Reading is a habit that can turn your life upside down. It can transform your life in ways you could never imagine. if reading books is good then studying them is great.
Food needs to be swallowed for it to be effective and produce results. Tasting and chewing alone is not enough. Similarly, the real value of a book doesn’t come from reading it, but it comes when you study and internalise the knowledge. Knowledge and wisdom needs to be cooked (contemplated) properly, like our food, in your brain for you to be able to make it a part of your nature.
Don’t skim
Most of us often start off a book with a lot of energy and excitement but as we go through it, we start to rush. Skimming process starts to take place (which is not good for you, your time and your money). Thickness of a book starts to bother us unconsciously and we rush through it to finish it and to start the new book, and the same thing happens again.
Just keep in mind that if you’re skimming through a book and you know it’s a good book, then it’s better not to read at all. Why waste money and time? It doesn’t matter if the book has 200 pages or 1200 Pages, every page is worth paying attention. If you pay attention to every page, let me assure you that there’ll be points, made by the author, and when you do discover them, you are going to say “holy moly! I’m glad I didn’t miss this point” you’ll thank yourself for paying attention. Because, that’s the point of reading a book.
Now just like in the meditation, a comfortable environment and body position is required. Similarly, in reading, a perfect study table and proper, we can say, tools are required. These tools work like a catalyst in reading in indirect ways. They help you retain more information in a systematic way and everything has a role to play in your reading experience. These things saves you time, energy and money. So without further due let’s unpack some of these reading tools (they’re in no particular order).
7 things to reinforce your reading experience
Sticky notes
Sticky notes provides a perfect way to keep information before your eyes 24*7. As much as we want to retain all the information, we all know it’s not possible to retain all the 500 pages in our mind. At the same time, we don’t want to forget that crucial precious information or knowledge, that we just discovered, which can help us change our life. Either you can paste the notes at the back of your book or somewhere else so that you can review them whenever you want.
Highlighter
Yes, I know most of you have it but I still wanted to include it in the list because I have seen people procrastinate highlighting lines and paragraph that moves them. I understand sometimes it can be hard to stop yourself for a moment and to pull yourself out from the depth of the book, just to highlight a paragraph. It’s kind of an interruption and breaks the flow, but at the same time, we don’t wanna let that paragraph get lost in the book.
I have made this mistake; not wanting to break the flow, I kept reading and reading, and then I eventually used to forget and that priceless piece of wisdom would disappear from my mind after few days, and all the time and energy that went into that book was kind of wasted, and nobody reads the book again just to find a paragraph. So be smart and take few seconds to highlight.
Pencil
Pencil is great for making your own headlines. Some paragraphs needs personalised headlines. Often in a book the author may be taking about topic x but you may realise that author made a great point about topic y too. Authors do it intentionally, in order to keep the book effective, concise and interesting at the same time.
As the Jesse Schell stated “there will be times… where things will not be laid out plainly – times where things are intentionally less clear so that when you do discover the truth, it means something to you.” Without a pencil it just isn’t fair to move forward without giving that precious paragraph or paragraphs a headline. This way it is super easy to find a particular topic (your topic) whenever you feel like reading it again.
Thermosteel bottel
There are things that enhance your reading experiences in indirect ways. I sure you all have seen unlimited amount of pictures of a book and a cup of coffee together, haven’t you? Well the biggest problem that most people do not realise is it takes time to prepare some coffee, and time is money. Aren’t we always trying to save money? So why waste so much time (AKA money) on preparing coffee when you can save yourself from all that hassle and time wasting activities.
Getting a thermosteel bottle has helped me save a lot of time. For those who don’t know about thermosteel botte, it is a bottle that can keep your beverage at the same temperature at which you poured that in the bottle, for almost 24 hours. Isn’t that amazing? I always keep my bottle right next to me and it takes my few seconds to pour the coffee in my cup.
Coffee
If you’re a coffee person then I don’t need to explain you the benefits of the coffee and you can skip this point. But if you’re someone considering coffee while reading then you should definitely give it a try without any hesitation. After all it’s not as addictive as cocaine. Try it and if you don’t like it try something different like tea. Tens of studies show the benefits of coffee and how it helps you concentrate. There are several other health benefits of coffee but I won’t get into that.
Coffee helps you get in the right state of mind. Whenever I’m about to read a book, where I know, I will have to put in a lot of energy and focus to understand that book, a cup of coffee is imperative. If you’re a coffee lover, you know what I’m talking about. And if you can read without coffee, that’s even better
Playlist
there are always going to be the times were you’ll just not be able to focus, and no amount of coffee will be able to help you out. The major reason will the noise around you. Our mind is vulnerable to emotions, it’s easily distracted and the chatting around you may get you tuned in without your awareness. At this moment, you must be saying “that’s right!”.
That’s where great playlists come into play. Good music keep your mind off the conversations of others and other unpleasant noise. If there’s going to be sound waves then it’ll be wise to go for the good ones, which helps you think and not distract you. Now same playlist isn’t going to work for everybody and you know best what works for you. Chopin, Ludwig van Beethoven is a good choice and for those who do not like this kind of music there’s a playlist on Spotify called MIDNIGHT LOFI. Thank me later!
Books
Although it’s totally up to you which kind of books you like and read, but if your goal in life is to grow and build something great, plus you read with a sense of purpose, then non-fiction books are the best. Some fiction books may help, but majority of books needs to be non-fiction in order for you to grow.
With that being said, HAPPY NEW YEAR in advance, make 2021 your greatest year.
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