Step by Step System to Learn from Any Book

In the last two months we have covered all the skills and mindset that is required to become a speed reader and an effective reader.
If you have done all the lessons and drills I have covered, you would now be reading much faster than you what you have started with.

What You have learnt so far:

1. Bad habits of reading and how to overcome them
2. Learning state
3. Drills to train your eyes and hand to move faster.
4. Right mindset for reading
5. Using pacer while reading
6. Increase your vision span.
Etc.… Etc. … Etc.….

This lesson will help you to connect all the dots.
In this lesson we will learn two things

1. Complete blueprint on how to read a book. (step by step)
2. How to use all the skills we have been learning together till now.

I will keep this lesson short and simple. I don’t want to write 50 pages if I can communicate the same message in 5 pages. You can start applying this lesson today.

Let's get started:

These are the steps you have to follow to read any book.

Step 1: Begin with end in mind
Step 2: Go to learning state
Step 3: Overview and preview
Step 4: Read
Step 5: Review.

Step 1: Begin with end in mind

Always have a specific purpose before you start reading any book. You must have clear idea of what you want to get out of the book and why you are reading the book.

The purpose for reading the book could be:

a. Pass exams
b. Enjoy a good fiction book
c. Learn new skills and/or improve existing skills
Etc. Etc. Etc.

Whatever the purpose is, decide before you open the book.

If you are not clear about the purpose, ask yourself these questions:

1. What do I want to achieve from this book?
2. Why I am I reading the book?
3. How much time and effort am I willing to spend on reading this book?

Time it takes to set purpose: 1 sec to 30 seconds

Step 2: Go to learning state

I have covered this in detail in previous lesson. You must go to learning state/alpha state before you read any book.
Time it takes to go to learning state: 1 sec to 20 seconds

Step 3: Overview and preview

I have covered preview in lesson on bad habits. You must do preview of the text before you start reading.
While previewing/ over viewing you must look for look at table of contents, index , headings, author writing skill , whether any diagrams are used and any key words popping out .

This step will give you complete picture of how the book is organised and you would be in right state of mind before you actually start reading.
One of the big advantage of doing overview/preview is after you have finished with this step you would have got lot of familiarity with the book and you would get a feeling that you have looked at this before while reading.

Note:

You are only looking the important section and not reading at this stage.

 Time to spend to overview and preview: 1 sec to 5 seconds per page (Max 5 seconds per page / Approx. 15 minute for 200-page book). 

You are only looking at this stage and not reading. So, it won’t take time.

Step 4: Read 

You would have noticed that many people start at this step and skip all the previous steps. That is why they are average reader and you are an effective reader.

In this stage, you will do the actual reading. In this step you will follow all the tips and lesson I am teaching from lesson 1.

a. Use pacer while reading
b. Focus only on understanding the text. Forget about recall at this step
c. Don’t underline or make notes. You can put light marks.
d. Have a Mindset which I have shared in previous lesson.
e. Have only good habits and overcome bad habits (If you haven’t overcome till now).
f. All the lessons and tips you have learnt during the process of this course.

Note:

a.Go with the flow at this step. Don’t become conscious of at what your reading speed is or whether what you are doing is right or not?
b. 100% of your focus should be on understanding the text and/or achieving your purpose and nothing else.

For Non-fiction and technical books I break this step in to two parts:

1^st reading I focus only on 4-11% (important parts) - Refer to last lesson _ Right Mindset.  At this stage, I am focusing only on getting the main ideas of the book. It normally takes 60 minutes to 90 minutes to complete reading a book if I am focusing only on getting main ideas.

I have released one more lesson – How to find main ideas in any chapter/book. This lesson will help you when you are doing your 1^st reading.

2^nd reading I read everything if I want to get more information. I do 2^nd reading for limited books. I do 2^nd reading only for those book where I feel, I want to get more information or it is worthwhile to read. In most of the books, my purpose is solved in 1^st reading.  If it is a technical book, then it is required to do the 2^nd reading as well.

If you follow this strategy, then you would have read the book multiple times and your understanding will be deeper.

 
Step 5: Review. 

After finishing what you have read. Do a quick review of what you have read. First review should be immediately after you have finished reading.

Second review should be after 24 -48 hours
Third review should be after 1 week
Fourth review should be after 1 month and
Afterwards every 3 months.
Note:

1. Review will only take fraction of time it has taken to read. It would take less than 10 minutes to review one chapter.
2. You need not follow the review schedule for the books. Follow the review schedule for only those books which requires review and those books which are worth reviewing.

So to summarize follow this steps to read all the books:

Step 1: Begin with end in mind – Set a purpose
Step 2: Go to learning state – Before you start reading any text.
Step 3: Overview and preview- spend 1 sec to 5 secs on every page looking at important text.
Step 4: Read –

Break this step in 2 parts:

1^st reading – Read for main ideas of the book

2^nd reading – Read the book completely, if you want more information and deeper understanding.

Step 5: Review – At regular intervals.

Important: You can follow the above steps for majority of the books. For remaining books, you can eliminate few steps depending upon the book. For eg. You don’t need to do 1^st reading and review for reading a fiction book.   If you any book, where you have difficulty in applying the above steps, mention below I will guide you.

Action step:

1. Pick a nonfiction book and read the entire book by applying the above steps.
2. Share your experience.

~Srinivas Reddy