Book Reading

[Blackjohn]

So I have noticed a problem that I have.Every time that I read a book I find it difficult to grasp and "save" every point that it is written and I have the ideology that I have to  understand and note every single thing that it is written.Maybe I go too fast or its just lack of focus.Do you have any suggestions to give and end to this?(types of books:self-help,philosophical)

I just want to find a way to understand and use the theorutical parts into practice

[alyra]

could try to open to a random page and reading from the middle of it. read a paragraph, then repeat the whole process. maybe even switch between books. 

[egoeimai]

@Blackjohn it's anxiety dear kotsos. 

Just hang in there , relax and take your time, detached from the outcome and I highly recommend you to watch Robert Najemys video about this subject . If you're interested I can send a link. 

[Blackjohn]

@egoeimai Yes I am highly interested and If it's convinient for you send the link. Σε ευχαριστώ πολύ im case your are Greek.

[egoeimai]

Of course watch the whole thing which is 4 parts . Enjoy ✅

[Echoes]

@Blackjohn Maybe check out the book "How to read a book" by Mortimer J. Adler. I am reading it currently and it definitely has very good points in it. Has the potential to improve and revolutionize your book reading forever imo. The topic can of course be a bit dry at times, but I think it's a good time investment if you are reading a lot.

[Michael569]

One of Eckhart Tolle's books (or maybe more of them) has a very specific sign at the end of each chapter or an important section. This means that you should stop and ponder for a while before going on. 

Perhaps try to draft with a pencil random sign or a word STOP on every 2nd or 3rd page or at the end of each sub-chapter to give yourself the sign that it is time to stop reading and think. 

Another great way is to take notes as you read. I like to use highlighter and take notes later. Whatever works for you.  Review your notes during your commute times or when at the toilet  

[Christian]

You are not supposed to save every point in a book; look for ONLY the information you can apply in your real life. The KEY points that really ressonate with you. Even when you have written something down in your notes, you are not likely to remember it in the long term if you do not study what you have learned repeatedly over time. Learning takes time. 

You need to commit to drilling your notes into the subconscious mind. Like reading out affirmations. You want your subconscious to be on board with the brilliant ideas in the book.  This takes commitment and frequent repetition. Study your notes actively; don't just read over them once after finishing a book. That way, you will never remember what you learned. Trust me, I've been there  

[Rob06]

I developed quite a practical way of reading a book over the last years. This process is really helpfull for me, it helps me to get a lot of juice out of the books I read:

1. First I select a book on a topic that I really want to work on (duh!), like something on life purpose if I want to work on that, or something on emotions if I want to work on mastering that area of my life. So I select my book very purposefully and strategically, because reading a book that's really good at the wrong time doens't help you anything huh (believe me, I've been there)?

2. After I chose the right book to read I start reading the first chapter and underline all the most important sections in that chapter (that's different for everyone). This underlining of the most important sections might be hard at first, you might underline too much in fear of "losing" a lot of information. But when you ask yourself what you want to get out of the book (what is my purpose with reading this book?) before you start reading it, you become pretty intuitive in underlining the right stuff.

3. When I finish the chapter I start reading it again, now a bit faster, and I write all the most important points (the underlined passages and sentences) down on my Laptop. Uh, that is, I type them in a Word document, I don't write them on my laptop with a pen.... 

4. I repeat steps 2 and 3 for all the chapters in the book. I also make sure that I do all the excercises in the book at least once, and yup, that's sometimes a bit tedious because I want to read on, but when I don't take practical action on what I read, I might as well not read it at all.

5. Now that I read the whole book and did all the excercises I have a document with all the most important points of the book per chapter. Cool! I read this document at least once or twice to see if I really understood everything and to remember the key points better.

After this process you should have a pretty good understanding of the material you've read, and you've got a summary on your computer that you can always go back to if you forgot some of the important points! This process will take you longer than just reading the book once and jotting some points down on a piece of paper, but I think it's really worth it  .

I'm a pretty slow reader, but I have been able to increase my reading speed a lot with the book Breakthrough Rapid Reading by Peter Kump, and I'm still working on this. This book also goes into getting a better understanding of the material you read and remembering it better.

Hope that helped!