35 Reading tips I’ve learned after reading 350+ books:
1) The hardest part of reading is sitting down to start.
2) Quit boring books to make room for brilliant ones.
3) Reading one book may not change your life but reading every day will change everything.
4) Read fewer books that have been around for days, read more books that have been around for decades.
5) If you ever say you don’t have time to read books, just take a look at your phone’s screen time.
6) All reading counts as reading–try print books, ebooks, and audiobooks to find the format that works best for you.
7) It’s not about how many books you get through that matters, it’s about how many books get through you that counts.
8) Put your phone on silent and leave it in another room before reading and you’ll 10x your focus.
9) Read good books, reread great books, rebuy groundbreaking books.
10) You don’t become a reader and then start reading books. You start reading books and then become a reader.
11) It’s better to quit a book than to quit reading altogether.
12) If a book changed your life, aim to reread it once a year.
13) Return, regift, or recycle books you didn’t enjoy.
14) Speedreading is reading twice as fast to remember half as much.
15) The best places to read are airplanes, beaches, and parks.
16) The rite of passage all readers must go through is learning how to pick books for themselves instead of waiting for others to pick books for them (like how parents, teachers, and professors did).
17) Reading book summaries and thinking you understand the book is like watching a movie trailer and thinking you understand the movie.
18) The irony of speedreading is that if you can speedread the book it isn’t worth reading. The best books are impossible to speedread because they constantly make you stop and think.
19) The goal of reading is application, not memorization. Stop spending time trying to remember information and instead spend time trying to apply information.
20) If you want to build a reading habit set a goal to read for 2 minutes every day. The goal is so small that it’s impossible to come up with a reasonable excuse to not do it.
21) The person who writes the book summary benefits 10x more than the person who reads the summary.
22) If you read a book but don’t change your behavior or thinking in any way, either the book sucked or you learned nothing.
23) Just because you bought a book it doesn’t mean it came with a binding contract to finish it.
24) Everyone who reads 100+ books a year is either getting paid to read (author, academic, podcaster, content creator) or reading fiction.
25) No man ever reads the same book twice, for it is not the same book and he is not the same man.
26) Books are an investment, not an expense. A $10 book can make you $100,000 or even $100 billion (look up Warren Buffett’s comment about “The Intelligent Investor”).
27) Your reading environment is more important than your reading motivation. It’s easier to read an average book at a library than an amazing book at a rock concert.
28) Carry a book with you everywhere you go. You never know when you’ll find yourself with extra time you read.
29) Give a book 3 chances (chapters) to win you over. If you aren’t into it by then, it’s out and don’t feel guilty about quitting it.
30) Easy reading hack: Download an ebook or audiobook to your phone so you always have something to read if you don’t have a physical book with you.
31) The highest praise you can give an author is showing them that you wrote, highlighted, and devoured their book. If you show them a pristine book, they’ll think you didn’t even read it.
32) Spend more time reading short books. Some of the shortest books have the deepest lessons.
33) For timeless problems read timeless books. For modern problems read modern books.
34) Books are the ultimate life hack: For $10 you can download 10 years of wisdom in 10 hours or less.
35) The best time to start reading books was 10 years ago. The second best time to start is today.
What reading tips would you add?
