Ryan Holiday's 3-Step System for Reading Like a Pro

it's a weird thing to say but i i guess i'm a professional reader that's really what authors are having written 11 books now i've read a lot of books so what i thought i'd do today is explain my method for reading for organizing what i read and keeping what they call a commonplace book that organizes all that information in a system that i can refer to in the course of my actual life and do on an almost daily basis so when i read i read with a pen and i read physical books i know that other mediums are easier but to me with too many screens in our life you're watching this on a screen reading should take you away from screens ideally i take the time and i sit down with a physical book as i'm reading i'm either highlighting uh writing in the margins i'm breaking it apart i beat the crap out of it when i meet people who have read my books and they show me all the dog-eared copies and that they beat the crap out of it i take that as praise you're supposed to be in an argument in a discussion it's a two-way street with you and the author so when i read i i fold the pages sometimes i use these highlighter flags i'm i'm having a conversation this is cicero's on the good life which i bought 15 plus years ago and i read and i took these notes but it's actually just rereading it yesterday for a project i'm researching so you'll see there's different some of it's in highlighter some of it's in pen and as i was reading it it occurred to me that i think i'd read it another time about five or six years ago looking at a project so you'll see in the margins the things i'm sometimes it's a word that i want to look up sometimes it's a story that i like sometimes it's an example a moment in history that i know nothing about that it's catching my attention so i'm folding the pages as i read often as well this is david mccullough's biography of truman you know truman famously says that not all readers are leaders but all leaders have to be readers again you're reading to get information to make you better at what you do so this is a you know a short 1100 page book probably took me a week or so to read i spend a lot of time with it i don't read fast speed reading is um but as i as i went through and read i'm folding the pages that i like i'm marking things that i think are of value to me so you'll see i probably did a hundred pages here this is a practice that readers have been doing forever you read you fold the pages you write down you argue in the margins you're noting what's important to you and then what so when i finish a book like this i let it sit i put it on the shelf behind my desk and i just let it sit couple weeks a month and then now's the hard part especially on a book like this i know my hand is going to ache by the time i finish but what i do is i sit down with it and i break it apart and i take all the things that i like and i put it on note cards so like here's a little story that i'm gonna use in an email for daily dad i'm writing a book right now about courage and i actually used this exact quote here in the book he said what made mr truman great is that he decided this idea of not equivocating of making hard decisions making them quickly owning them this is an example of him living that idea and living up to it so these are all things i'm going to write down on note cards so you know let's say i do this book i might get this many note cards on it so i'm taking the note cards where do they go it's not in a black hole i keep what is called a common facebook so commonplace books historically were done in journals you know you can see thomas jefferson's commonplace book there's commonplace book of montana they would just write down things that they they like i do it on note cards because this is what i learned from robert green robert green famously builds his books about note cards so this is my commonplace book these are note cards on all different topics things that have resonated with me that i'm going to use in one of my books so i have different themes themes about stoicism i have themes about strategy education the obstacle is a way you can see here my book the obstacle is the way began as just one little section of note cards in this box and then eventually it spreads out to its own box so in each the corner of each card i'm writing the theme of why that resonated with me how i'm going to use it and then eventually if i'm going to use them as writing they spin off i take them out and i collect them and in a single book my uh might be one or two of these boxes so each one of my books is a collection of note cards that i make part of the process of of writing the stuff down and there's a reason i do it long is that it's helping you create kind of a muscle memory and i could just read these on kindle highlight them and send them to my evernote but it's actually reading it once going back through it writing it by hand organizing it this forces me to go through the material over and over and over again until it's locked in my brain i've now interacted with the material so many times that i have kind of a fingertip feel for what it is what it means and how i might use it really what a commonplace book is it's kind of like a a backup hard drive of your brain it's it's things you couldn't possibly remember but you kind of have a vague sense of them but that you think might be usable in the future you know the obstacle is the way for me as i said began as just a single note card first i read meditations so i read the quote there the impediment to action advances action which stands in the way becomes the way so i first read the quote there then i read pierre-edo's the inner citadel and it's in this that he calls that exercise turning obstacles upside down so i went through it i marked it turned it into a note card started a new category here in the commonplace book this book leads me to this book which leads me to note cards which leads me eventually to write this book so again it starts with the raw material and it's about the refining and the organizing and the checking and the finding patterns that eventually culminates into some usable idea this isn't just a tool for writers it doesn't matter who you are or what you do chances are you're coming across wisdom or information in the course of your life that isn't relevant or of use to you just yet but in the future it likely will be so what you're doing is investing now you're putting in the time now and you have to trust that in the future you'll be able to put this to some good use you might be looking at this and go that took a lifetime that took forever i can't possibly catch up but there's that great expression like the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago but when it's the second best time the second best time is now if you're not reading if you're not keeping the common place book it's not too late start not tomorrow not next week start now don't wait for the perfect step just start reading reading actively read as part of a great practice and then start putting in the work in whatever form makes sense for you again i can't rave about this process enough i can't overstate the impact it's had on my life if you want some more information we talked a lot about this in our read to lead course based on that famous quote from truman about readers and leaders you can check that out at dailystoke.com reading it's one of the best things i think we've done and almost every story in it ironically came from the archives of my commonplace book i've heard from thousands of people over the years who've started their own process because of it and i hope you become one of them hey it's ryan holiday thank you so much for watching our videos every day i send out an email inspired by the best stoic wisdom marx realist seneca epictetus all designed to help you live a better life that's what i'm trying to do the email takes five minutes to read over 300 000 people get it that's the largest community of stoics ever in the history of the world i'd love to have you check it out totally free unsubscribe whenever you want but i think you'll like it sign up at dailystoke.com email

Channel: Daily Stoic

Views: 229,826

Keywords: Reading like a pro, 3-step system, Daily Stoic, Ryan Holiday Interview, Ryan Holiday Stoic, Ryan Holiday Daily Stoic, einzelgänger, massimo pigliucci, einzelganger stoicism, Stoicism TED talk, marcus aurelius, marcus aurelius meditations, ryan holiday podcast, Stoic, Stoicism, reading, read more, read like a pro, get more from reading, read to lead, Harry Truman, Cicero, commonplace book

Id: gT1EExZkzMM

Length: 8min 7sec (487 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 06 2021