How to Read Hard Books

I hate it when I dive into a hard book maybe philosophy fiction or some other classic that's notoriously hard and you think how the hell am I going to get through this already in the first five pages you're doubting yourself and wondering how you going to get through it let alone to the end and in that moment you feel all your ambition just fizzle away like it was nothing that is the worst feeling for any reader you felt it I felt it but how can we get past it I'm no Professor or scholar who's read for decades I haven't even lived that long but still I've had the time to practice and experence and really see what works and what doesn't when it comes to beating hard books and I found a technique that will not only help you get to the end of the hard book but actually leave you feeling satisfied that you've understood some of it but if you want to first get there then you have to accept one ugly truth and it's that it will take time and it will take effort because no matter what the self-improvement reading gurus whatever no matter what they say there is no hack or trick to just understand a book like in the snap of a finger it doesn't exist and I'm not here to sell you that b yes so I'm just going to be real and say it does take an investment but it's so worth it because for the effort you put in you receive 10 times more wisdom and knowledge in return so now that everything's clear and we're on the same page what is this technique well it's as simple as rereading the book that's your ticket to success it sounds simple because it is but there is one crucial difference that you have to understand so that you can avoid that typical frustration and allow yourself to use it in order to beat the hard book rather than being crushed by it let me walk you through how I do it in the first reading of the the book I would go through it as normal but with one crucial difference I would never stop to understand things that I didn't get and I know it sounds crazy I thought the same thing but hear me out on this because once you actually put it into practice it makes a lot of sense let's say you were reading a tricky book by Plato or some piece of fiction that was thought-provoking and quite dense as you read you will encounter passages that you just don't understand at first maybe it's an argument that sounds like gibberish doesn't make sense or in the case of fiction it might be events or emotions that are not really obvious as to why they're there there's clearly a deeper meaning to them that you just can't grasp yet now here I would expect that you stop it makes sense after all you have to stop understand and then move on right you might completely cut off any further reading until you've been able to say I get this point and only then can I move on and that makes sense of course it does you want to stop and actually get what you're reading but I found that in the past when I did this especially with harder books where you have to do it often I found that it actually slowed me down and I realized that because I was getting lost studying each tree I would lose sight of the forest the bigger picture and perhaps most importantly I was killing my momentum by stopping so often to to deal with things I didn't understand I was just getting frustrated and because I had to constantly slow my rhythm it was just pissing me off and I wanted that progress and that momentum to carry on through the book so ironically even though I felt I was being productive I was actually kind of sabotaging my reading because not only was I losing sight of the the bigger narrative but I was also just getting fed up and frustrated and there had been times it made me quit cuz I was just sick of it I I wasn't enjoying myself and I didn't feel like I was learning as much as I should have been and that's where that one crucial difference comes in the fact that we don't stop to understand things so when I got to something I didn't understand instead of getting out my pencil and getting out commentaries and all this extra stuff I would just move on and don't get me wrong this felt really weird in the moment it felt almost scandalous or wrong to just leave it behind Like An Unfinished piece of work it didn't feel like I had that closure and it was strange at the time I'll give you that and I'm sure it will feel strange for you too but you just have to trust that process temporary you will eventually get a chance to go back and kind of patch those holes up so what's the hype of this system you get to the end of the book understanding 10 20% that doesn't sound too good so what's the point of doing all this this system is stupid if you stopped at the end and did nothing else that's the mistake I made in the past I would finish the book and because I didn't really enjoy my time with it I would just leave it on the bookshelf forever it would collect dust and I wouldn't dare to return to it cuz why would I it was not a fun experience but this next step is where the magic happens you take that unfinished story and finally peace pie everything together this one cohesive picture that you understand so what I do next is I let the book simmer I just leave it on the bookshelf to collect my thoughts to have a break from it and to just let the ideas kind of solidify and what I do after a few weeks or months is I return to the book and this time you're not going to return to it empty-handed because you have something powerful in your toolkit you've already read the book so you have an idea of what's to come and just because you read it before you have this amazing Foundation to build upon you have the big picture now and with that big picture you have the ability to fill in the blanks and understand way more I always imagine it that you have a framework and now your secondary reading will be you adding bits to that framework the bits you previously missed it's likely that you walk past some kind of construction site every day maybe when you're out to school or work you see something being built and where do they start with they always start building first the foundation and then the the structural parts of it I'm not sure exactly what you call that in the building terms but they start with the parts that keep the building together like the skeleton of the building the thing that holds everything in place those are theun functional parts and everything else is less important you have all the the furniture and the interior Decor that stuff is good but if you have no structure to keep it together it's pointless it's all just going to come collapsing down and that's exactly what you just did here if you get to the very end of the book without stopping you've built yourself that skeleton that framework because you have that Foundation understanding all the bits in between becomes so much easier another good way to see it is a puzzle when you do a puzzle which bits do you start with maybe you find some bits in the middle but chances are you're going to find the Border first and once you found the Border pieces everything else inside becomes so much easier because you've defined those boundaries and made it easy for yourself to do the rest again it's the same when you reread if you understand the main Concepts in your first read through then understanding all the the details and sub arguments suddenly becomes a lot easier all the doubt you had previously starts to leave your mind and you feel actually confident that you can approach this book and you can get to the end understanding everything and again don't get me wrong cuz this is not an easy process this will take a lot of time and it will still take effort to understand things but I found a handy tip that can help you deal with that mental fatigue and slowness cuz let's face it you and I we're not medieval monks we don't have the time to study for hours a day and to go through difficult pieces of work so what I do to balance my energy levels and keep my motivation up is I always balance this hard book with something easier so for example I'll usually start off with a hard book and this is the history of the pelian war I don't actually know if this is hard I haven't read it yet but let's say is for now I would start with this when my mind is fresh and ready to take on some like big ideas but after some time once I feel like I'm getting sluggish and it's kind of taxing on me I would switch to something easier something that's more chill like this some light non-fiction and because this takes far less energy to read it's not difficult for me to make that switch so with that tip you can simultaneously get your hard reading done but also then get more reading done of something that's easier and maybe more fun in the traditional sense and this technique is amazing because you can reread read the same book as many times as you want this is a lifelong process and if there's stuff you didn't understand even the second time you're going to have opportunities to reread it again again and again and every single time you reread it you're going to understand more your mind will get more mature you'll have more like background knowledge to understand it and it will just get better for you it will take time it will take patience but if you can do that then you have real knowledge coming your way and of course it gives you the confidence to say I'm proud of myself cuz I got to the end of this hard book and at least I gave it to run for its money and even if I missed a lot this time I'm going to come back to it stronger than ever so give that a shot with the next hard book you try and believe me it will change how you read them forever and of course if you have any experiences with hard books then I'd love to hear them I'd love to hear how you beat them and how they challenged you how they tested you and of course thank you so much for watching

Channel: Odysseas

Views: 58,512

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Id: _5X9qRrAeHY

Length: 7min 47sec (467 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 25 2024