, you have chosen a book that is going to help you develop a skill that

00:46:50.420 | you need to acquire in order for you to achieve your goals, which means that you have an interest

00:46:55.180 | in this book.

00:46:56.720 | You've acquired the book, it's in your hands and you've got the tools of reading.

00:47:01.420 | Quick comment on digital books.

00:47:02.940 | I like digital books.

00:47:03.940 | I read a lot of digital books now because of my internationally mobile lifestyle.

00:47:09.940 | I can't get Amazon deliveries.

00:47:12.460 | I can't get books as easily and so digital books are a great boon.

00:47:17.360 | Digital books are nice but they're not so good because they have that problem of linearity.

00:47:22.100 | You have to read them from the front to the back.

00:47:23.600 | It's hard to scan a digital book.

00:47:25.100 | They do have a place but the best is, especially if you're a beginning reader, start with the

00:47:30.700 | physical book.

00:47:33.020 | Your first action is to pre-read the book.

00:47:37.940 | Now for a pre-reading, I'm going to here refer you briefly to a couple of pages in Mortimer

00:47:44.620 | Adler's classic book called How to Read a Book and of course I'm riffing on his title.

00:47:49.900 | But How to Read a Book is a good book but it's very important for academic, philosophical

00:47:56.380 | books, deeper books, the great books, the great history of ideas, etc.

00:48:00.560 | It's not so important for what we're talking about necessarily.

00:48:03.380 | It's a good book that you should probably read but it's beyond what's necessary for

00:48:07.620 | most of what we're talking about.

00:48:09.540 | But in that book, Adler talks about the different levels of reading.

00:48:16.380 | Now since I have my copy and since I read it carefully, I can go right to the levels

00:48:20.340 | of reading and I can use his four levels.

00:48:23.340 | I've got with my marginalia, I have those levels clearly outlined.

00:48:27.220 | So I can, without re-reading the book, I can immediately know I'm going to talk about these

00:48:31.580 | four levels of reading.

00:48:32.740 | I know right where to go and my system of marginalia, which I'll talk to you about in

00:48:36.740 | a moment, is going to clearly show me what I need.

00:48:40.300 | So here are the four levels of reading.

00:48:41.660 | Number one, the first level of reading is called elementary reading.

00:48:45.220 | Other names might be rudimentary reading, basic reading, or initial reading.

00:48:49.980 | Any one of these terms serves to suggest that as one masters this level, one passes from

00:48:53.940 | non-literacy to at least beginning literacy.

00:48:58.380 | In mastering this level, one learns the rudiments of the art of reading, receives basic training

00:49:02.660 | in reading, and acquires initial reading skills.

00:49:05.220 | We prefer the name elementary reading, however, because this level of reading is ordinarily

00:49:09.180 | learned in elementary school.

00:49:11.540 | So this is the level of reading which most people read, elementary reading.

00:49:14.540 | They learn how to understand the concepts of word formation.

00:49:21.180 | They learn some basic vocabulary, but they don't learn how to deal with the ideas in

00:49:25.500 | books and thus, once they finish school and do the required reading, they're done.

00:49:28.780 | They leave.

00:49:29.780 | Now, the second level of reading, Adler calls inspectional reading.

00:49:33.980 | And inspectional reading is characterized by its special emphasis on time.

00:49:38.820 | When reading at this level, the student is allowed a set time to complete an assigned

00:49:42.300 | amount of reading.

00:49:43.460 | He might be allowed 15 minutes to read this book, for instance, or even a book twice as

00:49:47.260 | long.

00:49:48.260 | Hence, another way to describe this level of reading is to say that its aim is to get

00:49:53.700 | the most out of a book within a given time, usually a relatively short time and always,

00:49:59.340 | by definition, too short a time to get out of the book everything that can be gotten.

00:50:03.420 | Still, another name for this level might be skimming or pre-reading.

00:50:06.980 | However, we do not mean the kind of skimming that is characterized by casual or random

00:50:12.260 | browsing through a book.

00:50:14.660 | Inspectional reading is the art of skimming systematically.

00:50:17.020 | We're going to talk about that more in a moment.

00:50:19.860 | Third, the third level of reading we will call analytical reading.

00:50:22.780 | It is both a more complex and a more systematic activity than either of the two levels of

00:50:27.820 | reading discussed so far.

00:50:30.140 | Depending on the difficulty of the text to be read, it makes more or less heavy demands

00:50:33.500 | on the reader.

00:50:35.380 | Analytical reading is thorough reading, complete reading, or good reading, the best reading

00:50:41.300 | you can do.

00:50:42.820 | If inspectional reading is the best and most complete reading that is possible given a

00:50:46.700 | limited time, then analytical reading is the best and most complete reading that is possible

00:50:52.620 | given unlimited time.

00:50:55.540 | That's analytical reading.

00:50:56.740 | Analytical reading is preeminently for the sake of understanding.

00:51:00.660 | And then number four, the fourth and highest level of reading we will call syntopical reading.

00:51:05.340 | It is the most complex and systematic type of reading of all.

00:51:08.840 | It makes very heavy demands on the reader, even if the materials he is reading are themselves

00:51:12.980 | relatively easy and unsophisticated.

00:51:16.460 | Another name for this level might be comparative reading.

00:51:19.680 | When reading syntopically, the reader reads many books, not just one, and places them

00:51:24.060 | in relation to one another and to a subject about which they all revolve.

00:51:28.180 | But mere comparison of texts is not enough.

00:51:30.560 | Syntopical reading involves more.

00:51:32.340 | With the help of the books read, the syntopical reader is able to construct an analysis of

00:51:36.220 | the subject that may not be in any of the books.

00:51:38.980 | It is obvious, therefore, that syntopical reading is the most active and effortful kind

00:51:43.900 | of reading.

00:51:46.020 | Syntopical reading is what you do to the most important components of your goals.

00:51:53.780 | This will usually relate to your career, to the most important things in your personal

00:51:59.140 | life, etc.

00:52:00.620 | That's where you read syntopically.

00:52:04.020 | With me, as a career, as a financial advisor and a financial planner, I have to read syntopically

00:52:09.240 | because I have to have at least a basic familiarity with all of the concepts that will affect

00:52:15.700 | my chosen career and industry.

00:52:18.180 | It's the same for you.

00:52:19.380 | If you're involved in marketing, in order for you to advance in your career, you must

00:52:24.300 | read syntopically so that you have an understanding of everything related to marketing.

00:52:29.860 | There's no excuse for you not to do that.

00:52:32.060 | If you are engaged in really any activity, anything that you really care about in your

00:52:36.700 | personal life, you have to read syntopically.

00:52:38.860 | But we're not going to focus on that.

00:52:39.860 | We're going to focus on pre-reading or inspectional reading.

00:52:44.540 | So when you start with a book, here is what you do.

00:52:46.580 | And I'm going to read here from Adler, Chapter 4, the second level of reading, inspectional

00:52:50.740 | reading.

00:52:52.900 | Inspectional reading is a true level of reading.

00:52:54.920 | It is quite distinct from the level that precedes it, elementary reading, and from the one that

00:52:59.100 | follows it in natural sequence, analytical reading.

00:53:02.520 | But as we noted in Chapter 2, the levels of reading are cumulative.

00:53:05.340 | Thus, elementary reading is contained in inspectional reading, as indeed, inspectional reading is

00:53:10.840 | contained in analytical reading and analytical reading in syntopical reading.

00:53:16.220 | Practically, this means you cannot read on the inspectional level unless you can read

00:53:19.700 | effectively on the elementary level.

00:53:22.200 | You must be able to read an author's text more or less steadily, without having to stop

00:53:26.220 | to look up the meaning of many words, and without stumbling over the grammar and syntax.

00:53:31.420 | You must be able to make sense of a majority of the sentences and paragraphs, although

00:53:34.980 | not necessarily the best sense of all of them.

00:53:38.720 | What then is involved in inspectional reading?

00:53:40.760 | How do you go about doing it?

00:53:42.380 | The first thing to realize is that there are two types of inspectional reading.

00:53:46.960 | They are aspects of a single skill, but the beginning reader is well advised to consider

00:53:51.300 | them as two different steps or activities.

00:53:54.500 | The experienced reader learns to perform both steps simultaneously, but for the moment we

00:53:59.420 | will treat them as if they were quite distinct.

00:54:04.060 | Inspectional reading 1.

00:54:05.060 | Systematic skimming or pre-reading.

00:54:07.460 | And there are two.

00:54:08.460 | I'll give you just a moment.

00:54:09.820 | And I'll insert this here.

00:54:11.380 | So whenever an author says there are two types of reading, especially this, you know, in

00:54:16.180 | Adler's book, and by the way at the end I will share with you some, a way that you can

00:54:22.340 | get some information.

00:54:23.340 | I'll show you some pictures of even just my reading of Adler's book so you can see how

00:54:28.980 | I do it in hopes that that might inspire you or help you in some way.

00:54:32.220 | I always enjoy looking at other people's marginalia.

00:54:34.860 | But the, whenever an author says there are two types, I immediately, with my pen, write

00:54:40.120 | two types of inspectional reading.

00:54:42.260 | Then I look forward and I find the categories and I write them right where it was introduced.

00:54:47.980 | So I have a note in my handwriting, two types of inspectional reading.

00:54:51.300 | Number one, systematic skimming or pre-reading.

00:54:53.920 | And number two, superficial reading.

00:54:55.820 | That allows me to properly organize the ideas as I progress.

00:55:00.160 | The author may say there are two types, introduce the first type and go on for 10 pages.

00:55:04.180 | And which type, I'm going to forget about the fact that he said there was a second type.

00:55:07.740 | But if I immediately look forward 10 pages and see the two types listed, then I can go

00:55:12.120 | ahead and write them in the margin.

00:55:14.080 | Now the conventions of writing have changed over the last 50 years.

00:55:17.840 | Adler's book is typical of what was written 50 years ago, where there's much more prose,

00:55:23.820 | there's much more story in the prose, and much less outlining.

00:55:28.240 | Today, most non-fiction books are outlined even in their basic presentation.

00:55:33.440 | So there would immediately be, in general, in today's style of writing, is that there

00:55:37.520 | are two types.

00:55:38.520 | There would immediately be a space, and number one, systematic skimming or pre-reading.

00:55:42.860 | Number two, superficial reading.

00:55:44.600 | But if that's not there, you still need to grasp the ideas.

00:55:47.960 | And one of the things that I do that I think you should do as well is you should work on

00:55:51.840 | your taxonomy of ideas.

00:55:54.520 | Now I don't know how much of this is related to my brain specifically versus all brains.

00:55:58.720 | My brain is uniquely skilled at the taxonomy of ideas.

00:56:03.800 | I don't know how common that skill is, but it's a unique skill that I have, and it's

00:56:08.280 | basically my core unique ability is the taxonomy of ideas.

00:56:14.200 | But that taxonomy is developed through engaging with work.

00:56:17.360 | So what I do is when I read, I draw pictures, and I understand the elements.

00:56:21.880 | I write in outline form.

00:56:24.880 | Once I learn something, I immediately classify it in my head.

00:56:30.640 | So I always think, ever since reading Adler's book when I was younger, I always think in

00:56:35.320 | the four levels of reading.

00:56:36.480 | And I think at what level am I actually reading right now?

00:56:40.560 | And I mentally classify from now on all reading in that way.

00:56:44.760 | And then I always have that breakdown.

00:56:46.460 | And although I don't often remember everything, I remember where to go to get the breakdown.

00:56:51.280 | So I know inspectional reading has two types.

00:56:53.600 | I can immediately go to the book.

00:56:55.040 | I have it listed there in outline form.

00:56:57.400 | These are the two types of inspectional reading, et cetera.

00:57:00.480 | Make your notes that help your brain to work the way that your brain works.

00:57:06.600 | Let's talk about systematic skimming or pre-reading.

00:57:09.600 | Let us return to the basic situation to which we've referred before.

00:57:12.380 | There is a book or other reading matter, and here is your mind.

00:57:16.760 | What is the first thing that you do?

00:57:18.680 | Let us assume two further elements in the situation, elements that are quite common.

00:57:22.160 | First, you do not know whether you want to read the book.

00:57:24.860 | You do not know whether it deserves an analytical reading, but you suspect that it does, or

00:57:29.280 | at least that it contains both information and insights that would be valuable to you

00:57:33.880 | if you could dig them out.

00:57:35.600 | Second, let us assume, and this is very often the case, that you have only a limited time

00:57:40.480 | in which to find all this out.

00:57:42.160 | In this case, what you must do is skim the book, or as some prefer to say, pre-read it.

00:57:48.360 | Skimming or pre-reading is the first sub-level of inspectional reading.

00:57:52.200 | Your main aim is to discover whether the book requires a more careful reading.

00:57:57.000 | Secondly, skimming can tell you lots of other things about the book, even if you decide

00:58:01.080 | not to read it again with more care.

00:58:03.760 | Giving a book this kind of quick once-over is a threshing process that helps you to separate

00:58:08.560 | the chaff from the real kernels of nourishment.

00:58:11.540 | You may discover that what you get from skimming is all the book is worth to you for the time

00:58:15.120 | being.

00:58:16.120 | It may never be worth more.

00:58:17.660 | But you will know at least what the author's main contention is, as well as what kind of

00:58:22.160 | book he has written, so the time you have spent looking through the book will not have

00:58:25.880 | been wasted.

00:58:26.880 | I'm going to pause here to insert my commentary on this idea.

00:58:30.360 | When you're reading syntopically on something that's very important to your area of skill

00:58:35.960 | development and advancement, skimming is an incredibly important tool, and you should

00:58:40.640 | not feel the burden to need to read analytically all the books that you buy.

00:58:45.760 | I don't.

00:58:47.240 | What I do is I get any book that's related to my major core areas of focus.

00:58:54.880 | I don't think twice about it.

00:58:56.400 | I don't count the cost.

00:58:57.760 | I simply get the book.

00:58:59.640 | If it's related to my core areas of interest, my core goals, my wealth goals, my health

00:59:04.360 | goals, my personal goals, my family goals, I don't think twice.

00:59:07.840 | I buy the book.

00:59:09.080 | And this is most important for me in the topic of financial planning.

00:59:12.520 | I buy almost all the books that I come across in the topic of financial planning that pique

00:59:16.640 | my interest, because the cost of actually purchasing those books as compared to the

00:59:23.520 | benefit is just utterly insignificant compared to the benefit.

00:59:29.440 | But I don't read all of those books analytically.

00:59:32.800 | There's no reason for me to.

00:59:34.560 | What I do is I read it in a skimming fashion so that I know the points that are in it so

00:59:39.480 | that it's cataloged in my brain.

00:59:44.040 | Case in point.

00:59:45.880 | Last week I read a book on Roth IRAs.

00:59:49.440 | And the two, I stumbled across the book on Amazon, was talking about, was looking around

00:59:55.560 | on Amazon, looking at all of the financial books, et cetera, seeing what Amazon popped

00:59:59.240 | up for me, browsing to see what was available.

01:00:03.320 | And I stumbled across a title on Roth IRAs.

01:00:06.440 | The title of that book was called Roths for the Rich, How to Fund Your Roth with Over

01:00:10.840 | $100,000 Each Year.

01:00:12.520 | Well, of course, with that title, I immediately think, I think I know how this guy's going

01:00:17.180 | to do it.

01:00:18.840 | But I'm not sure, so I bought the book.

01:00:21.000 | I just bought it and immediately.

01:00:23.080 | Now when I skim that book, I have a deep knowledge of Roth IRAs, but I'm only looking for the

01:00:28.600 | question to one answer.

01:00:30.280 | I'm looking to know the answer of how did he get $100,000 in there and is there something

01:00:35.720 | that I can use to, is there something that I can use that I don't know about?

01:00:41.120 | Is there a key thing that I don't know about?

01:00:44.880 | While I'm skimming the book, I stumbled across one other idea that I had not previously thought

01:00:51.240 | about and it made me question my previous opinions on Roth IRAs.

01:00:57.160 | But I didn't read the whole book.

01:00:58.320 | The only two things that I needed to know from that book was number one, the new idea

01:01:02.640 | that I stumbled across, and number two, how did he get $100,000 into the Roth IRA?

01:01:10.520 | I didn't read the book analytically and I don't need to read the book analytically.

01:01:14.680 | Now that I know the two ideas in that book, it's pigeonholed in my head what the book

01:01:19.120 | contains and I'll just simply keep it in my library as a reference book.

01:01:23.840 | So the next time that I read, sorry, the next time I write or speak on the topic of Roth

01:01:28.960 | IRAs, I have it as a reference book.

01:01:31.480 | And if I have a question on Roth IRAs that relates to either of those two concepts, I

01:01:35.200 | know where to go to get the answer.

01:01:36.960 | I spent seven, eight minutes on the book, read it, done.

01:01:40.560 | It's categorized, it's pigeonholed.

01:01:42.440 | It's all I need from the book.

01:01:44.600 | And so that's one of the key values is as you develop it, you know what the author's

01:01:49.440 | point is and if it fits into that nice little cubbyhole in your brain, you know where it

01:01:54.520 | is, you know you can go and get it and you can access the information whenever you need

01:01:57.840 | it.

01:01:58.840 | So it's entirely fine to read on that level as you advance in your career.

01:02:03.760 | Now you can't read on that level in everything.

01:02:05.760 | That would be silly.

01:02:06.900 | But you can read on that level in the things that are important to you.

01:02:10.840 | Now continuing on with how to actually skim the book.

01:02:14.720 | The habit of skimming should not take much time to acquire.

01:02:17.120 | Here are some suggestions about how to do it.

01:02:19.360 | One, look at the title page and if the book has one, add its preface.

01:02:23.640 | Read each quickly.

01:02:25.000 | Note especially the subtitles or other indications of the scope or aim of the book or of the

01:02:29.920 | author's special angle on his subject.

01:02:32.720 | Before completing this step, you should have a good idea of the subject and if you wish,

01:02:36.980 | you may pause for a moment to place the book in the appropriate category in your mind.

01:02:41.280 | What pigeonhole that already contains other books does this one belong in?

01:02:46.240 | Two, study the table of contents to obtain a general sense of the book's structure.

01:02:51.080 | Use it as you would a road map before taking a trip.

01:02:54.080 | It is astonishing how many people never even glance at a book's table of contents unless

01:02:57.840 | they wish to look something up in it.

01:02:59.780 | In fact, many authors spend a considerable amount of time in creating the table of contents

01:03:04.320 | and it is sad to think their efforts are often wasted.

01:03:07.160 | It used to be a common practice, especially in expository works, but sometimes even in

01:03:12.840 | novels and poems, to write very full tables of contents, with the chapters or parts broken

01:03:18.360 | down into many subtitles indicative of the topics covered.

01:03:21.680 | Milton, for example, wrote more or less lengthy headings, or arguments as he called them,

01:03:27.280 | for each book of Paradise Lost.

01:03:29.480 | Gibbon published his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire with an extensive analytical

01:03:33.700 | table of contents for each chapter.

01:03:36.160 | Such summaries are no longer common, although occasionally you do still come across an analytical

01:03:40.880 | table of contents.

01:03:43.240 | One reason for the decline of the practice may be that people are not so likely to read

01:03:47.440 | tables of contents as they once were.

01:03:49.960 | Also, publishers have come to feel that a less revealing table of contents is more seductive

01:03:56.040 | than a completely frank and open one.

01:03:59.320 | Publishers they feel will be attracted to a book with more or less mysterious chapter

01:04:03.480 | titles.

01:04:04.480 | They will want to read the book to find out what the chapters are about.

01:04:07.660 | Even so, a table of contents can be valuable and you should read it carefully before going

01:04:11.960 | on to the rest of the book.

01:04:13.780 | At this point you might turn back to the table of contents of this book if you have not already

01:04:18.000 | read it.

01:04:19.000 | We tried to make it as full and informative as we could.

01:04:22.280 | Examining it should give you a good idea of what we are trying to do.

01:04:25.200 | 3.

01:04:26.200 | Check the index if the book has one.

01:04:28.360 | Most expository works do.

01:04:30.400 | Make a quick estimate of the range of topics covered and of the kinds of books and authors

01:04:34.480 | referred to.

01:04:35.800 | When you see terms listed that seem crucial, look up at least some of the passages cited.

01:04:42.140 | The passages you read may contain the crux, the point on which the book hinges, or the

01:04:46.320 | new departure which is the key to the author's approach and attitude.

01:04:50.160 | As in the case of the table of contents, you might at this point check the index of this

01:04:53.320 | book.

01:04:54.320 | You will recognize as crucial some terms that have already been discussed.

01:04:58.180 | Can you identify, for example, by the number of references under them any others that also

01:05:01.880 | seem important?

01:05:03.440 | 4.

01:05:04.720 | If the book is a new one with a dust jacket, read the publisher's blurb.

01:05:08.200 | Some people have the impression that the blurb is never anything but sheer puffery.

01:05:11.920 | But this is quite often not true, especially in the case of expository works.

01:05:16.280 | The blurbs of many of these books are written by the authors themselves, admittedly with

01:05:19.960 | the help of the publisher's public relations department.

01:05:22.840 | It is not uncommon for authors to try to summarize as accurately as they can the main points

01:05:27.680 | in their book.

01:05:28.880 | These efforts should not go unnoticed.

01:05:31.740 | Of course, if the blurb is nothing but a puff for the book, you will ordinarily be able

01:05:35.280 | to discover this at a glance.

01:05:37.080 | But that in itself can tell you something about the work.

01:05:39.720 | Perhaps the book does not say anything of importance, and that is why the blurb does

01:05:42.800 | not say anything either.

01:05:44.600 | Upon completing these first four steps, you may already have enough information about

01:05:48.000 | the book to know that you want to read it more carefully, or that you do not want or

01:05:52.120 | need to read it at all.

01:05:53.800 | In either case, you may put it aside for the moment.

01:05:55.960 | If you do not do so, you are now ready to skim the book properly speaking.

01:06:00.080 | 5.

01:06:01.220 | From your general and still rather vague knowledge of the book's contents, look now at the chapters

01:06:06.240 | that seem to be pivotal to its argument.

01:06:09.000 | If these chapters have summary statements in their opening or closing pages, as they

01:06:12.880 | often do, read these statements carefully.

01:06:16.720 | 6.

01:06:18.280 | Finally turn the pages, dipping in here and there, reading a paragraph or two, sometimes

01:06:23.360 | several pages in sequence.

01:06:25.560 | Never more than that.

01:06:26.560 | 7.

01:06:27.560 | Thumb through the book in this way, always looking for signs of the main contention,

01:06:32.400 | listening for the basic pulse beat of the matter.

01:06:35.160 | Above all, do not fail to read the last two or three pages, or, if these are an epilogue,

01:06:40.400 | the last few pages of the main part of the book.

01:06:43.280 | 8.

01:06:44.280 | Few authors are able to resist the temptation to sum up what they think is new and important

01:06:48.200 | about their work in these pages.

01:06:50.360 | You do not want to miss this.

01:06:52.900 | Even though, as sometimes happens, the author himself may be wrong in his judgments.

01:06:57.960 | So that's how you basically skim or pre-read a book.

01:07:03.400 | If you're interested in more, go and buy and read Mortimer Adler's book called How to Read

01:07:08.560 | a Book.

01:07:09.640 | But when you pre-read a book, you can get an idea of the basic concepts, and you can

01:07:13.600 | see if this book is worth your further reading.

01:07:17.680 | That's the basic goal.

01:07:19.160 | There are only a small percentage of books that are worth your reading cover to cover.

01:07:27.200 | Only a small number.

01:07:28.940 | Those books are the ones that are going to make the most impact in your skill development

01:07:33.780 | towards your goals.

01:07:35.500 | And they're books that are going to be clearly written, and often what I find is they're

01:07:38.720 | books that are going to be filled with lots and lots of introspection or lots of important

01:07:42.540 | ideas.

01:07:44.300 | Just because a book is not worth reading analytically, that doesn't mean it's not worth reading at

01:07:52.020 | all.

01:07:53.020 | That's one of the key things that I've always struggled to say to somebody, "What book should

01:07:55.980 | you read?"

01:07:56.980 | Because usually it's not a book.

01:07:58.320 | It's usually these seven books, or these three books.

01:08:01.880 | And yet I can't do that without context.

01:08:04.300 | You make a book reading list of 200 books.

01:08:06.260 | How do you do that?

01:08:07.260 | I've got 2,200 books in my library, so what do you do?

01:08:10.920 | What I find is that even when I inspection, even when I skim a book, it usually will spark

01:08:16.380 | ideas that will then go off of other ideas.

01:08:19.880 | So let's assume now that in pre-reading the book, you have decided that this book is worth

01:08:25.660 | actually reading on an analytical level.

01:08:27.920 | What do you do?

01:08:28.920 | Well, after pre-reading it, you have an idea of what's in the book, and now you're equipped

01:08:32.800 | to go and start from the beginning and read it in the order that the author intends you

01:08:37.200 | to read it.

01:08:38.720 | And in this case, the most important thing is to start dealing with the author's ideas.

01:08:43.840 | So I do that with a pen.

01:08:46.920 | Here we come to marginalia.

01:08:47.920 | Marginalia is simply the term that refers to a reader's margin notes, how you interact

01:08:53.200 | with the book.

01:08:54.200 | And the important thing, although many of us enjoy looking at other people's marginalia

01:08:57.880 | to understand how they do it, the important thing is for you to figure out your own system.

01:09:02.240 | So I'll give you a few highlights of what I do, but it doesn't really matter what I

01:09:05.480 | do.

01:09:06.480 | What matters is what you do.

01:09:07.480 | The first thing is I personally am very prone to extensive highlighting and extensive underlining,

01:09:14.520 | which means that I read, when I read analytically, I read very slowly.

01:09:18.320 | Not that I form the words slowly, but I engage with the concepts.

01:09:22.380 | So I'll do something where, especially if it's a good book, it's one that's worth reading

01:09:26.340 | on a deep level, I'll often read a page and then I'll frequently highlight two-thirds

01:09:31.160 | of the page.

01:09:32.160 | But while I'm highlighting it, I'm re-reading it and really thinking about the concept.

01:09:35.380 | So I'll linger on a page for several minutes while really engaging with it.

01:09:39.720 | Because once I've engaged with it once, I don't usually need to ever engage with it

01:09:43.760 | again.

01:09:44.760 | The reason that I note and do extensive highlighting and underlining is so, first, to give me time

01:09:51.160 | to think about it, and also so that if I need to come back in the book in the future, I

01:09:55.080 | can pick it up and in just a couple of minutes refresh all of the ideas.

01:09:58.760 | If I grasp a book that I have read extensively, that I've highlighted, that I've marked, I

01:10:04.840 | can grab it for about three or four minutes, look at it, and then all of the ideas quickly

01:10:09.320 | come back to the forefront of my mind.

01:10:11.400 | I don't need to go back and look through it again.

01:10:13.080 | I just need to look at my highlights and I've grasped all the important points.

01:10:16.700 | So that's one of my goals in highlighting and underlining.

01:10:20.720 | I'll do a couple different things.

01:10:22.340 | So when I used to highlight everything, I would highlight extensively because highlighting

01:10:26.040 | was simple and allowed me to read things.

01:10:28.240 | Since I've stopped highlighting because I now know that I'm probably going to wind up

01:10:31.640 | scanning the book after I'm done with it, then I've switched to just simply underlining

01:10:37.600 | and I underline a few sentences here and there.

01:10:40.400 | Always use a ruler and then make sure that it's nice and neat.

01:10:43.560 | Or I will make notes on the side.

01:10:45.480 | I'll put a bracket on the side of an important paragraph.

01:10:47.760 | I'll star an important paragraph.

01:10:50.360 | That's one of the things that I do in my personal system of marginalia.

01:10:55.540 | Another thing that I do is I outline the book while I'm reading it.

01:10:58.600 | If the author writes one, two, and three and I'm in a section where it's numbered, I'll

01:11:04.640 | go ahead and I'll either just circle the one, two, three or I'll write my own one, two,

01:11:08.520 | three.

01:11:09.520 | So that way I can come back and I see one, two, three.

01:11:11.520 | Here are the three points.

01:11:12.680 | And if the one, two, three are mixed up in a lot of words, then I'll just underline the

01:11:17.200 | key thing and at the bottom of the page I'll write one, two, three and then the key points.

01:11:22.060 | Because what I'm looking for is to have the ideas classified in my head.

01:11:28.280 | So that's one of the keys.

01:11:29.880 | I'm not always reading to actions, although that's an important component of reading.

01:11:33.840 | Often I'm reading to ideas.

01:11:35.400 | And so I need those ideas to be classified in my head.

01:11:37.480 | So the act of noticing the author's outline and then reproducing my version of the author's

01:11:43.160 | outline helps me to stick those ideas in my head so that I can then articulate them to

01:11:48.960 | somebody else in the future.

01:11:50.480 | I can then teach them to somebody else or I can always have this as a framework to go

01:11:54.240 | back to.

01:11:55.660 | When I think about ideas, I'm always thinking about principles and frameworks.

01:12:00.080 | Do we have a good principle to start from and do we have a framework that works?

01:12:03.880 | And then I go and take that principle and framework, apply it to the world, notice where

01:12:08.880 | it works, notice where it doesn't work.

01:12:10.480 | And if it doesn't work, come back and say, "Well, can we upgrade the framework in some

01:12:14.320 | way?"

01:12:15.320 | And to me that seems a much better way to live, to start with a framework of ideas and

01:12:19.160 | see if that framework holds true as it's tested by evidence than to start with nothing and

01:12:23.720 | always just say, "Oh, whatever.

01:12:25.280 | Hey, whatever goes, man."

01:12:27.460 | So those frameworks come from putting things together over time.

01:12:31.840 | Next, if I disagree with the author, I will go ahead and argue with them in the text.

01:12:37.880 | One of the most important things when you're having a conversation with the author is to

01:12:40.720 | make it a two-way conversation.

01:12:43.460 | You need to write that in the book.

01:12:46.140 | You need to write whatever it is.

01:12:49.440 | Sometimes my notes are about things I need to pay attention to.

01:12:56.800 | I just randomly as I'm sitting here looking at my copy of Adler's books, sitting here

01:13:03.100 | on my screen as I record this, I'll just give you an example.

01:13:06.120 | On page 24, there's a section called "Stages of Learning to Read" and there's this paragraph

01:13:10.480 | here.

01:13:11.480 | "General reading readiness is assessed," talking about teaching language and reading to children.

01:13:17.080 | "General reading readiness is assessed by tests and is also estimated by teachers who

01:13:21.720 | are often skilled at discerning just when a pupil is ready to learn to read."

01:13:26.560 | Then this sentence is, or this next section is underlined.

01:13:30.720 | I'll tell you when I stop.

01:13:31.880 | "The important thing to remember is that jumping the gun is usually self-defeating.

01:13:38.080 | The child who is not yet ready to read is frustrated if attempts are made to teach him,

01:13:43.600 | and he may carry over his dislike for the experience into his later school career and

01:13:48.680 | even into adult life.

01:13:51.080 | Delaying the beginning of reading instruction beyond the reading readiness stage is not

01:13:56.360 | nearly so serious," here I stopped underlining, but I'll finish the sentence, "despite the

01:14:00.720 | feelings of parents who may fear that their child is backward or is not keeping up with

01:14:05.040 | his peers."

01:14:06.040 | Then I have all that underlined, then a big note next to it.

01:14:09.080 | I need to pay attention to this.

01:14:11.320 | The reason is because given my personality and given my desire for my children to succeed

01:14:17.000 | and given how important reading is to me, it's very obvious that I could become an overbearing

01:14:22.280 | parent and I could try to push my children into something that I want them to experience,

01:14:28.400 | which has been very helpful to me, but I might push them before they're ready.

01:14:32.280 | Noticing that that's a big danger zone, I have it underlined in a big note.

01:14:36.400 | I need to pay attention to this, exclamation point.

01:14:38.920 | I don't want to make that mistake.

01:14:41.040 | That's my way of saying, "hey, this applies to me.

01:14:43.560 | This hurts.

01:14:44.560 | This is a really, really big deal."

01:14:46.320 | I'll give you another example where I ask myself questions to engage with the author.

01:14:52.440 | On page 28, I see the author says, "this of course should not be the case," talking about

01:14:58.960 | higher levels of reading and higher education and has been making a point about reading

01:15:02.860 | in schools.

01:15:04.080 | So I underlined this paragraph.

01:15:05.800 | "This of course should not be the case.

01:15:08.400 | A good liberal arts high school, if it does nothing else, ought to produce graduates who

01:15:12.800 | are competent analytical readers.

01:15:14.880 | A good college, if it does nothing else, ought to produce competent syntopical readers.

01:15:19.640 | A college degree ought to represent general competence in reading such that a graduate

01:15:23.640 | could read any kind of material for general readers and be able to undertake independent

01:15:27.940 | research on almost any subject, for that is what syntopical reading, among other things,

01:15:32.400 | enables you to do.

01:15:34.200 | Often however," and I ended my underlining there, "often however, three or four years

01:15:38.120 | of graduate study are required before students attain this level of reading ability, and

01:15:42.520 | they do not always attain it even then."

01:15:45.200 | And so I have beside that sentence a big star, and I have, "home education goals?

01:15:50.200 | Is this a proper and worthy goal?"

01:15:53.240 | Meaning that of course I'm thinking about my children.

01:15:55.600 | I want my children to have very high quality educations.

01:15:58.760 | I want them to understand, so is this my goal?

01:16:01.460 | Is this an appropriate goal for me to have when I'm laying out their curriculum for their

01:16:06.880 | studies?

01:16:07.880 | So those are some examples of my things to do.

01:16:11.080 | Now once you get past that, let me focus now on actions.

01:16:14.960 | The next piece of marginalia, and this is not in a book like, necessarily in this kind

01:16:20.100 | of book, but in the kind of books that you'll probably be reading for your goals, it's important

01:16:23.880 | that you focus on actions that you can take, because only action is ultimately going to

01:16:29.160 | change something for you.

01:16:31.300 | You can set a goal.

01:16:32.320 | That's good.

01:16:33.320 | Right?

01:16:34.320 | That's automatically going to start moving you in directions because of the actions you'll

01:16:36.800 | take based upon having that goal.

01:16:39.120 | Once you set a goal, you make a plan.

01:16:40.940 | That's good, but you still haven't done anything when you made a plan.

01:16:43.880 | Then you said, "What skills do I need to develop?"

01:16:45.840 | Good.

01:16:46.840 | So then you took the action of buying a book, but now in order for you to work all the way

01:16:50.320 | back to that goal achievement, you have to put into action something specific to help

01:16:55.980 | you learn the skill.

01:16:57.520 | And so one of the things I'm always looking for is what action do I need to take based

01:17:01.840 | upon what I am reading.

01:17:04.320 | So I use when I'm reading simple check boxes, and I write a little square box, a check box

01:17:09.220 | next to something when I say, "This is something the author is saying.

01:17:12.100 | This is something I need to do."

01:17:14.120 | Sometimes it's a book I need to read.

01:17:15.220 | The author alludes to this certain book, and I say, "You know what?

01:17:18.600 | For my goals, I need that book."

01:17:20.200 | I put a little check box next to it.

01:17:24.200 | And then what I do is I put an index in the back of the book or the front, doesn't matter,

01:17:28.000 | and I go to the back of the book or the front of the book, and I write a little check box,

01:17:32.920 | and I write, "Page 53, by the Secrets of Success."

01:17:37.080 | I don't know if that's a book name, but by this book.

01:17:40.020 | And then I put a check box next to it.

01:17:42.520 | Or if they have a website to visit, I put a little check box, make a list, check, check,

01:17:47.040 | check, all the things I need to do.

01:17:48.760 | Or do this journaling exercise.

01:17:50.600 | I go ahead and put a check box next to it.

01:17:53.320 | And I'm creating an action list for myself based upon what I'm reading.

01:17:57.320 | Because the only way I'm going to build that skill is to actually do it.

01:18:00.520 | So I'm engaging with it, and I'm building that action list.

01:18:03.160 | That way, when I arrive at the end of the book, I have my to-do list right there at

01:18:07.080 | the beginning of the book.

01:18:08.400 | Now, once I arrive at the end of the book, I go through those things, I see what seems

01:18:12.320 | relevant.

01:18:13.320 | If something doesn't seem relevant, just cross it off.

01:18:15.080 | "No, I'm not going to do that.

01:18:16.240 | I don't need to read Secrets of Success, whatever."

01:18:18.600 | But if something does seem relevant, then now it goes on to my action list for my other

01:18:24.680 | task management list.

01:18:25.960 | And it comes from the book.

01:18:27.840 | And then as I do it, I check it off and go from there.

01:18:30.400 | That's a really important thing to do.

01:18:32.960 | Another thing that I do, and that's probably the most crucial thing, is to make sure you're

01:18:36.000 | taking action.

01:18:37.000 | So if it's a book on investing, and the author's telling you how to become an investment, then

01:18:40.960 | lay it out.

01:18:41.960 | Lay out how to do it.

01:18:42.960 | I will also often reproduce, depending on the book, reproduce some of the basic concepts

01:18:48.240 | or action lists or outlines of the book into the front or back cover, so that I can really

01:18:53.120 | have an idea of how to do this going forward.

01:18:58.560 | So in my copy of Adler's book, the most important topics for me, which were the levels of reading,

01:19:06.400 | are right there inside the front cover.

01:19:08.740 | If it's a more action-oriented book about follow this process for learning how to be

01:19:12.840 | a successful real estate investor, I'll write my action plan right there.

01:19:16.820 | If I've set a goal as a result of the book, maybe I read John Shobbs, Building Wealth

01:19:21.080 | One House at a Time, and I just said, "You know what?

01:19:23.240 | I can grab the idea of buying a house every year."

01:19:25.520 | So I write to the front, "My goal is to buy a house every single year for this number

01:19:29.900 | of years at this value with these levels of rents to build this certain financial freedom

01:19:34.000 | plan."

01:19:35.000 | And I lay it out there.

01:19:36.000 | It's one of the reasons why I don't ever like anyone to look at my books.

01:19:39.520 | I get very nervous about somebody seeing my books, because they're very personal.

01:19:44.640 | I've made myself vulnerable.

01:19:46.640 | So another reason why you never lend your books out.

01:19:48.780 | I've made myself vulnerable.

01:19:49.780 | I've argued with them, with the book.

01:19:52.600 | And especially when you're reading in things that are, it's one thing if you're reading,

01:19:55.600 | well, a book like Adler's book, I don't care.

01:19:58.080 | I've published that on the internet of my books, because it's not personal to me.

01:20:02.060 | But if I'm reading a book on money, and I'm setting financial goals, I might not yet have

01:20:06.320 | the confidence to say to somebody that I've set a goal of earning a million dollars a

01:20:11.440 | year, right?

01:20:12.440 | You set a goal.

01:20:13.440 | I'm going to earn a million dollars a year, but you're earning $40,000 a year.

01:20:14.520 | You don't know how you're going to do that.

01:20:15.880 | And most of your friends, when you're earning $40,000 a year, most of your friends will

01:20:18.640 | laugh at you if you tell them you're earning a million dollars a year.

01:20:21.400 | So you don't ever tell anybody about your goals to earn a million dollars a year when

01:20:24.400 | you're surrounded by people who are earning $40,000 per year.

01:20:27.440 | Yeah, when you're talking with people who are earning a million dollars a year, it's

01:20:30.480 | fine to share those goals.

01:20:31.840 | But you don't do that when you're earning $40,000 a year, because they'll ridicule you.

01:20:34.600 | They'll laugh at you.

01:20:35.600 | They'll try to pull you back down to their level.

01:20:37.240 | But you can write it in your books.

01:20:38.780 | You can engage with that.

01:20:39.780 | But I wouldn't want someone to know that.

01:20:40.960 | So I'm pretty sensitive about people seeing my books, which is another benefit of having

01:20:44.760 | them scanned in terms of privacy of the ideas.

01:20:49.560 | There are also books that you read where you're really wrestling with a topic.

01:20:53.880 | Maybe you're reading a book on weight loss, and you're fat.

01:20:56.880 | And you're just wrestling with the psychology of it.

01:20:59.560 | And you take a moment, and you pour out your heart on the back page.

01:21:03.040 | You're like, "Why am I so fat?

01:21:04.480 | Why is it that nothing works?

01:21:05.600 | I don't actually believe this guy, that he knows what it's like, etc."

01:21:08.360 | Well, that stuff's really personal.

01:21:10.240 | Or maybe you're wrestling with a spiritual crisis, and you're thinking to yourself, "I

01:21:15.480 | don't know if I believe in God.

01:21:16.960 | I'm not sure."

01:21:17.960 | And you're reading a book, and my note in the margin is, "I don't know if I actually

01:21:23.680 | believe in God."

01:21:24.680 | And all of a sudden, that would be the kind of thing where you don't need to talk about

01:21:27.840 | that to everybody.

01:21:28.840 | You just choose carefully the people that you talk to.

01:21:32.280 | And so when you're dealing with some aspect of your theology, or your worldview, or your

01:21:36.320 | politics, and you're reading a book that you disagree with politically, but you write,

01:21:40.400 | "Good point.

01:21:41.400 | This guy's got a good point."

01:21:42.800 | So I get nervous about being exposed like that until I've had time to really think something

01:21:47.880 | through.

01:21:48.880 | But I do engage with them in that way.

01:21:50.600 | Next thing that I do when I'm reading is I always focus on the vocabulary that I am learning

01:21:58.000 | from a book.

01:21:59.280 | Back to that skill of reading.

01:22:00.520 | One of the skills of reading that you need to develop is learning vocabulary.

01:22:04.120 | And if you're not reading books that stretch your vocabulary, you're probably not being

01:22:08.360 | stretched intellectually.

01:22:09.360 | And this is where, I don't know whether it's good or bad, I try not to assign judgment

01:22:15.520 | on things that don't have to be judged, but we certainly have regressed in the level of

01:22:21.320 | vocabulary that we use in the written word.

01:22:25.640 | If you go back and you read a book, you read Adler's book, or you read a book from 50 years

01:22:30.240 | ago, you'll find all kinds of words that you don't know today.

01:22:34.520 | And it'll expand your vocabulary.

01:22:36.520 | And when I read old books that were intended for lay audiences, oftentimes I'm just sitting

01:22:39.840 | there puzzling with a dictionary.

01:22:42.200 | Now is this a good thing or a bad thing?

01:22:43.560 | The good thing about writing with a simpler vocabulary in the modern world is perhaps

01:22:48.320 | you can reach more people.

01:22:50.080 | One of the key things that people who write sales copy professionally, copywriters, try

01:22:54.960 | to focus on is always keeping their language very simple.

01:22:57.480 | They don't generally ever want to be past the fifth grade level.

01:23:00.680 | Interestingly, how I saw this work out in politics was during the 2016 presidential

01:23:07.280 | election, I read a piece of analysis and it was talking about then candidate Donald Trump,

01:23:14.120 | how simplistically he spoke.

01:23:15.960 | The simple, elementary, juvenile, ignorant, was what the author criticized, level of speech

01:23:23.280 | that he as a political candidate was employing.

01:23:26.360 | And I thought to myself, you know what?

01:23:29.240 | And then after President Trump won the election, I thought that is exactly one of the reasons

01:23:33.480 | that he won, is especially if you understand that the copywriters will take their copy,

01:23:38.040 | they'll run it through an automated program which will assign a grade level.

01:23:42.400 | And if they find that there is something past grade five, they go back, they strip out complex

01:23:47.000 | words, they make things simpler, shorter, etc. to cut down the grade level.

01:23:50.560 | And so the same thing applies from the level of political candidate.

01:23:54.480 | The challenge I've always had is do I do that?

01:23:57.280 | Do I speak with a small vocabulary, small words, etc.?

01:24:03.440 | Or do I enjoy the richness of the English language?

01:24:06.840 | Do I enjoy the richness of intellectual ideas and learning how to weave those ideas together

01:24:13.120 | in a tapestry that not only indicates meaning but also conveys beauty?

01:24:22.160 | Sentence that I've just created there is a complex sentence with a metaphor, a visual

01:24:26.800 | metaphor and complex words.

01:24:30.680 | And yet that's what I like.

01:24:33.140 | And so I want to read books that expand that and I want to be careful depending on the

01:24:37.640 | context to use simpler words, simpler grammar, more elementary syntax when I'm in those contexts.

01:24:47.940 | But I still want to read reading at a level that stretches me out.

01:24:50.760 | And so when I'm reading books, I want to be reading and learning new vocabulary.

01:24:54.400 | So whenever I find a word that I don't know or a word that I think I know but you know

01:24:58.920 | it's been a long time since I've looked that up, then I always circle it and then I write

01:25:03.280 | at the top of the page, I write the word and the definition.

01:25:07.040 | I write the word and the definition right away.

01:25:10.480 | I used to not do that because I used to have to go and look up a word in a dictionary.

01:25:14.800 | But since the advent of online dictionaries, especially the dictionary that's available

01:25:19.720 | through a digital device which is probably sitting right next to me, now I have a wonderful

01:25:24.400 | ability to just simply look up the word right away.

01:25:26.880 | And so it's super easy to do that.

01:25:28.480 | So as an example on page 98 of How to Read a Book, Adler writes this sentence.

01:25:33.280 | He says, "If language were a pure and perfect medium for thought, these steps would not

01:25:37.800 | be separate.

01:25:39.500 | If every word had only one meaning, if words could not be used ambiguously, if in short

01:25:45.280 | each word was an ideal term, language would be a diaphanous medium."

01:25:50.840 | I don't know what the word diaphanous is.

01:25:53.440 | So I circled it, diaphanous, looked it up and wrote at the top of the page, diaphanous,

01:25:58.760 | very sheer and light, almost completely transparent or translucent.

01:26:04.400 | So now I know what he's talking about.

01:26:06.440 | Meaning would be clearer, language would be a diaphanous medium, a more clear medium,

01:26:12.480 | a more able to be understood more easily.

01:26:15.960 | So then what I do is I write the word at the beginning of the book.

01:26:20.360 | So I have on the front page, new vocabulary and then a list whenever I learn a new word,

01:26:25.120 | I write it at the front of the book.

01:26:26.160 | So that way I can refer to the book and find all of those new vocabulary words.

01:26:31.600 | So my list at the beginning of How to Read a Book, vocabulary, desideratum, page X,

01:26:38.560 | abecedarian, page XI, carp, page XXIX, interstitial, page XXXIX, perspicuous, page XXIV, oratory,

01:26:47.000 | page XXIV, oratorical, chronotopic, individuous, diaphanous, verbalism, tautology, ledger domain,

01:26:54.680 | inveterate, sine qua non, admixture, buskin, oblation.

01:26:59.000 | Those are my vocabulary words from this particular book.

01:27:02.840 | Not all of them were words that I necessarily didn't know.

01:27:06.760 | For example, the word carp, I mean, a carp on somebody.

01:27:08.800 | I knew the word, but I wanted to just make sure that I understood the full context.

01:27:12.600 | And so whenever I even do that, I want to make sure that I learn it.

01:27:15.200 | And then ideally, I would love to tell you that I put those words into a study system

01:27:20.160 | of some kind.

01:27:21.160 | And every day I wake up and I study my vocabulary cards.

01:27:22.880 | I don't.

01:27:23.880 | I should.

01:27:25.200 | Maybe I'll add that at some point in the future.

01:27:26.520 | I don't.

01:27:27.520 | Usually though, once I see them once, I'm pretty good to go.

01:27:32.120 | And then the challenge is it's just not always worth memorizing all that stuff because unfortunately

01:27:38.560 | in today's world, there's not, when you use complex vocabulary, people think you're showing

01:27:45.000 | off instead of, unless you're with a very select group of friends where you would actually

01:27:49.300 | speak like that.

01:27:50.300 | I mean, the word desideratum, the sentence was, however, certain things have not changed

01:27:54.640 | in the last 30 years.

01:27:55.860 | One constant is that to achieve all the purposes of reading, the desideratum must be the ability

01:28:02.080 | to read different things at different appropriate speeds, not everything at the greatest possible

01:28:06.640 | speed.

01:28:07.640 | So desideratum means something wanted or needed, but I can't imagine the context where I could

01:28:12.800 | use that word without being laughed out of the room.

01:28:16.480 | So why bother to learn it?

01:28:17.920 | It doesn't really make any sense.

01:28:19.400 | It's unfortunately, that kind of environment is a bygone era and anybody, if I ever use

01:28:25.880 | that word, nobody would understand it.

01:28:27.280 | And then you've basically taken away the whole use of language when nobody understands it.

01:28:30.480 | So we're going to regress to a fifth grade level of speech in all of our interactions

01:28:40.320 | and I've basically resigned myself to that.

01:28:43.520 | A couple of more things and then we will be done for today.

01:28:47.000 | Vocabulary building, we've talked about.

01:28:48.580 | One thing you can do is dog ear the pages.

01:28:50.880 | If you are looking to, you think about how you want to have the book.

01:28:54.200 | If you're looking to have the book and it be a reference manual for you, you can consider

01:28:58.400 | just dog earing the third of your pages or whatever that you want to refer to.

01:29:01.520 | Some people use post-it notes.

01:29:02.840 | I have sometimes dog eared pages.

01:29:05.280 | The problem is now that I've taken to scanning the books, I don't do that.

01:29:08.800 | A lot of times if there's a page that has a really important point or idea, I'll put

01:29:11.680 | a big star at the top, etc.

01:29:13.840 | So exclamation points, underlines, squiggly lines, lots of writing.

01:29:18.400 | You develop your own system of symbols, etc.

01:29:20.920 | But you do want to engage with the book.

01:29:24.720 | Second to last final step, follow the references.

01:29:28.000 | One of the most important things to do is follow the references.

01:29:30.960 | And here you follow the bibliography and you follow the books that were written.

01:29:35.160 | And this is how you start to gain comprehensive knowledge in a subject.

01:29:39.480 | When you read a book, a well-written book, notice you've probably culled out nine books

01:29:43.760 | to choose this one book to read.

01:29:45.880 | But a well-written book is going to reference and allude to other books, which you will

01:29:51.120 | probably need to go ahead and get or find a summary or some way to engage with those

01:29:57.960 | books.

01:29:58.960 | So you study the bibliography and in general most books that are worth reading will stimulate

01:30:03.880 | you to read three or four or five other books, which is one area where this process is ultimately

01:30:09.440 | unsustainable.

01:30:10.800 | If every book you read inspires you to read five other books and you get those five books

01:30:15.080 | and of course those five books all inspire you to read five other books, you're quickly

01:30:18.580 | at a point of unsustainability, which is why those of us who are readers have houses full

01:30:24.160 | of books that we've never read.

01:30:25.480 | We will never read and yet we feel a little bit guilty about having bought them and not

01:30:30.360 | read them.

01:30:31.360 | I've given up the guilt.

01:30:32.360 | I realize that the fact that I know a book is on my shelf and I know what's in it, even

01:30:37.040 | just with a quick skim, is enough.

01:30:38.560 | I know if I'm in that situation where I can go and get that book.

01:30:42.200 | And I go back in my head and I find that idea and sometimes I'll just go and pick a book

01:30:46.440 | up because I want to read in a certain topic for a little bit.

01:30:49.360 | Not going to become deeply knowledgeable in that area, just want to read in it for a little

01:30:53.600 | bit.

01:30:54.600 | I've given up the guilt over buying books that I don't read or that I don't read thoroughly

01:30:58.360 | and I think you should too.

01:31:00.280 | But you do want to make sure that you understand what are the books in a certain area that

01:31:07.400 | are really influential.

01:31:09.200 | I've been talking a lot about money and kind of success in the examples I've given you.

01:31:13.560 | I've not talked about philosophy or theology or some of these more less mainstream subjects.

01:31:19.840 | I've kept it on pertinent examples.

01:31:21.720 | But at the end of the day, you're always going to go back to Napoleon Hill when you're reading

01:31:27.400 | about success.

01:31:28.760 | So you'll see Napoleon Hill referenced everywhere.

01:31:32.120 | So you're going to have to go back to Napoleon Hill.

01:31:35.160 | And so when you get there by the bibliography, once you've read Napoleon Hill, what will

01:31:40.840 | happen is all of the later success literature will just instantly unfold to you.

01:31:46.960 | And it's just like a cascade where you see, "Oh, this idea is just a restatement of this

01:31:50.640 | idea and there's this basic core repertoire of these 25 major ideas in this genre and

01:31:57.400 | everybody's just restating these 25 ideas."

01:32:00.160 | And then in time, when you do that syntopically on an area that you care about, that's what

01:32:04.800 | allows you to then read faster and faster and faster, which is why today when I talk

01:32:09.920 | about money or I read a money book, that's what I do.

01:32:12.720 | I go to the bookstore, give me 10 money books, give me five minutes with each book and I

01:32:16.440 | can categorize them all because there are only so many concepts.

01:32:20.120 | Now the individual stories will be impactful to different people and I'm not denying the

01:32:23.280 | power of a new book.

01:32:24.440 | That's why new books are great.

01:32:26.880 | Books will grab different people at different times.

01:32:29.000 | One person will relate to one story, another person will relate to another story.

01:32:32.940 | And so that's why it's valuable to have an author write new books on these certain things.

01:32:38.880 | But once you've read the whole slew of early retirement books that have been coming out

01:32:45.160 | recently, and I've read a few of them, I should read and review more.

01:32:49.360 | Stuff bores me, which is why I don't do it much.

01:32:52.400 | But at the end of the day, if you just read early retirement extreme by Fisker, you don't

01:32:58.840 | need to read any of those other books because Fisker covered the basic concepts, he laid

01:33:03.680 | out the math and he described the vocabulary of it.

01:33:08.940 | And now everything after that is just simply permutations on an idea, reworking through

01:33:18.240 | things etc.

01:33:20.240 | Now that's not to say that individuals can't add certain things to it.

01:33:24.380 | That's why you still read the books, you still have an idea because you're looking as they're

01:33:26.880 | a unique flavor.

01:33:27.880 | And it's not to say there won't be individual applications to it.

01:33:30.940 | So somebody can take and write a book on how to become financially independent with real

01:33:34.520 | estate, somebody can write how to become financially independent with stocks etc.

01:33:38.040 | But once you've grasped the basic ideas, then you don't need to read carefully every single

01:33:45.760 | book because it's just going to be a repackaging of the core ideas of the field.

01:33:52.960 | And so that's where you get to and you should have a goal of getting to that.

01:33:56.220 | You get there by following the bibliography and following the references.

01:34:01.720 | In my approach to reading, I don't think there's one book that's going to answer all your questions.

01:34:07.960 | I think there are very few categories of things to read in that are going to bring a major

01:34:15.120 | change to your life.

01:34:17.360 | It's actually a very short list.

01:34:19.840 | It's not that much.

01:34:23.480 | Most people will have goals related to their business, their career.

01:34:28.160 | Most people have some goals related to their finances.

01:34:31.480 | Most people will have some goals related to their family or relationships.

01:34:37.200 | Most people have some goals related to their physical health, their fitness.

01:34:41.560 | And most people have some goals related to their spiritual experience, their spiritual

01:34:46.680 | life or their intellectual life.

01:34:49.280 | That's really about it.

01:34:51.060 | And so in those key areas, there are only some basic applications that you do.

01:34:57.160 | Now the most interesting one to me is business and career and finance.

01:35:00.120 | But that's the areas that are most extensive in terms of things you look at.

01:35:05.560 | I guess we could talk about philosophy and spirituality is extremely extensive as well.

01:35:10.200 | But once you master some of those basic subjects, you don't have to keep on going, keep on going.

01:35:16.360 | But most likely don't expect any one book to solve all of your answers.

01:35:21.400 | Expect to read some good books and to have those stimulate other books.

01:35:25.380 | But expect that in time you can't just read one book.

01:35:29.020 | What you'll probably do is read all the books.

01:35:31.920 | And so I've created a list of books to start with, which I'll tell you how to get that

01:35:37.640 | list in just a moment.

01:35:39.040 | But don't expect any one book to do anything other than to give you some new ideas.

01:35:45.480 | As you're reading, think about what's written in the book and deal with what's written in

01:35:50.200 | the book.

01:35:51.200 | But don't expect what's written in the book in any one book to change your life.

01:35:55.960 | I don't know of any one book that has ever changed my life.

01:35:59.120 | What I do know is that reading all the books has changed my life.

01:36:04.200 | I'm aware that may sound overwhelming to you.

01:36:06.920 | I get that.

01:36:08.120 | And I get that in today's world we're supposed to make things sound easy.

01:36:10.800 | But you know what?

01:36:11.800 | I don't think it is easy.

01:36:13.760 | It's not easy.

01:36:15.560 | But it is doable.

01:36:16.840 | And if you develop the skills little by little and expect to read all the books, in time

01:36:22.720 | you'll develop your own application of those things.

01:36:26.760 | There are places for different types of reading.

01:36:28.960 | And that's where the most important thing is simply to read.

01:36:31.980 | What I find at this point, one of the most important things for me is to read widely

01:36:37.420 | rather than deeply in everything.

01:36:40.760 | So I read widely.

01:36:42.360 | And that allows ideas to just rattle off of each other sometimes.

01:36:46.440 | I read the weirdest books.

01:36:48.000 | I would be so embarrassed if my reading lists were published to the internet because nobody

01:36:52.080 | would understand it except me.

01:36:53.760 | I read weird books.

01:36:55.440 | I read weird books and I usually go for, I read the ones written by the popular ones

01:36:59.920 | because I need to, but I usually go for the most esoteric books because often what I find

01:37:04.880 | is the ideas in them can rattle and bounce off and mate with some of the other ideas

01:37:09.240 | in my head and allow me to have a unique perspective on something or allow something to really

01:37:13.560 | sink in deeply.

01:37:15.680 | And I think the same would probably be true for you.

01:37:19.140 | When you read widely, you gain access to different ways of looking at the world.

01:37:24.800 | And that helps to keep your creativity alive.

01:37:26.760 | It helps you to look at things differently.

01:37:28.680 | And what I have noticed is for me, that helps me to be a better financial advisor.

01:37:33.240 | It helps me to be a better teacher and to have more effective examples that help more

01:37:40.640 | people.

01:37:42.080 | And so don't be scared to indulge your esoteric interests.

01:37:46.680 | There's value in those things.

01:37:49.580 | Which brings me to my closing.

01:37:51.560 | If you are now, you're still here, one hour and 38 minutes into this podcast episode,

01:37:57.680 | you are very deeply interested in improving your life and in learning the skills that

01:38:03.440 | you need.

01:38:04.800 | Reading and these skills that we've talked about today are foundational skills for your

01:38:10.000 | success and for your expertise.

01:38:13.220 | You will not be able to move yourself into a very high income position unless you master

01:38:21.440 | an area of your career, your business, et cetera.

01:38:26.640 | You won't do it.

01:38:27.680 | The fastest way for you to get there is through reading.

01:38:31.460 | So you've gotten to this point.

01:38:33.020 | So what I have done is I have created a recommended reading list.

01:38:37.600 | And as with all lists, a recommended reading list is not something where you should read

01:38:41.400 | every book on the list.

01:38:43.000 | It's a list where you should read a handful of the books on the list that speak to something

01:38:47.520 | that you need right now.

01:38:50.000 | Filter books based upon how they speak to you right now.

01:38:53.780 | But if you would like to get Joshua's recommended reading list and you would like to get it

01:38:57.880 | so that you can understand and have some creative fodder for useful and valuable influences

01:39:03.320 | that you can invite into your life, teachers, leaders, mentors, et cetera, go to radicalbooklist.com

01:39:11.880 | and enter your email address there and I will email you my reading list.

01:39:15.560 | Go to radicalbooklist.com.

01:39:17.960 | Again, radicalbooklist.com.

01:39:21.920 | And this is a selection of books that is very tightly curated.

01:39:26.360 | This is just simply my opinions, but I will tell you about the book, why the book has

01:39:30.400 | helped and influenced me deeply, and you can then take that book and read it and experience

01:39:37.920 | a similar transformation.

01:39:39.280 | So in closing today, go to radicalbooklist.com, put your email address there and I will email

01:39:43.800 | you my recommended reading list.

01:39:46.600 | In addition, if I can get it done in the next hour or two, I will create a short presentation

01:39:51.400 | where I will walk you through and give you a video of my copy of Adler's book, How to

01:39:58.600 | Read a Book, that I've been referencing here on my screen.

01:40:00.800 | So I'll show you it and do a short little presentation on that and send you that video

01:40:04.280 | as well.

01:40:05.280 | So go to radicalbooklist.com to sign up to get a copy of my book list and that short

01:40:09.720 | presentation.

01:40:10.720 | Again, radicalbooklist.com.

01:40:11.720 | The holidays start here at Ralph's with a variety of options to celebrate traditions

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01:40:20.500 | You could do a classic herb roasted turkey or spice it up and make turkey tacos.

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01:40:37.060 | No matter how you shop, Ralph's has all the freshest ingredients to embrace all your holiday

01:40:41.600 | traditions.

01:40:42.600 | Ralph's, fresh for everyone.

RPF0673-How_To_Read_A_Book