Here are 3 unconventional reading ideas:
- Read multiple books at the same time. This allows us to connect thoughts across disparate topics—history, science, health, technology, politics, etc. This opens the possibility for us to find patterns that don’t exist when we read linearly.
- Read books written by dead people. Modern books are still on trial; they haven’t stood the test of time. C.S. Lewis once wrote that the only way to protect ourselves from our modern biases and assumptions was to “keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books.”
- Ditch more than you finish. If you read one book a month between the ages of 20 and 80, that’s 720 books in your adult lifetime. To put that in perspective, UNESCO estimates 2.2 million books are published every year. Once we know how few books we actually get to read in our lifetimes, it’s nuts to push through to the end when one doesn’t resonate.
I’d love to hear if you disagree, or if you’ve got any additional rules to make your reading and learning more effective.