How I Read 50 Books In Half A Year (Reading Strategies)

[Music] in December of last year I decided to start a challenge for myself I wanted to read more now before this I wasn't really a big reader I didn't like it so much in the school and I only read maybe one or two books a year so I made it a daily habit to read every single day at least a little bit it went well and then between December and March I had gotten through quite a few books in March I realized if I tweaked just a few things about my reading strategy I could get through 50 books in the first 6 months so I did I want to share with you guys the strategies I used what I learned from reading those books and at the end of the video even give a one or two sentence summary of each of the books so you'd know which ones to avoid so before this I was never really a good reader the most books I've made through in a year I think were two or maybe three and even those took me a really long time see I thought my attention span was the problem as soon as I'd sit down with a book and crack open the page by the time I get to the third or fourth page my mind goes into a million different directions and I just don't have the patience to continue sitting down and reading what's in front of me I still own plenty of books though I bought them kind of because of a FOMO of the information in the books whenever I go to the book store all the books were so well laid out as beautiful arrangements and I bought these books with good intention to read them plus most of these books came with reviews and I kind of just felt sorry for myself there are other good people out there reading these books having a good thought to say and leaving reviews like best book by this author in a long time one of my top 20 books I just couldn't put this one down definitely on my top 50 list and before this point I don't think I've ever read 50 books toting at a rate of 2 books a year assuming our lives to 80 I'd have less than 120 books left to read before I died now that doesn't sound too bad but I drew out what that would look like and it's actually pretty depressing this is it I've drawn out every single book that I'm going to read for the rest of my life I even start with smaller lines because I thought I'd take up more of the page but this is a that's pretty sad but there's just so much good content out there to consume between Netflix YouTube Instagram I just jump back and forth between all of these staying distracted but I understand that none of these really give me any value with the exception of some Graham Stefan or some trash talk and visually seeing how many books I was missing out on gave me enough motivation to change something immediately I decided to cut my time down on social media I installed Facebook Instagram even YouTube for a while to help me regulate my time this dropped my daily time from a really crazy four or five hours a day down to just a few minutes I'd only ever redownload the apps to check up on friends or family every once in a while maybe a few times a week I replaced this time by getting the Kindle app and just opening that app up on my phone whenever I was bored or wanted to usually open up social media then I could read my book for a few minutes and put it away but I had tried the strategy before and it never really worked out for me I would always start reading and read for five days in a row and then kind of drop off for three or four months it's kind of like people that find out they can't fit into a pair of jeans anymore and then they start going to the gym and they go for a few weeks straight every single day and then one day they just stop going and ever come back so I had to implement the same strategy that got me going to the gym the first time and once I started I never really missed a week or even a single workout the reason I was able to make the gym a habit is I went very consistently and I really enjoyed doing it so to stay consistent with my reading habits I had to really really like reading books to be able to read them consistently previously I hated reading some books because I absolutely didn't think they were interesting but for some reason I felt like I had to finish them like maybe there was something really good on the next page or that I felt like I had to prove myself by getting through this challenge of reading the book or maybe he was highly recommended on Amazon or by a good friend I didn't want to and down or take others opinions for granted I adopted a no bad book policy as soon as I got disinterested in a book I just stopped reading it now I broke this rule a couple of times but for the most part I stuck with it and books that I didn't find interesting I didn't end up finishing now once I had made it through a few books I noticed something my reading speed really sucked I try to watch a few videos on speed reading to increase my reading speed but it really didn't work for me I found myself feeling rushed so I didn't really enjoy the books that I was reading which broke my rule so I gave up on speed reading but I had to find another strategy that allowed me to get through a lot of books I started reading 15 minutes every single morning I allocated time specifically designated to this where all I would do is read and I got to do it in the morning with my morning coffee so the addiction carried over as well I think it worked I wake up at 6 a.m. and after taking my dog outs making my coffee I'd have about 25 minutes to a half hour to just sit down and read one before it was difficult to focus on something for more than 10 minutes without the distraction of social media and now having a habit of this specially designated time for reading it became a lot easier and once I really began enjoying it I actually started looking forward to having some time in the morning after getting out of bed to sit down and read the time it took me to finish each book vary quite a bit it only took me about an hour to finish Guerry these crush it but I didn't over for days at 15 minutes each however it only took me two days to blast through the first 15 lives of Harry August and this is like a 10 hour read for me while I couldn't increase my reading speed by increasing my reading consistency and frequency I was able to get through a lot more books and once I got a few books under my belt it became kind of like a game to get as many as I could another strategy that I used was not letting myself read as much as I wanted to this will also fix the issue of working out five or six or seven days in a row being completely burnt out and completely avoiding it well I could have read more I spot myself a little bit short and put down the book before I got burnt out for the first week I literally limited myself to 15 minutes a day and no more this really helped because almost every time I put down my book ready to pick it up again I'm sure a big question many of you have is how much did you really retain from a book or what did you get from it or how much do you even remember after going through so many in such a short period of time I think I retained quite a bit and most of that is because I didn't read too fast I had a very relaxed reading speed and I was able to carefully go over each page I never felt rushed to get through a book I also liked on my books and I never felt the need to ignore one just so I could get on to the next one if I didn't like it I just dropped it I also mark up my book with the things that I find most interesting after reading the book I go over my highlights and see what I kind of got from the book as a quick recap this is incredibly easy to do with my Kindle and then the Kindle app on my phone some books like the ones I used for reference or marked up quite a bit but honestly how much of a book do you remember that you read six months ago probably not much unless it was a text book but those are pretty boring and that breaks one of my rules I understand that if I read five books back-to-back all are on stock investing they kind of blur together it'd be difficult to separate the different thoughts and ideas from each one but I'm not interested in taking notes and marking up a book just to tally what I learned from it I realized that if I read each book carefully and with intention I will likely retain a lot of the information I learned from it my goal is not to be able to list out the individual points and where I learn from each and every single book that I read I think what I learned is retained deeper than just surface level Factory call but retention is never perfect so I do absolutely intend to reread some of these books hopefully next year and I'm sure with a new perspective that I'll have next year I'll gain a lot from the books just by reading the same thing I'll make sure to cover which books made this special reread list later but I I do have a secret to share I didn't really read all of these books I listened to quite a few of them living in Alaska things are pretty far apart if I wanted to go to the near small I'd have to drive over six hours my commute to work is 45 minutes a day and I make this commute five or six times a week this puts my average drive time to about 220 hours a year I know I'm not alone the 2017 american community survey showed that average commute time was up to twenty six point nine minutes a day that's close to 120 hours a year for many people this is a huge untapped block of time read if the average american let's do a book on every single commute i reasonably think they could get through 20 books in a year now I know some hardcore readers are gonna say that this doesn't count and that real reading takes meditation like focus and a lot of discipline and concentration in my opinion reading should be fun and for most people having to work hard at it isn't going to give them enough consistency and reading to make a valuable difference if there's ever a time where you feel like you were forcing yourself to read you should try to put yourself in a different environment or find a better book one last tip for those using audiobooks crank the speed up to 1.5 X or 2 times X the regular speed usually in post-production of the audio recording they slow it down to make it a little bit more digestible when listening to it but by increasing the speed you can close the gaps between words and have the sentences flow better together this can double the amount of books you could get through I do the same thing with YouTube videos and podcasts as well I also wanted to get a one or two sentence summary of each of the books whether I decided to read or listen to it and whether or not I'd recommend it this won't be the order that I read all the books I often jump between genres and subjects to help keep me interested reading eight books in a row on real estate was really helpful but if I had to read three books in a row on index investing I'd probably want to die the go-giver a short book on mindsets really quick read highly recommended the compound effect this isn't a some book small consistent changes are so so undervalued I'll definitely be reading this book again as soon as next year Habits of Highly successful people I thought it's a pretty good book with good content but it seemed a little condescending to me life is and how's your soul these two are both written by Judah Smith he's the pastor of church home the church I like to go to when I'm in Seattle if you like Judah it's kind of like a conversation with him tools of Titan's by Tim Ferriss wow this book is incredible I read tribe of mentors last year and I really liked it it reads the same exact way with a slightly different layout it's an informal interview with tons of informal business leaders of the world they talk about sports cooking all kinds of different things from the most professional perspective I couldn't recommend this one enough get rich carefully it's a book written by Jim Cramer about how he analyzes businesses and decides whether to invest or not it's extremely technical but if you like stocks you might like it if you're not into stocks it's an incredibly dry book it's not for beginners sapience by you've all know Harare whoa this is a completely mind-blowing book if you hate history in high school this will completely change your mind in the subject I will definitely be rereading this book again soon the topic the covers are just so broad I'm sure after even a year I'll come back with the book to a new perspective home adios after finishing sapiens buy you've all know Harare I immediately jumped into this book because the first one was so so incredible this one is just as good and it talks about technology and the future of humans 21 lessons for the 21st century this is the third book by you fall no Harare and I've read this one right after the first two this one is a little bit more about politics and current events which didn't interest me so much but I understand why other people like it the one thing if you waste too much time jumping around between different tasks this is a good book to help you prioritize so I wanted to learn Spanish and I thought that this book might be able to help me out and learn it quickly turns out there's no secret to being really proficient than anything without either devoting a lot of time or effort into it moonwalking with Einstein after that last book I thought my time might be better spent with memory techniques and trying to improve my memory up to a near photographic level which I realized isn't a real thing turns out this requires a lot of time and dedication too so I still forget my bank account passwords all the time awaken the giant within I picked this one up because a lot of people recommended Tony Robbins and I knew I'm not a huge fan of him before going into it but I thought I'd give it a chance about halfway through I really got fed up with the writing style and I just couldn't finish the book so this one doesn't count the first 15 lives of Harry August I read this one about halfway through my six months and it served as my genre break from all of the business and vesting and self-improvement books I had been reading it was a good book but I don't feel like I really learned anything so I was really eager to get back to my self-improvement books and I liked so much how we bought a 24 unit apartment complex the book on rental property investing the book on managing rental properties investing real estate with low no-money-down tax strategies for the savvy real estate investor and the book on flipping houses now we get into the bigger pockets books I read all of these back to back in the course of just a couple weeks because I was extremely motivated to get more into real estate investing I started looking for a rental property when I got into the second book and I kind of had to get through a lot of them in a very short period of time because I didn't want to make a mistake and and do something wrong just to read about it next week but I also didn't want to wait and not buy a property just because I hadn't learned enough about it yet this ended up being one of the most productive reading periods of that six months and I ended up with the duplex at the end of it I highly recommend reading all of the BiggerPockets books if you're planning on getting into real estate they gave you such a huge foundation of knowledge it's really invaluable the book on estimating rehab costs this figure Pockets book deserves its own review I learned so much from this book it is crazy I highlighted almost every single I took notes on everything everything was incredibly valuable it really blew my mind about houses if you want to get into real estate but don't even understand the difference between bat or blown insulation this is the book for you every landlords tax deduction guide this book really sucked it read like a refrigerator instruction manual and this is coming from an accountant who is already familiar and understands the basic principles of taxes I can't believe I actually made through this book do yourself a service and read the tax book by bigger pockets instead never split the difference I don't like books like this negotiating with high pressure tactics and trying to trick someone in conversation really isn't my thing but after watching an hour-long interview with Chris Voss it really changed my mind on the perspective that he was coming with in writing this book awesome book on negotiation liars poker this is the second book that I never really made it through about a third way and I realized all I ever going to talk about is Wall Street debauchery and it wasn't something that I was into unshakable I decided to give Tony Robbins another chance and this book was really worth my time it talks about the basics of investing like get a mutual fund but it also covers things that are a little bit more in depth like life insurance and I thought that was really cool the little book on common sense investing the intelligent investor a random walk down Wall Street these books are all the same index fund promoter just pick one 10 extra this was a fun motivational read grant is a really fun character if you had the option to I recommend listening to this book he adds in a bunch of tidbits in the audio version that he doesn't in the book I think like every chapter he goes off script and says going off script with this one and usually it's actually pretty interesting information that he adds Rich Dad Poor Dad this is a classic book I highly recommend reading and if you haven't already it's super short I think it took me like an hour maybe an hour and a half and for that short time commitment I really think it's gonna be worth my time reading it year after year I'm I'll get something new and have a new perspective on it each time I read it how not to be wrong nudge and Thinking Fast and Slow these books all talk about the same common fallacies of human thoughts and emotions I think all the books use the same two or three or four studies or experiments to illustrate these concepts and there's only a few original or new thoughts sprinkled across these books it's like telling your friends that they could copy your homework and just change a few things to make it look different when to rob a bank I like the guys at Freakonomics and I thought it was a pretty interesting read about statistics and applied economics the checklist manifesto and we should apply the concepts more than other businesses rather than just hotels and airlines still worth my time though shoe dog the other night is an incredible business leader this is a must-read for entrepreneurs I will teach you to be rich ravit is a really funny guy and this was a very easy read if any of these books have to be required reading material in high school I'd hope it'd be this one profit first I already made a video on applications of this book for business that I work with but I think it's a really cool cash flow management strategy and it's pretty easy to read the dichotomy of leadership I think if I was more into the military this book would have been more interesting to me most of the points he makes are kind of common sense and often even contradictory the military story just wasn't enough for me to really like this book wild at heart this is another Christian book it was recommended by Brandon Turner of BiggerPockets it's about men doing wild and crazy adventurous things zero to one it's an awesome book by paypal founder Peter teal I'm a big fan of Elon Musk and this guy I worked with him so he thinks the same way I would definitely be rereading this on a hard copy version and highlighting all my favorite parts for later reference essentialism it's a great book on minimalism I'll probably be rereading this one after a year maybe two hopefully with a new perspective of what worked for me and what I'd like to improve next crush it crush Thank You economy and askgaryvee this was my Gary B stint and I absolutely love it if you could just put your first impressions aside of this guy you might be able to learn something that will change your life forever these books inspired me to continue on to my youtube channel despite me being really embarrassed about it and kind of worried what other people would think in Gary I trust never eat alone this is another book that I'll definitely be rereading it completely changed my perspective or on professional networking and why so many top-level people spent a lot of time on golf and dinners and parties I think I desperately need to improve my networking abilities and this book gave me really actionable steps to take the art of the deal by Donald Trump I give myself an A plus $100 start up this book read a lot like Tim Ferriss is the 4-hour workweek but only for the first half the book it kind of fell off by the second half if you're interested in starting a business is low money down at least read the first half let my people go surfing after listening to an interview with the author I thought this book would be a little bit about human resource management and flex time work policies and implementing those into a growing business turns out is just an autobiography about the founder of Patagonia I thought he was kind of a hippie and I disagreed with a lot of his thoughts but he started Patagonia and I didn't so Who am I to judge good to great this is a really comprehensive book on successful and seemingly successful business leaders and I think that anyone that wants to be in a corporate managing position should make this book required reading final thoughts on these 50 books it didn't make me a genius but probably didn't make me any Dumber and I know for certain it was a much more productive use of my time than the alternative I would have done which is just wasting it on social media and I'll likely be attending the same challenge for the second half of the year if you've read any of these books please leave a comment down below letting me know what you thought I'm really interested in hearing what the different perspectives are on these same books that I read or if you have a wreck for a different book for me to read in this next six months please please let me know I'll definitely be adding it to my reading list I'd also really appreciate if you can hit that like button as it helps others see it with the YouTube algorithm and if you haven't already hit that subscribe button thanks for watching the video I really appreciate all you guys for sticking around to that for in the videos like this it really means a lot to me

Channel: Daniel Iles

Views: 1,839

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: read 50 books in half a year, reading strategies, how to read more, a book a week, two books a week, how to read more books, max joseph, How To Read a Book a Week, tips to read more books, speed reading techniques, how to read faster, how to read more books in less time, how to read a book a week, speed reading, how to read books effectively, read more books, read a book a week

Id: MkZEd56A9_A

Length: 22min 13sec (1333 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 07 2019