Do you want to start getting the most out of the books you read, and be able to apply life-changing knowledge to help you reach any goal or desire you have for yourself?
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Introduction
“The great breakthrough in your life comes when you realize that you can learn anything you need to learn to accomplish any goal that you set for yourself. This means there are no limits on what you can be, have, or do.” –Brian Tracy
For years now I’ve been making daily reading a powerful habit in my life. I read life-changing books on all areas of personal development. I also read books on how to build and grow successful online businessess. What I realized, is that I wasn’t remembering everything I knew I could from these books, especially years later.
What good is reading a lot of self-help books, only to forget them shortly after? I knew I needed to find a better way, a system that could help me remember more and get everything out of the books I was consuming.
So, I decided to slow down and enjoy the process of reading, learning, and remembering each book I read by applying what you’re about to learn, one book at a time.
Focus on one book at a time
“The path to more is through less” –Gary Keller, The One Thing
The first order of business was to commit myself to reading one book at a time until completion. It’s easy to start a book, get in a chapter or two, and then let the “shiny object syndrome” begin to interfere and want to start another book. I’ve been guilty of this for many years and don’t recommend it.
I now believe that starting something, only to stop, and jump into something else (even if it’s just a book) starts to show up in other areas of your life. This is teaching you to become a “dabbler” which is the complete opposite of the “master”, and the more often you teach yourself not to complete things — will make it difficult to find success in any area of your life.
I think you’ll find that, if you practice and cultivate the habit of completing one book at a time, you’ll begin to complete other projects you’ve been putting off in life as well.
Making it a habit of reading only 10 pages per day of a good, life-changing book, can have a dramatic improvement on your life. Don’t think you have to consume a book a day to be successful. I don’t recommend that anyway because you’re only going to be able to absorb so much information in one sitting. With the above example, 300 pages per month equates to approximately 12 books per year.
At this rate, and if you apply the next part of the personal development reading system, you’ll begin to grow faster than anyone else you know each year. Why? Most people are too lazy to follow this process.
Highlight, take notes, and bookmark pages
“Many of the most effective people I know are avid note-takers – but many people still haven’t caught onto the value of notetaking.” —Richard Branson
As you read through your book you’ll want to be mindful of “life-changing knowledge” that stands out to you that you can immediately apply to your life.
What resonates with you today may change the next time you read the book, or when you go to review your notes. You may even find yourself preferring certain highlights over others then previously before because of where you are on your personal development journey. As you grow, you’ll begin to look at information with a new set of eyes.
I own most of my books on Amazon Kindle and have been reading on my phone for many years. Only recently have I made the switch to getting a Kindle Paperwhite, and yes, I love it.
When reading a digital book on Kindle or any other device, it is simple to highlight as you read. You can also highlight physical books just the same. While it is just as effective to use a highlighter, I prefer to use post-it’s to highlight the text or bookmark entire pages of my physical books instead. As previously mentioned, what you find to be of value today will change as you grow tomorrow.
Taking notes can be as simple as journaling what you learned daily, either traditionally (pen to paper) or digitally (with the notes app on your phone or laptop). This way, when you look back through your journal, it’s pretty incredible to review all the best key ideas you’ve picked up from the books you’ve been consuming.
Another tip, is to write down your notes in your own words, this helps to further internalize and make sense of what the author is saying.
If an entire page seems profound, rather than highlight the full page and not be blinded with highlighter top to bottom, I prefer to just bookmark the page. This way I know that when it’s time to review the book and I come across a marked page, the entire page is of value.
Revisit, re-read, and review highlights
“Repetition is the mother of mastery” ― Tony Robbins
By following the process above you’re making it very easy for yourself to quickly review the best information you learned without having to re-read entire books. Although that can be helpful as well.
If you’re trying to improve a certain area of your life, or are trying to master a new skill I recommend re-reading a book back to back that you’re getting so much out of. Don’t be afraid to go deep with one book multiple times if it resonates and helps you to become the person you need to achieve the outcome you have set for yourself.
You can then simply implement a ritual for yourself daily, weekly, or monthly to go through and re-read your notes, highlights, and bookmarked pages. Taking this one step further, you can make affirmations from these books that can be applied to your morning ritual to absorb the information into your subconscious mind, especially through repetition and speaking them out loud as incantations.
Taking the time to physically write out all of your highlights, journal notes, and bookmarked pages is optional, but this process may have the most dramatic effect in committing what you learned to memory according to this study. “Our take-home message is to use paper notebooks for information we need to learn or memorize,” said Sakai.
Share what you learn with others
“To teach is to learn twice over.” –Joseph Joubert
One of the best ways to learn information is to teach it. By sharing what you learn with others you get to improve your memorization of the material and go deep with it. Whether it’s telling a friend about the latest strategy you learned, a co-worker about the latest book you’re reading and what you enjoyed about it, or even creating content with it on a blog or YouTube channel.
The process of creating content also forces you to improve you’re thinking skills, grow as a person, and learn the material in a way that really can’t be replicated by just reading notes or highlights.
What good is it to keep all of this knowledge to yourself? By sharing what you learn, you have the potential to add value or even change someone else’s life for the better. Helping others is the ultimate form of success and fulfilment.
Conclusion
To get the most out of the books we read, we need a system for remembering.
Start by focusing on one book at a time. As you read, highlight, take notes, and bookmark pages. Implement a daily, weekly, or monthly ritual to revisit, re-read, and review your highlights. And last, share what you learn with others by teaching or creating content.
This process is very simple, almost too simple. As Jeff Olson mentions in his book The Slight Edge about simple daily habits that can either empower us or disempower us “While they’re easy to do, they are also easy not to do.”
My only regret is that I didn’t apply this process to my personal development plan earlier in life. Who knows how much I could have grown had I started earlier?
Lastly, what type of books do you read? Let me know in the comments.