Unread books are the norm. Stop blaming yourself for them

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Why the most successful people have so many unread books and how to read nonfiction effectively.

We are accustomed to the fact that books need to be studied from cover to cover, so we feel a terrible sense of guilt for another purchased and unfinished bestseller. But still we continue to visit the bookstore, arranging a whole collection at home.

And if fiction for understanding is better to read in full, then you definitely should not worry about an unfinished non-fiction book. The main thing is to highlight and assimilate what you need.

Why don't we finish reading books

We live in a society dominated by knowledge. We are surrounded by a huge amount of very different information. So huge that it is difficult for us to assimilate even a small part of it.

In order to parse all this array of information and turn it to its advantage, society constantly comes up with how to effectively search for the necessary data. They appear in a variety of media and formats. And a person is still faced with an unbearable amount of knowledge that is available to him. All this information boom is forcing us not only to read more, but to do it differently.

Surely no book lover would refuse to plunge into the world of fiction in the old fashioned way. But if you read business books in the same way, they can be boring and irrelevant. We close them in half, read them in fragments, and do not start some of them at all - and we feel a real sense of guilt. But there is nothing wrong with unfinished books.

Why you shouldn't blame yourself for unread books

The main thing is not the number of books you read, but the amount of knowledge that you could get from them. If you learn to isolate the main thing and cut off the unnecessary, unread books will no longer seem like a dead weight.

The Italian writer and philosopher Umberto Eco has collected over 30,000 books. The Thomas Jefferson collection numbered over 6,000 titles and was the largest library in the country. And Bill Gates of all the rooms in his house most of all loves a huge library with an area of 195 square meters.

And they hardly read all the books in their entirety.

Most successful entrepreneurs read only 20–40% of the books they buy. Many people read more than 10 books at a time.

I seem to have started reading half of the books I have and finished about a third of what I started. As a result, it turns out to finish 1-2 books a week.

Patrick Collison founder of Stripe, billionaire

To read as efficiently as possible, follow the example of successful people: they use special life hacks to select and read books.

How to read for maximum benefit

1. Think of books as an experiment

Emerson Spatz, a serial entrepreneur and investor, has read thousands of books. He believes that buying a book is an experiment.

Indeed, you need to spend a certain amount of money and a little of your time. But in return, one of the books can turn your life around.

Moreover, the more such experiments you conduct, the higher the probability of success. Yes, you will most likely have to choose, buy and study a dozen books to find one that is really useful. But the successful experimenter is willing to put up with some losses.

Every time a purchased book turns out to be complete nonsense, you still get one step closer to the one that can change your life.

2. Practice fractal reading

All books are accompanied by metadata - these are interviews with authors, book presentations, annotations, reviews, quotes, first and last chapters. And often they are just as valuable as the entire book. And that's why.

• They are free. You can pre-estimate an unlimited number of books. Therefore, every experiment buying a copy will have a better chance of success.
• You get access to information in various formats - in the form of texts, audio and video - and you can fit it into your life as you like. For example, watch an interview with an author on the way to work, or listen to an audiobook snippet while cleaning.
• The short versions of the book mainly contain the key ideas.

The book is a concise collection of the author's best ideas, and its metadata is a condensed version. Therefore, this reading can be called fractal. A fractal is a figure, each fragment of which is similar to another and the figure itself as a whole.

Perhaps in our time it is more efficient to read a non-fiction book using the fractal method than from cover to cover. This makes it easier to determine which works to dive into and which chapters are most important.

• Read 2-3 book annotations. They can be found on the internet. For almost any book, you will find several synopsis, which often contain the most important information - the 20% of ideas that create 80% of the value. We remind you that we are talking only about the non-fiction genre.
• Listen to an interview with the author. The interviewer works for you by asking relevant questions, carefully selected based on the results of reading the book.
• Watch the author's talks (TED or university lectures). When an author has to fit a 200-page book into a 20-minute lecture, he shares only the most important ideas and examples.
• Read all the helpful reviews for the book. Not only positive, but also negative.

Read the first and last chapters - you can find them in Google Books and the free snippets. They usually contain the most valuable information. It is also worth paying attention to the first and last paragraphs of each chapter, because, as a rule, its main idea is presented there.

3. Let unread books remind you of how much you still don't know

It always seems to us that we know much more than we actually do. We are surrounded by constant reminders of what we have achieved, but we forget how little it is.

Comparing all the knowledge that humanity could acquire and what we have now is like comparing the universe and a small grain of sand. Therefore, value intellectual self-criticism. She is able to give a real idea of ourselves and our place in the world, and this inspires more learning.

Nassim Taleb, a successful investor and best-selling author, calls the collection of unread books an anti-library. The more you learn, the larger this collection becomes. It is a visual proof of how much is left outside your mind. So a huge home library is a learning tool, not an image building tool.

4. Give up good books in favor of great

At any moment, you must read the book that suits you best of all the books in the world. But as soon as you find something more interesting or important, you should immediately postpone it … Any other algorithm will certainly lead to the fact that you gradually begin to read the worst.

Patrick Collison founder of Stripe, billionaire

In other words, do what you have been taught exactly the opposite. Instead of solemnly promising to finish every book you take on, allow yourself to simply put it away - but only if you find something better.

Just don't overdo it by discarding good books simply because you see a more attractive title.

How do you know if you are jumping from one book to another too quickly? This is where fractal reading comes in. If you did not see the information you need in an excerpt from the book, it is hardly worth reading it in its entirety.

5. Remember: every book has its own time

Books read at the right moment are perceived not only consciously, but also subconsciously. This means that it is then that they are most effective.

The most important book on the shelf is the one you haven't read yet. Even if you have a promising copy, it may not be time to get started. It may come in a year, or maybe in 10. But when the book catches your eye at the right time, you immediately become interested in it and take it off the shelf.

Eben Pagan a successful American businessman

The ability to put a book down is very valuable. Because it is important to read it at the right time, when the question raised in it becomes genuinely interesting. Another reason to appreciate paper books is that you always see clearly what you can turn to.

6. Read books like magazines

When we open the magazine, we feel no guilt, selectively reading the pages or flipping through it in five minutes. We skim through it in search of the most interesting and relevant articles, and only then plunge into thoughtful reading. "Magazine" reading of a book is effective for several reasons:

• Helps to find the main thing - what is worth studying in depth.
• Helps to slow down to get the most out of what we're digging into.
• Makes it easier to read and makes us more consistent.

Entrepreneur Naval Ravikant noted that most of the most valuable books are sources that form the basis for others written later. He believes that the age-old problems have long been solved and these solutions are most likely many times better than the new ones. Indeed, over the years, a huge number of people have experienced them.

However, Ravikant notes that reading primary sources is quite difficult. We are used to receiving information in small portions and excerpts, from blogs and social networks. Therefore, books can be read in the same way - flip through uninteresting, start from the middle and not finish reading - and not feel any sense of guilt.

Be a literate reader and do not count the books you read, but the knowledge that you learned from them.