How to pick your reading increments and steps

People don’t tend to fail because they can’t read; they fail because they pick the wrong steps.

Sometimes someone will set out to become a “reader,” whatever that means in their head, and they will pick something way too complex or hard, and they burn out and lose interest. Other people pick things that are too short, or just not interesting to them. Maybe it is too easy and they get bored and quit. These give the first few ways you move through your reading journey to find what to do after the action of reading is a habit.

-          Read something you always wanted to know about.

Have you always wanted to know how to cook something? You can find a recipe book for it. Have you wanted to know what it was like to live in Morocco in 1700? I guarantee there is a book on it. Do you want to understand the political movements of the 1860s in China which led to the modern China we see today? There are a ton of books on that too.

Are you interested in what it might be like to be an assassin working to kill an empress in a mythical desert land? I can assure you that book is out there too.

People will often make the mistake of picking up something to read that they think someone else would be impressed that they read, but they are not actually interested in the topic. They don’t pick up what they want. If you are bored because you grabbed the wrong thing to read, there is no harm in putting it down and grabbing something new. In the parlance of modern readers, “DNF,” did not finish, is something that happens for a many of reasons. Until a few years ago, I finished every book I ever picked up. I felt guilty any other way. But time is ticking, and I don’t have time for bad work.

-          Read something easier / harder

If you spend ninety percent of your reading time thinking some variation of “what?” and rereading it, this can be very frustrating. I believe in challenging yourself, and I believe in doing hard things, but there is a ratio of understanding to not understanding which everyone needs to find. If you are reading something where you lose the thread or the interest because too much of the book is too hard, find a new book on the topic or in the same genre which is technically easier. Save the first one and come back to it in three or four books, and you might just find that you are ready to tackle the same challenge and realize it is not so insurmountable as you thought.

On the other side of that coin, if you are reading and thinking you predicted every plot twist, the characters are all boring, or you already know everything about the topic you selected to read about, maybe the book is too easy.

My opinion is that the sweet spot is something in the 75% range for understanding, with 25% of a book either challenging you, making you work to understand it, or really surprising you. Everyone’s journey through reading is different, but just because what you tried first doesn’t work doesn’t mean you’re not a reader.

-          What does easier or harder mean?

Want an easier read: pick a shorter form of reading (fewer words per book or short story). Try a more general book if you are reading non fiction, with less depth and more breadth.

Want something a touch harder? Try a longer form of reading or older books on the same topic. As language evolves, it gets harder to read older books, but it doesn’t mean they are not still wonderful books and good for us to understand our cultural history.

Look for more dense prose or more complicated themes and plots. On the other side, find simpler ones. Ask friends who read things you read, or a librarian, a question about “I like the idea of XYZ, but want something with more or less XYZ...”

Like everything in life, just because we don’t nail it the first time doesn’t mean we can’t in the end.

I said in the first of this series I wanted to give you superpowers. I still do. The ability to read well and deeply is like the ability to download a new function into yourself. One of my favorite movies ever was the original The Matrix. In this film, when a protagonist needed to know something, they could directly download it to their brain.

Neo wanted to know kung fu;

Trinity needed to fly a helicopter.

While reading may take you a touch longer, the idea is still there. You can learn anything if you give yourself the time.

Imagine if you dedicated yourself to reading well for one year, how powerful you would become?

Next: What’s the endgame?