To become a successful investor, you must read. Those who aspire to become successful investors frequently begin by reading business periodicals, books, blogs, podcasts, newsletters, etc. Although they come across some useful information, much of it is unclear. This makes determining “what,” “why,” “when,” “how,” and “how much” of the information need to absorb extremely difficult.
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This article will teach you the methods, approaches, and pointers that will help you become a more efficient reader and better organize your life. Instead of giving you recommendations for books to read at random, we will also teach you how to improve your reading abilities.
1) How Can I Schedule My Reading Time?
Lack of time is a frequent justification given by people for their lack of reading. Unfortunately, though, that argument doesn’t last very long since the wealthiest people on the planet—Waldrew Buffett, Charlie Munger, Peter Lynch, and others—always find time to read. In other words, reading is more about replacing time than it is about finding it.
As an example, let’s say you are cooking or heading out for work. Listening to an audio book during the interim can be a great idea. An hour of reading on your Kindle app may easily replace an unproductive hour of social media browsing if you take the Metro to work.
Examine your whole day as you do a time audit. You’d be shocked to learn that there are three to six timeslots available for reading. However, these time frames don’t have to be the same. Alternatively, you can slightly alter them. Let’s say you have 30 to 45 minutes to read throughout your commute.
You may probably read a book at that time, but you should also schedule these shorter, ten to fifteen minute periods. Probably at tea time, when you have time to read a few newsletters. At first, everything may seem a little jumbled, but everything will make sense in the end. You would have read for a solid 50–60 hours over the course of a month before you knew it.
2) How Should I Read Each Day?
In his fantastic book “Atomic Habits,” James Clear outlined several methods for assisting anyone in forming positive habits and kicking undesirable ones. It just so happens that several of these methods are also easily transferable to the development of a reading habit. For example, no matter how strong your resolve is, you will find it extremely difficult to lose weight if you have fried foods all over the place.
In a similar vein, if you have a few books beside your bed, you’re more likely to read them at night than to browse social media. You may have noticed that there is a lot of discussion on little habits if you have read “Atomic Habits.” The secret here is to divide up big jobs into smaller, more doable portions. One may apply the same idea to a method of reading books. Let’s say you wish to read Mohnish Pabrai’s “The Dhandho Investor” in a week. It has 208 pages total, or 30 pages every day.
Here’s what to do if you want to finish it in a week. Grab seven sticky notes. Put the names of the seven days of the week on each note. The first page indicates the day of your reading week. Then you put Tuesday on page thirty-one. Wednesday arrives on the sixty-first day, and so on. In other words, you’re essentially setting a daily goal for your brain.
Using these straightforward Post-it notes gives you a visible marker to help you stay motivated in addition to giving you a mental aim. Thus, give these two methods a try to improve your reading habits.
3) Is Speed Reading Necessary?
For many, reading quickly is the ultimate knowledge hack. In any case, this has resulted in hundreds of YouTube videos offering to teach this potentially life-changing ability. Reading quickly now is like to viewing a movie twice as fast. You might be able to follow the main narrative, but you would be lacking in small elements like the conversation, tension, and music.
While being able to locate material fast is a useful ability while preparing for examinations, mastering topics like investing will not benefit from speed reading. When reading investment-related literature, your goal shouldn’t be to finish the book. Rather, the focus should be on understanding the material, having the ability to think critically about what you’ve learned, and then applying that knowledge to your investment strategy and worldview.
The only exceptions to this rule are YouTube videos and audio books, which are primarily meant for listening. Consequently, if the voice speed is a little slower, they can be digested at 1.25x or 1.5x. When it comes to reading documents, it is strongly advised to take your time so you can fully comprehend the content and stay away from pointless shortcuts like speed reading.
4) Is It Time To Stop Reading a Book?
Do you have the compulsion to complete a book after you’ve begun reading it? They feel compelled to read every page because they think there must be something significant on them. Alternatively, people have the impression that those latter pages contain some gold.
The author of “The Almanack of Naval Ravikanth,” Naval Ravikanth, contends that contracts should not be interpreted as governing books. Rather, try to make the most of your time with them. If the content isn’t appealing to you, though, you should put the book down and find something else to read.
Alec Wykowski, who runs the “Alex & Books” Twitter feed, employs two straightforward yet powerful strategies. The straightforward 10% rule is the first. If a book has 200 pages, then 10% of it is 20 pages. According to the norm, you should have a good idea of the topics and writing style of the book after reading the first 20 pages. You should only keep reading if you find the content appealing. If not, you ought to put down your reading material.
The three-strikes rule is the second tactic Alex suggests. Start with the book’s introduction and first chapter. the’s two strikes if you’re not enamored with the book. After that, you quickly consult the book’s table of contents to see whether there is a chapter that you could find intriguing later on.
Once the chapter has been located, open it at random and begin reading. That would be strike three if you also don’t like this one. It indicates that you should stop reading the book. The author has enough opportunities to impress you with this strategy. You may save a lot of time by not reading the book to the end if it doesn’t move you.
Let’s say you don’t feel like you’re engaging with the book in the first two chapters. The likelihood that you won’t enjoy the book increases. This is due to the fact that most writers, particularly those who write non-fiction, devote the majority of their work to the book’s opening. They run out of things to say after presenting the core argument and just keep offering instances.
Simply grasp the book’s main idea if you don’t require dozens of examples, then feel free to go on to something more fascinating.
5) What Should I Do Following a Book Read?
Along with blogs, bulletins, financial statements, and other materials, people often read books, especially investing literature. The ability to apply such information to their investment methods and plans is the fundamental principle underlying that.
In a podcast, Ryan Holiday, also known as Naval Ravikant, once stated, “Books are by far the best investment you can make.” They might potentially improve your life for less than ten dollars. The creation of a summary page is the first method that may be investigated. The main idea of the book, the top five lessons learned, and a few standout phrases should all be included. Include a list of the things you plan to do to better your life or your investing strategies.
If you’d like to demonstrate your devotion even further, write a summary and post it to a social networking site. Let’s have a look at a basic action Parimal does on his Twitter account. After reading about and comprehending a popular issue, he uses a pen and paper to create a one-page synopsis, which he then tweets to the globe.
Another method is to annotate or highlight relevant paragraphs. This is when most of us go overboard, almost coloring the book and underlining much too many parts. It is advised to use a filtering procedure instead. You limit the lessons you learn from a book to the top 10 ideas that you can easily jot down on the front or rear cover of the book.
As an example, let’s say you find a marketing case study about Steve Jobs that you truly enjoy. The first page of the book, which is often a blank page, will then be your next step. Page 54, or whatever page it is, should have Steve Jobs plus innovative marketing on it. This makes it possible to keep a quick list of the top 10 lessons learned from the book. If you want to utilize the book later on or want to use it to make a blog post, Instagram picture, Twitter feed, etc., it may be really helpful.