How To Be A Prolific Reader - Ray Bradbury's Advice

now before we start i want you to take a look at your bookshelf there are probably a lot of books on there some of them you've never ever read and as we investing more time into technology into distractions and into endless streams of procrastination there's a really good chance that you're going to be thinking to yourself how in the world am i gonna dig through all of the books on my shelf reading takes up a lot of time and we all have this idea in our heads of reading being this very hermetic activity where you're gonna lock yourself in the room for hours on end and shut yourself away from the rest of the universe in order to get some good reading in so what you read here doesn't really matter because there are simply too many good books out there you might want to read that treatise on the origins of species you might want to read the essays by mischa de montenegro or you might simply settle for descartes meditations these are all great books for sure but having this idea of being some hermetic person just to read could actually be kind of counterproductive because if you think about it the more that you insist upon this idea of that you have to lock yourself away from a room for hours and then to read the bigger the goal becomes and the bigger and the scarier the goal becomes the less likely that you're actually going to do the reading nowadays we really have the concentration in order freedom to really dive that deeply into books so thereby by conjuring up this really giant thing in your head by conjuring up this fantasy it's actually going to drive you away from reading instead of driving you toward it we need to stop fearing the boogeyman and to actually get some decent reading in in my opinion how much you read on a daily basis actually doesn't matter that much whereas consistency on the other hand which i've talked about before in other videos of mine is much more important it is way better if you read 20 pages a day and sustain that over the coming months than if you read 200 pages a day and completely burn yourself out you need to get to a point where you don't even have to think about reading it just happens it needs to become a part of you reading needs to be a part of your daily routine science fiction writer ray bradbury had a really brilliant tip for the next thousand nights before you go to bed every night read one short story they'll take you 10 minutes 15 minutes and rewind poem at night from the vast history of poetry go back and reach shakespeare read alexander pope read romper frost but one poem a night one short story a night one essay a night for the next 1000 nights the beauty of this tip is that everyone can do it you totally can spare 15 minutes to read one little short poem and a short story before you go to bed every night it really takes the excuse and the fear out of the equation you can sit down and do it before you go to bed enjoy the story enjoy the poem and then bugger off the bed and it's really important to point out that ray bradbury suggested that we read from multiple pursuits of disciplines one short story one poem and one essay what this does is that it builds up a requisite variety within you it prevents you from getting bored from just reading one book for the entire duration of this month it could also build these very unique connections in your head if you read from multiple pursuits of disciplines the more exposure to different fields that you have for example you read an article from cosmos before you go to bed and you read one poem from william shakespeare and you read one hemingway short story at some point all those points of references are gonna start to integrate together and then you're gonna have this really beautiful understanding this interdisciplinary understanding of literature of poetry and of contemporary science personally my reading habits are a little bit different from ray bradbury's advice i typically like to read non-fiction or university reading or hard fiction first thing in the morning over a cup of tea so that my mind is really clear and i can sort of make sure that whatever i'm reading i'm giving it a thousand percent concentration and before i go to bed i typically whip out a short story here and there or read a chapter from a fictional work that i like and to finish it all off i'll read one random poem from a collection on my shelf let it be allen ginsberg let it be ts eliot let it be william shakespeare let it be william wordsworth anything read one poem every single night poems are really short and then after two to three months you come back to your progress you take a look at all the stuff that you've read what's going to start to happen is that you know that elusive idea is no longer there reading is no longer scary reading is no longer this giant monster that you have to tackle from that point something really powerful happens now because you've got the base habit of 15 minutes a day down you can then build on top of that and to turn yourself into a very prolific reader and that's really how prolific readers were made when they were younger they read a bit here and there and then the more that they've read the more that they fall in love with reading and by the time they turn 20 or 22 23 they'll just become excellent readers reading everything from shakespeare to the romantics to you know anything that you throw out of and that's the vision that i want for you reading prolifically doesn't have to be scary that's all i have for this week if you haven't signed up for the newsletter i would recommend that you do so to keep yourself up to date with all the goodies coming at you in the coming future and also thank you guys so much for 20 000 subscribers it's just it's blowing my mind i can hardly stand a crowd of 50 people now there's 20 000 people out there watching my videos it's just absolutely mad nevertheless the newsletter's got a new design again because i am a bit stuck in my head you'd be surprised how much time i actually spend you know designing every nuke and granny of the website the newsletter i want to make everything perfect and worth your time anyway rc walton here and i shall be signing off right now see you guys next time

Channel: Robin Waldun

Views: 192,881

Keywords: how to read more books, how to remember what you've read, commonplace book, r.c. waldun commonplace book, how to read a book, rc waldun, how to read more often, ray bradbury, writer's advice

Id: bzOBSLKC5Fw

Length: 5min 17sec (317 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 01 2020