Focussing On One Or Multiple Books At The Same Time

[Max_V]

I started reading self development books last year december and since english is not my main language I am quite slow on finishing books. My question to you guys is do you guys focus on one book mainly when you are reading or are you reading multiple books at the same time. 

Regards,

Max

[Max_V]

Mhh that makes sense indeed. I am reading Six pillars of self esteem right now but sometimes I just find it really hard to focus on reading those long pages for a while. I am really trying but once in a while I find myself reading a part and thinking "what was this about again?" I need to find a way to be become more focused on understanding the words rather than quickly scan over them.

[Lawrence]

There is a really good personal growth book called The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson and a daily discipline from it is to read just 10 pages of a life changing book. Easy to do, easy not to do but if you do, it will help you very much and will make it easier to get through all the books you want to read.

[Max_V]

@Lawrence I will take a look at it. I'm currently reading Inner Engineering by Sadhguru though, really awesome book too

 

@Lawrence You should! Sadhguru is one of my favorite teachers. He is great

Edited May 9, 2017 by Max_V

[Lawrence]

I've heard good things about that book, I'll have to check it out

[Paul McCarthy]

I stick to one book and study it until I'm through it.

I come from the viewpoint that if you study 10 books per year - and I'm deliberately using the word "study", rather than "read" - and you take the time to digest and apply it to your life, then you'll reap far greater rewards than focusing on volume.

For example, Max mentioned The Six Pillars of Self Esteem in the discussion above.  This book took me 32 days to get through and I took over 14k words of notes - this seems like a long time and rather excessive.  But, the stuff I learnt and applied from this book changed my life. ..

I'm not exaggerating, either.  

What's the ROI on that?  Immeasurable.  

With something as critically important as self esteem, that's worth spending a month or two... or even six months to get it right.  

The new found sense of self esteem has cascaded down into many other areas of my life and helped me push forward with other personal development projects that I'm doing.  

So, the way I look at it is this:-  Don't focus on the result, but the action.   In other words, don't focus on how many books you've read, or how fast you're completing books.  Instead focus on doing 1 hours worth of study each and every day - master that consistency.  

The speed at which you get through the books is irrelevant and is more of a vanity metric than anything else.  Have faith in the fact that if you do relentlessly one hour of "study" per day, then the results will take care of themselves.  Take the longer term view.

Here's a video I made about one year after starting a self development project of reading 140 books and producing video reviews of them (I'm currently on my 38th book and 14 months into the project) and some of the learnings I took from that:- 

 

 

 

TLDR:- Quality and application over quantity has definitely reaped the rewards for me.  Take as long as you need to learn the concepts and apply them to your life. Don't rush through books because it feels like you're accomplishing something by reading more books.

Edited May 17, 2017 by Paul McCarthy

[Max_V]

@Paul McCarthy Thanks a lot, this made me very aware of the fact that I do rush through my books sometimes.

I've already thought of an awesome way to save the information, gonna buy a notebook for each of the books and in them I will write down the most important things and how to implement it nto my life.

Really cool you answered on an old topic of mine, your tip is going to help a lot

[Paul McCarthy]

That sounds like a good idea.  

Another thing you might want to experiment with, depending on how much you like use your computer / laptop while reading, is to use Evernote.  

I record all my notes in Evernote mainly because I can very quickly and easily revert back to the notes I've made through the search both on my phone and on the laptop. 

It's not an ideal solution though because I usually have to read like this:-