My Reading Strategy for Maximum Insight

this is my entire reading strategy from start to finish over the past year through lots of failure and experimentation I've tailored what I think is a great approach for the analytical reader it uses many powerful learning techniques to take every single book I read and let me squeeze out as much insight as possible but at the same time it keeps it simple because complicated workflows are hard to stick to they set you off for disappointment and then leave you feeling frustrated whereas this process is seamless and free of frustration I'm happy to say that this process focuses on the learning and not all the gimmicks that surround it I must warn you though this is not casual it will take time effort and patience but that's where the real value comes from the real wisdom and perspective before we jump into the meat of the system we have to first slow down and think how are we going to choose the books we read Because what you choose can make or break the entire experience going forward so it's important what do you read when there's a million books out there just the thought of choosing one in that massive ocean is intimidating but thanks to this system I've made it a thoughtless process I know exactly what I'm going to read next and there's no extra friction in choosing what to read it keeps things easy and removes just another mental burden the backbone of my entire reading life comes from one list one that I didn't make and this might sound weird but bear with me I can do this because I trust this list I'm confident in how it was made and I have no doubts that it's going to give me the education I'm looking for these are the great works of Western tradition this list was brought together a few decades ago by a group at the University of Chicago and that includes Robert Hutchins the president but also Morman J Adler who's the famous critic and the author of how to read a book it's one of my favorite books one that inspired me to take reading more seriously this list is a collection of some of the finest works that the world has to offer I don't think there's any other list as rich and dense in wisdom as this one there's three criteria that every single book must meet in order to get into this list and that's what makes them such powerful choices for the well-rounded education you might be looking for the first criteria is that they're not only relevant in their history but also in modern matters I have a few of them back here and once you start reading some you'll find old solutions to new problems and it's truly mind-blowing the second criteria is that they must revolve around great ideas in the great conversation now this is more abstract but I like to think of it as the ideas that we've been thinking about for thousands of years things that define The Human Experience like truth beauty Justice goodness all these big Ideas the third criteria is that they must be deep enough to make rereading them worth it every time you dive back into one of these books you can find a new depth to it maybe for your entire life now I love the idea of a structure in my learning one that takes me on this journey through all the greatest minds of history and then leaves me at the end with what I can say is a well-rounded education and you can be sure there's some bangers on this list there's Homer there's Shakespeare there's Adam Smith there's dostoevski there's everything you could hope for and that's why I trust the great works list as almost the backbone of my reading career the trunk in the middle and I have the experience to back it up because right now I'm working through the ancient Greek tragedies and I'm loving each and every single moment it keeps my learning focused and giv me that direction so if you also like the idea of this structure and order in your learning then I'll make sure to link this list down below of course I'm not strict in sticking to this list and you don't have to be either I'll supplement it from more modern books of all kinds and these will usually come from my massive Goodreads list when a book catches my eye in the store or someone recommends it online maybe even you then I'll take this book and just add it to the list and for that small effort you'll see it saves me so much effort later on so picture this I've just finished the aesan trilogy now it was great there was lots of insight lots of writing to do lots of analysis and I had a great time with it but it was a bit heavy so maybe I want to change your pace before moving on to the next play and The Simple Solution is just look in the goods reach list it's that easy so all I have to do is take a quick scroll through it see what I'm feeling and then read it there's no long-winded searching there's no asking people what to read none of that I always know what to read and I make that process as simple as possible free from any pointless friction now comes the reading this is the mundane daily effort that actually gets you the results you want the wisdom and perspective you're looking for as I read there will always be a pencil in my hand 100% of the time because without it you're shooting in the dark it's how your reading goes from passive to active because you're interacting with the words on the page you're not just listening but you're asking questions too you're not just accepting everything at face value because you're thinking critically and you're not just glossing over the author's ideas because you're truly taking the time to understand them and this is only half the benefit because yes writing is probably the best tool for learning but it actually saves me hours of effort later in the process I write knowing that my future self is going to read these notes again I've recently reread the Odus plays by Sophocles and if you've ever read anything to do with Greek mythology you know it gets confusing everything you read in this book is connected somehow to The Wider universe and you can get to the end of the book having missed maybe 200 references to characters to events to stories all these different things and I know once I finish this book or maybe revisit it in the future I would have forgotten a lot of these references now if I did write notes it would be such a pain in the ass to flick back through all the pages and try and get back into the groove and remember everything again so to counter that I simply annotate the book you probably can't see at the moment but there are annotations on almost every page and this is me almost walking my future self through the book it can look like asking questions in the margin things that I want to find the answer to it could be me numbering different points in an argument so it's easy to follow it it could be taking a huge block of text in the book and then summarizing it into a neat little sentence it could be that as I'm reading I find an idea that connects to something else and I think oh that's interesting I'll bridge that Gap and make that connection but my favorite thing to do above all of that is to Simply take an idea and explain it in my own words to me that's the ultimate form of note taking it's easily the best way to take what you learn and almost integrate it as your own knowledge to truly make it yours the author is just a guide in this process it's your effort that the learning relies upon and I should mention that sometimes I use index tabs to Mark where I put these important points and again this is purely a quality of life thing it just helps me find the most important notes later on in the process and all of this stuff sets me up for the next stage which is where the magic happens now it's time to process what I've learned and truly cement it into my mind when I say I read a lot that is almost a lie because for most of the time I spend reading I'm actually writing instead and I know that's sounds bizarre but it makes so much sense hear me out when I get to the last page of a book and close the covers that is 20% of the work done the bulk of the process the 80% will be spent writing notes remember I said this wasn't a casual approach I love writing notes because it gives me the chance to take the most impactful ideas from each and every book and really discuss them and flesh them out so once I finish a book I'll actually go back to the start and just start flicking through the pages again and if I find notes that stood out to me I'll give them the formal write up they deserve and if this sounds like a lot of work it's because it is and by no means am I saying that you have to do this to have a good reading life that's ridiculous but I know that this works for me and there's a few good reasons why it works so well one reason it's so powerful for learning is that it makes your reading slow slow isn't that a bad thing I have to apologize to all the speed reading gurus because good learning is slow wisdom is a slow and careful process one that can't be rushed and if you try and rush it you're just going to sabotage yourself all of the greatest philosophers thinkers and writers of the world only got to that level because they dedicated their entire life to their craft so why should we expect anything different by writing I purposefully slow down the flow of ideas and I give time to digest and understand them yes it takes time but it's so much better than speeding through the book and just skimming the surface you can never regret taking it slow and being thorough in your reading and a happy side effect of this is something that every reader wishes for and it's that you're going to remember so much more of what you read if you allow yourself to think about it and reflect the second reason I love this process is because it gives me the room to practice my writing let me ask you a question how do you become good at something do you watch a bunch of YouTube videos on it well it helps but not really no do you read lots of books about it again it gives you the raw information but it doesn't really get you anywhere it's none of those things and actually it's even simpler to get good at something you have to do it a lot and slowly get better at it over time and this basic truth will shine in your book notes I've been writing for years when I was younger too I would even make these little informational posts on Instagram with a caption on basically whatever I was reading at the time just to help me solidify the concepts even though I posted them publicly I knew that no one would read them cuz why would they I didn't care they didn't care and the writing was kind of shitty and while this was good for my learning at the time I made one of the stupidest mistakes that would cost me years of writing experience because back then I didn't care if my posts were good or not I would write them and the urge to improve was nowhere to be found as a result I stagnated I ended up going nowhere and I wasn't improving at the skill I loved so much but this all changed my current system and I can show you exactly how I did this in the past year I've committed to improving my writing because I want my words to carry more weight and I choose this because writing quite literally changes the world it moves hearts and Minds it inspires people to Greatness and it educates to me that is worthy of a lifetime of attention when I give my notes a detailed write up I'm allowing myself to practice writing every single day yes I write in other formats Beyond this but the fact that my notes are hundreds of words long it gives me that extra practice and makes me improve much faster and it's no SLO either because I'm truly invested in the ideas I'm writing about I find them interesting everything about this process is personal to you and that keeps the whole experience fun in the long run you don't need discipline if you have a genuine love for the craft my third reason for in-depth notes is that they are a long-term investment into my writing one that will save me potentially hundreds of hours in future projects it will make more sense when you answer the question what is a book now it sounds obvious but at the same time it's a little bit abstract so let's start with what we know in most cases a book is centered around a single unifying Topic in this case how to infn friends and influence people it's that that's the main topic of the book but it's also divided into chapters and each one of these chapters within the book is going to relate to this theme somehow and then if you go into each chapter you'll find that it's just a collection of arguments and those arguments are a collection of paragraphs and sentences and words and maybe you can see how I'm going with this because every finished book is just a result of many building blocks coming together to form this one idea when I take the time to write out these detailed notes I'm collecting the building blocks that one day will become this or maybe they'll become a video script or an article or an essay or maybe even a thread on Twitter the point is I'm collecting the building blocks that one day will build up to larger projects in the future and all because my past self put the effort in writing those bigger projects will be so much EAS easier in the future for example let's say I wanted to write an essay about Envy I would go into obsidian which is my notetaking software and I would look at the Envy tag and that would give me suddenly all of the notes I've ever written relating to Envy this way I'm never starting from scratch I can then explore this network and see of these notes what is going to be helpful for my current project and if that sounds amazing it gets even better because if your past self took the time and effort to write well with Clarity then chances are most of the writing is already done sure you have to do some editing and you have to adjust the structure a little bit but most of the writing is there already and you're just taking it and piecing it together and all of a sudden it makes this large project this essay or book or whatever so much easier because you've done most of the work plus every single note has a reference to where it came from so if you ever need to jump back into the source material it's there for you the more you add to your notes the stronger it gets for your future writing and I can vouch for this because it's serving me right now I'm I'm writing a book right now one that I'm excited to show you and in the process notes from months ago are resurfacing to help me and it's amazing so if you're in a similar position you want to produce some writing then I would recommend a system like this because it makes life so much easier okay back to my reading strategy cuz I tend to drift off on tangents there I have a set of folders that store all the notes I made from a specific book or article video whatever so take aulus again the Greek playright now this isn't it but let's say I finished reading Prometheus bound I write up everything that resonated with me in that book in this one note dedicated to the book and to save myself a huge pain in the ass later I label each note with the page I found it from so nothing crazy so far this is all standard note taking and you probably have a system that looks very similar to it but here's where the twist comes in I add an extra layer to these notes that unlocks a new power to them as I write these first notes I'm talking within the context of the book I'm talking about the characters the themes what they did and all the ideas as they sit in the book and that's great for understanding the book itself but there's a way to make the ideas even more valuable once I write up the book notes I think so what what's the important reflection or takeaway from what I've just written by doing this I seek the meaning of what I just read maybe the message of the story or in the case of non-fiction the central points I look for these nuggets of wisdom and I turn them into what's called an atomic note and if they sound the same they're not because they have this one crucial difference that gives them a new Strength that your old notes didn't have these notes are stripped from the context of the book in other words they're self-explanatory you don't have to understand the rest of the book to get what this note is telling you and suddenly because they're freed from the context of the book you've given them the room to connect to other notes whether that's in the same book or completely different ones and this is where the magic happens this is where the interesting links start to form now when you start to link these notes they'll usually be quite obvious related to the same topic but every so often you'll get two ideas that are so distant but then find a way to connect to each other and that's where your mind gets blown for example just the other day I was writing about the decline of cron who's a character in a Sophocles play I wrote up the notes as normal and then I looked for any notes that could relate to it somehow using the search function and honestly I wasn't expecting to find that much because this note was quite different to anything I'd ever written but I stumbled across a note that explained his situation perfectly one that I had completely forgotten about from probably months ago it was a note about how sin breeds chaos and funnily enough it was from another Greek play but I had completely forgotten about it and just like that I had created a connection and made something unique this is where knowledge becomes yours sure it's good to reflect on an author's ideas but that will only get you so far where are your ideas when you read many books and start to mix and match ideas you create a fresh angle to an existing topic and some of these angles are going to be completely unique to you these are your most precious insights and this notetaking system is the perfect environment for them to arise the more you add the more connections can form and sooner or later it becomes this idea generator this tool for Unique thinking okay I've been rambling about the system for a while but you might be wondering how do you actually structure the notes themselves my preferred format is a mini essay and I've already made a whole video talking about why they're so great for reading and writing so do check that out but I'll keep it short here mini essays are short but detailed notes that dive into a single interesting idea I keep them short so they're quick to write and I avoid burning out but they're just long enough to allow me to flesh out my ideas and practice my writing because I aim for professional writing I try and keep my mini essays short informative and entertaining as if I'm sharing them to the world but depending on the note I might use a story to get the point across or in the list format it all depends on what I'm writing in most cases I use a simple three-part structure of my notes I first hook the reader in and really get them engaged and then I might build some tension or expand on the point and then send it home in the conclusion with some final powerful message but that's just me and if you think these have a rightful place in your learning then I would do your best to structure them in a way that serves you for example if you wish to get better at fiction writing then maybe use a story to convey most of your points because that will force you to practice and to really engage the reader with emotion so only after this point my reading is done I've achieved my goal maybe it's a new perspective on something maybe it's research for a future project or maybe it's just being able to say I checked another Masterpiece off my list I've tried this system it works and I couldn't be happy with the results and maybe some element of it will help you too and of course I love to hear your system how do you approach reading like what are the maybe common struggles or successes that you find within that as always my emails are open the comments are open and thank you so much for watching

Channel: Odysseas

Views: 63,479

Keywords:

Id: 0ue53UR2c48

Length: 16min 49sec (1009 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 25 2024