How to Read 5 Books a Month | Cal Newport’s Method

00:00:00.000 | I'm Cal Newport and I want to talk to you for a moment about reading.

00:00:06.240 | As a professor and writer, reading is an important part of my life.

00:00:12.040 | My goal is to read five books every month and to hold myself accountable on the first

00:00:19.140 | episode of my podcast, Deep Questions each month, I actually go through the five books

00:00:25.200 | I read that month before.

00:00:27.680 | You can actually go back and see what I have been reading.

00:00:30.720 | Now people often wonder how do I do this?

00:00:33.120 | Five books seems like a lot to get through in a month, but I don't actually think it

00:00:36.920 | is.

00:00:38.120 | So I want to share my secrets to how I get through so many titles.

00:00:43.060 | So quickly, I'm going to have five reasons to share with you.

00:00:46.480 | Four are small.

00:00:48.260 | The fifth is going to be the big critical one.

00:00:51.320 | Now before we get into those five reasons, let's briefly answer the question of why this

00:00:54.360 | even matters.

00:00:55.560 | Why bother reading so many books?

00:00:58.160 | Well I am convinced that if you do intellectual work, so if one of the primary ways you make

00:01:04.840 | money is by creating value with your brain, alchemizing dollars out of the stuff of thoughts,

00:01:14.440 | reading is critical to you.

00:01:16.880 | Why because reading is to your brain what exercise is to your body.

00:01:21.760 | To work with books means you are grappling with complex ideas, trying to make connections

00:01:26.120 | between different types of theories or ways of seeing the world.

00:01:29.520 | It helps your ability to empathetically put yourself into other people's shoes and understand

00:01:33.360 | life through other people's eyes.

00:01:35.960 | All of this is critical.

00:01:37.280 | It's calisthenics for the gray matter up here.

00:01:41.520 | It is a huge competitive advantage if you work in knowledge work.

00:01:46.300 | You need to work out your brain.

00:01:48.000 | Reading is one of the best workouts that we know about.

00:01:51.040 | I mean I find it to be surprising the degree to which we obsess so much about physical

00:01:56.160 | health and we get into minutia about different exercise routines or supplements or exactly

00:02:01.960 | how you eat and yet we barely think at all about how to keep our brain operating at its

00:02:07.680 | full capacity even though for most of us we depend way more for our livelihood on our

00:02:13.520 | brain than we do these days on our body.

00:02:15.400 | So I care about getting the most out of our brain.

00:02:18.320 | Reading is a fantastic way to do this.

00:02:20.920 | Alright five books a month.

00:02:22.320 | Five ways to help you get there.

00:02:26.600 | Number one choose more interesting books.

00:02:30.640 | Now I think this is something that trips people up.

00:02:34.000 | They think about what book should I be reading.

00:02:37.960 | What book is going to impress other people if they heard I read it.

00:02:41.520 | This is a quick way to get stuck.

00:02:43.840 | To hit a dead end on some giant tome and just give up on reading altogether for a while.

00:02:49.140 | Choose a wide variety of books.

00:02:51.080 | Switch between novels that are just absolutely fun and you're lost in with nonfiction books

00:02:56.120 | that are just hitting a sweet spot.

00:02:57.680 | Mix in some deeper books or some more interesting books.

00:03:00.360 | Big variety.

00:03:01.760 | Different difficulties.

00:03:03.320 | Different styles.

00:03:04.880 | Also mix between audio and written.

00:03:06.600 | I think that's absolutely fine.

00:03:08.840 | Find what genre of books you can listen to well that are compelling on audio.

00:03:12.440 | Some are better in your ear than they are on the page and always have one of those going.

00:03:15.800 | That's one or two books a month already happening just in your spare time.

00:03:20.600 | So mix it up.

00:03:23.000 | In the month that we're in right now and I'm recording this for example.

00:03:26.360 | I read Lost Moon.

00:03:28.720 | This is just a nonfiction account of the Apollo 13 disaster.

00:03:32.300 | It reads like a thriller.

00:03:33.740 | It's just a fun book.

00:03:35.420 | It's easy to get lost in and you could just go down a rabbit hole and get lost in it.

00:03:41.840 | At the same time I also read a much more dense biography of Daniel Boone.

00:03:46.760 | I was just curious about that point of American history.

00:03:49.640 | You mix it up.

00:03:51.240 | Alright that's number one.

00:03:54.380 | Number two.

00:03:56.040 | Schedule reading sessions like you schedule exercise.

00:04:00.240 | So give them respect in your schedule.

00:04:02.680 | Hey, you know what?

00:04:03.680 | I'm going to get home from work at this point.

00:04:05.600 | I'm going to put aside a half hour I want to read today.

00:04:07.980 | For tonight between dinner and when we put on a show I'm going to have a reading session.

00:04:12.120 | Sunday morning before we get out of the house I want to put aside an hour to read.

00:04:16.680 | Start actually putting reading on your calendar just like you would with exercise.

00:04:21.720 | Very few people tackle physical exercise with the mindset of if I have time and I'm in the

00:04:26.440 | mood I'll do it.

00:04:28.760 | As we know from long experience that means you will do exactly zero hours of exercise.

00:04:34.180 | The same is true for reading.

00:04:35.520 | If you're just saying, hey, if I have a lot of time and I'm in the mood to read then I'll

00:04:38.760 | do it.

00:04:39.880 | You're not going to find that time.

00:04:42.160 | Pages will not get turned.

00:04:43.380 | So treat the activity with respect.

00:04:45.380 | Actually schedule time.

00:04:48.020 | Number three.

00:04:49.960 | Put rituals around reading that makes it more enjoyable.

00:04:55.960 | I like for example if it's a Friday night, it's the end of a long week to have a drink

00:05:02.280 | with a book and just sort of get lost in my study, just lost in a book and enjoy a little

00:05:07.940 | bit of bourbon.

00:05:09.840 | There's something to that.

00:05:10.840 | I also like leveraging during the nice weather months my porch.

00:05:15.880 | I have a nice porch.

00:05:16.880 | I have an outdoor couch on it.

00:05:19.080 | There's some columns that frame a bunch of plants in front of me.

00:05:21.920 | It's all very verdant.

00:05:23.260 | It's all very scenic.

00:05:24.560 | I like going out there and reading.

00:05:27.560 | If I'm reading a demanding book, I like to have something like tea or coffee with me.

00:05:33.560 | If I'm reading a fun book like a novel, I like to have some crackers to chew on.

00:05:37.240 | That's an old habit from my childhood.

00:05:38.960 | But nice rituals surrounding the reading makes you more likely to do it.

00:05:46.340 | Number four.

00:05:47.600 | Do closing pushes.

00:05:49.600 | This is a big part of my secret to getting through all five books each month.

00:05:55.700 | When you're just working on a book or two in the background and you get close to finishing

00:06:00.000 | one, and by close I mean you're at that last 100 pages, you have some momentum, you've

00:06:04.520 | been working on this book for a while and you can see the finish line in the hazy distance.

00:06:11.040 | You say, you know what?

00:06:12.800 | Let's just get this done.

00:06:14.760 | I'm going to put aside two and a half hours.

00:06:17.520 | I'm going to hold myself up and I'm just going to go, go, go.

00:06:20.640 | I'm going to the coffee shop, you know, hold my calls, two hours.

00:06:25.860 | I'm going to push final sprint.

00:06:28.280 | Let's get to the finish line.

00:06:30.320 | That really helps.

00:06:31.320 | So instead of just petering off or trailing off as you get towards the end of a book,

00:06:35.380 | this allows you to actually push to get done.

00:06:39.140 | This brings us to the fifth idea for reading more each month.

00:06:43.300 | The most important of the five ideas I talk about in this video, and that is to take everything

00:06:50.200 | interesting off your phone.

00:06:54.780 | This is my secret weapon.

00:06:56.500 | Perhaps the most important secret weapon I have to support my reading life is the fact

00:07:00.500 | that I have never had a social media account.

00:07:04.440 | The effect of this is that my phone is not very interesting.

00:07:09.500 | There's not much for me to look at on my phone that is going to distract me.

00:07:13.280 | So what do I do when I'm bored?

00:07:15.020 | I'm at the table, I'm just sitting around the house waiting for someone to come over.

00:07:18.340 | I've woken up early before my kids and I don't know what to do with myself.

00:07:21.460 | I read.

00:07:24.700 | Reading becomes my default activity when I don't have something else to do.

00:07:30.500 | Now remember when Apple first introduced a few years ago that screen time feature, when

00:07:36.740 | it revealed to people how much time they were actually spending on their phone and everyone

00:07:40.460 | was surprised they were seeing two hours, three hours, four hours a day they were looking

00:07:44.580 | on their phone.

00:07:45.700 | That is a lot of time.

00:07:47.660 | We underestimate how much time we spend looking at those little glowing pieces of glass.

00:07:52.460 | Imagine how much reading you get done if that two, three, four hours a day was diverted

00:07:57.580 | towards pages in a book.

00:07:59.940 | Tell you what, five books a month no longer looks all that difficult.

00:08:04.060 | So take everything interesting off your phone.

00:08:06.400 | Take off the social media apps, take off the YouTube apps.

00:08:09.660 | When you feel that itch of boredom or you have that downtime, just have a book nearby.

00:08:15.700 | Retrain yourself to make reading your default activity.

00:08:18.380 | Even if you do nothing else I advise in this video, that alone is going to skyrocket the

00:08:23.900 | amount of books you get through each month.

00:08:26.100 | Oh, by the way, there's a side benefit to that as well because now that time that used

00:08:33.660 | to be spent on your phone is going somewhere not just more productive, but you are avoiding

00:08:38.700 | the anxiety, the stress, the addictive emotional manipulation that these apps are inflicting

00:08:45.140 | upon you every minute that you're looking at them.

00:08:47.340 | So you gain a positive over here because you're going deep in a book, doing cognitive calisthenics,

00:08:52.100 | building up that competitive advantage against everyone else who makes a living with their

00:08:55.140 | brain while at the same time avoiding a major source of negativity.

00:09:00.900 | The difference between two hours spent on Twitter versus two hours spent grappling with

00:09:06.420 | Thoreau on the quality of your life is significant.

00:09:13.220 | It's worth at least trying.

00:09:14.620 | All right, so five books a month is not actually that crazy of a goal if you come at it the

00:09:20.940 | right way.

00:09:21.940 | So let's just go down my five tips real quick.

00:09:24.660 | Choose better books, schedule reading time like you would exercise, have good rituals

00:09:30.620 | surrounding your reading, do big closing pushes when you get within 100 pages of finishing

00:09:35.220 | a book and most importantly, make your phone boring so that reading can once again become

00:09:40.180 | your default leisure activity when bored.

00:09:46.500 | The reading life is a deep life.

00:09:47.900 | The reading life is a good life.

00:09:49.300 | I recommend it.

00:09:50.740 | Give it a try.

00:09:51.260 | [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:09:54.620 | (upbeat music)

How to Read 5 Books a Month | Cal Newport’s Method

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