Why I stopped reading to start reading

Addictions. People get latched onto behaviours: drinking too much, snorting too much, eating too much, inhaling too much. My addiction was reading too much. And just over a year ago, I realised I was an information junkie. I still am.

There were two problems:

1. I wanted to know everything about what was going on about technology.
2. I loved non-fiction books.

I solved problem one by unsubscribing from everything I was reading by email and slowly built up my reading material using tools nuzzel to sift out what my network wanted and being smart about how to use LinkedIn and Feedly. I have a workflow that works for me. Hint: I’m totally dependent on Pocket to read offline.

But how could I solve my love of non-fiction? I was reading 50+ books a year without the return in learning that I expected from that time investment. What I realised is that while I still loved the pleasure of reading, I hated it if I didn’t get the information I wanted — or if I already knew what was in the book.

So, I need a method of sifting.

I now read 10 books a year, but learn a lot more from about 100+ books.

How?

I used a combination of these 3 options:

1. Blinkist.com : For roughly $50 a year you have access to summaries of about 2000 non fiction books. Summaries and key learnings. There are also many audio summaries if that’s your thing. It’s all in their amazing app. You can sign up for the free summary to see if you like it, but I moved from plus to premium to get the full benefit.
2. Mentorbox.com: For about the same about, you get the full working of some key books as well as some key ideas, including deep interviews with the authors, audios, and cheatsheets of the key messages from the books. I have found this extremely useful, especially the video summaries by the authors themselves. You can sign up for free for three days to see if it is for you. They also provide you access to a closed Facebook group with some live sessions. I highly recommend this
3. Getabstract.com: For about $300 you get access to 15,000 book summaries. I tried this out monthly, but it wasn’t for me. I found the summaries were written in an academic way — but you may prefer that.

So what did I learn?

1. Aim to decide what you want to learn first. Not what you want to read. For example I wanted to focus on reading inspirational change books and so skimmed through those books on Blinkist first before picking the one book that I wanted read (e.g. Deep Work)
2. Focus on reading summaries regularly. Through this method I quickly found the books that I thought I wanted to read — and then decided if I really did.
3. Put all recommendations of friends through the Blinkist filter. If the 10 minute review feels like it warrants reading in full, then make time for that book. Invariably, I found that I didnt want to read many books in full — and I had learned the 80:20 of the concept — or that the main book wouldn’t interest me.

Blinkist and Mentorbox actually encourage you to read the books but I find the summaries so valuable that you may find you don’t need to.

Freeing up my time on book reading has given me the time to read more topical articles, have more time with family and give me more time to devote to boxofamazing.com.