I read to be entertained, informed, to learn and shut down my brain at night.
It’s fantastic that someone has taken the time to put down their experience, lessons and insights down on paper, and for the price of a latte, you can learn them.
I’ve not yet found a better way to find ideas and solutions to things I’m working on than by reading.
For non-fiction
- Listen to the book summary on Blinkist.
- If I like it, I’ll get a kindle copy and an Audible version. Sometimes, I’ll get copies from Scribd.
- I’ll listen to the book at 1.7 speed walking my dog +/- 10K step goal.
- I’ll go through the book and take notes/highlights. After listening to the audible copy, I am picking up nuances, and a few extra points.
- I skim-read and return to sections that I found insightful.
- For books I really found useful, I’ll make a summary note of my personal takeaways. These jottings are notes that I put into Evernote.
- On a book full of insights, I’ll go in more depth and produce notes along the lines of Zettelkasten notes. Ronald Regan did something similar.
- For a small percentage of my reading, I’ll try and further distil my understanding into a blog post.
When asked why I write, my response is along the following lines ” To see how little I understand about an issue”. I don’t know a better way to increase my understanding of an issue and expose my ignorance than to write something short, around 500 words.
Non-Fiction
I find Robert Harris to Robert Ludlum the perfect means to cleanse the brain’s synapse after a day’s work. Sleep comes quickly and deeply.