😎 I read 300 books in 6 years. How to read faster (and learn more).
😎 I read 300 books in 6 years. How to read faster (and learn more).
Avoid the brain crash and devour books with lightning speed! Learn strategies to boost your reading comprehension and retention. Even if you are a busy software engineer.
Don’t you wonder where is the “Reading II” subject?
We learn reading when we are 5 years old. It’s impossible we learn everything at that time and that’s it. Left to right, word by word, oh, and don’t underline with your finger!
The last book I read took me 25 calendar days. It was a small book, but I spent many days without picking it up. By the time I finished, I didn’t remember the beginning of the book.
Reading faster and finishing your books on time helps your understanding and retention. If you are reading a thick algorithms book, spend half an hour per page. But for the rest of the nonfiction books, most are longer than needed.
This means you can read them faster.
It doesn’t mean that you can read all books in under 1 hour. I get the skepticism to “speed reading”. That’s why I don’t use that word.
But I apply these techniques.
⭐ In this post, you’ll learn
The warmup of professional readers.
How to plan which books to read and your reading sessions like a pro.
Why do I carry a pen with my Kindle (no, it’s not for writing).
How to read faster than you can speak in silence.
When to take notes and what to do with them, other than burning them.
What to do if books are not for you.
🧒 Before the reading
Did you ever hear that software engineering is more than coding? That being a professional athlete is more than the match-day? Reading is also more than picking the book
👀 Eye warmup
Your eyes are a muscle. They won’t perform if you just woke up and didn’t even wash your face.
My favorite eye exercises are grabbing a pen and doing infinite symbols and circles. Follow the tip of the pen with your eyes
🤓 Find the syllabus and reading purpose
I bet you wouldn’t enroll in an expensive degree without checking the syllabus.
For the book that’s the table of contents. Often it’s not enough. Skim through the chapters for anything that catches your attention: headers, graphs, images, quotes.
When you or someone you know buys a new car, you start seeing that same car everywhere. We want the same with the book, so write down what’s the questions you want answered by the end of the book
If you realize by now that some chapters are not worth reading, skip them. You may realize the book is not worth reading considering your current knowledge. Better to waste just your money than wasting your time and money.
📑 Plan the session
I do 45-minute to 1-hour blocks. After that, I need a quick break and chances are you need too. No shame if you read only 15-minute blocks. The purpose is not to sit in the chair with your mind somewhere else and your eyes tired.
Don’t stop reading the book to start reading social media. Let your eyes and your brain rest. Look somewhere far away, get some sunlight and breathe fresh air, drink water, move your body. Prime yourself for the next reading block.
👨 During the reading
🖋️ Use a visual guide
All kids start reading underlining the words with their finger.
Kids are smart. Adults pretend to be smart but we are just dumb. Have you found yourself re-reading the same line or skipping one? But hey, “you don’t use your finger”
When you do the eye exercises, your eyes follow smoothly the tip of the pen. If you did the same without a visual guide, the eye movements would be rough and slower.
Underline with a pen or anything you have around while reading. Warning note: a finger is not the best in a Kindle or phone, and you’ll get more tired.
Congrats, you are a faster reader now.
〰️ Don’t start at the start of the line. Don’t end at the end.
You don’t need to fixate your eyes on the first word to get its meaning. If you start with the 2nd or 3rd word, you'll still get the meaning thanks to your peripheral vision.
Follow-up: Instead of reading word by word, make a couple of fixations in the entire line. You apply the peripheral vision trick to intermediate parts of the line. That’s why I like reading on a Kindle. If you have an ultra-wide screen, you know it's impossible to read text that expands to the entire screen.
Congrats again. Not only do you read faster, but you have to read fewer words
💭 No reading aloud (even if you read aloud in silence)
I wish I could ask the inner voice in my head to kindly shut up. But I can’t.
It slows my reading because it tries to read every word. I try to imagine a mental movie while reading to avoid saying the words in my head. To get out of the habit, you can try humming or counting “1,2,3”. If you have the urge to subvocalize, try to only do it with nouns and verbs, those drive the meaning of the sentence.
⚙️ Take notes while you read
I told you earlier I spent 25 days on a single book. If I intended to take notes at the end, I’d be writing nothing.
An anti-pattern that was hard to break was taking notes like you were writing a school essay. Just write what’s meaningful to you in this moment of your life, don’t write details that you don’t care about.
I have tried mindmaps and text notes per chapter. I’m sticking to the latter because I go faster and I can write more detail. Mindmaps are great for picking the idea with a quick scan. But you'll capture less information.
Enough for note-taking, that’s a separate post.
👨🦳 After reading
Sorry for the tragic surprise, but you are not done after reading the acknowledgments of the book.
🏭 Process your notes
You took “raw notes”. They are linear based on the order of chapters. Chances are you didn’t connect the ideas of the last chapter with ideas in the introduction.
Now it’s time to do it.
The most basic form is answering some questions by the end of the book. I have the following on my template:
The book in 3 sentences → This is what I’d answer if someone asked me “What’s the book about?”
Impressions → I try to rate the book and find what I liked and didn’t like. It’s helpful to read when I come back to this note years later
Who should read it? → I think about which kind of person would like it, and if I know someone who fits the criteria I’d message them.
How did the book change me? → It forces me to take action on the book rather than passively reading
Top 3 ideas → The most interesting things for me. The 20% that gives the book the 80% of meaning.
Now it’s a good time to go through the “purpose of reading” you wrote at the beginning and answer it.
🎯 Conclusion
I can’t believe I wrote more about reading than about some software engineering topics.
But I write about what’s best for you and your career, and reading definitely is.
I get it if you say that books are not for you. There are shorter forms of content to learn from.
In this case, Educative (affiliate) could be for you. Their courses are more concise than picking a thick book around a topic.
Especially for interview prep, it’s better to follow a guide than going on your own. For system design, check their courses on System design interviews and advanced ones. I like this kind of platform for topics that are not mainstream. In particular, I want to cover my gaps in API design.
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👏 Weekly applause
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Taking notes is the one thing that made my reading so much more efficient.
Even though it sometimes takes me up to an hour to process what I read, it's worth it in the long run.
Though reading without subvocalizing is not really helpful if you want to retain what you read.
I'll leave a link to an article that talks about some of the speed reading methods that might sound good in theory but are bad for you in practice:
https://www.wired.com/2017/01/make-resolution-read-speed-reading-wont-help/
And, if you would rather watch it, I made a video specifically about this topic :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuBY5pBQ4nk
Great advice, Fran. I read a book on speedreading before I started college and it was one of the best investments I made. What most people misunderstand about it is that it's a very active process. You can't just slowly read through every word and sometimes for me--fall asleep 😄. Your brain is engaged the whole time. Appreciated a condensed version of tips and thanks for the shoutout!