11 Things I learned from reading 111 books in 2 years.

The goal here is simple: to read a book per week, on average, and if possible exceed that. I know that 56 books per year sound like a big number, at least to the majority of people, but trust me, this is nothing spectacular and I do consider this to be something anyone can achieve if they set the intention to do so. I find reading books to be a valuable time to spend quality time with myself and get knowledge literally in any field I like whether it be nutrition, mindset, trading or history. You can get a significant edge if read all the books available on a certain subject. Common education is peanuts compared to what reading can do with you.
I think adequately I could be reading even more since at this moment I am not even obsessed with reading. If I’d be obsessed it would mean I’d spend time reading whenever & wherever I can. Obsession is the easiest way to get an edge over everyone else. But here I prefer moderation and quality.

Over those few years of reading, I’ve had quite a few realizations and learnings and I think I got something insightful for any kind of readers out there, but especially to those who don’t consider themselves readers and haven’t yet formulated habit to do so.

1. First of all, as said, it all comes down to a formulating reading as a habit. It can be done by setting a daily goal to read 10 pages and then measuring your performance. 10 Pages per day = 300 pages per month. Big goals, divided into smaller chunks become easily attainable and measurable. With this technique alone you could easily read 20+ books in a single year. The best is to devote a certain time every day — let’s say a commute to work or a lunch break.
2. To read 56 books you have to set a clear goal to read 56 books. If you want to read 40, then set 40 and know since the first day that you will achieve this by the end of the year. It important is to not have doubt in mind. To know it as a fact just as if you were going to a kiosk to buy a newsletter. You never doubt for a second you will come out empty-handed, right…?
3. If you don’t like a book within 1 hour of listening or reading then probably it is not worth investing your time further. It rarely gets much better than it is. Our psychology is set up so that if we invest in something, it’s hard to let go and we continue digging deeper even though we know it does not feel right. Letting go and killing it is a decent quality one can develop and have. Takes time to fully grasp tho. We are not trees, we can move if we don’t like the soil. Don’t marry the book. Invest your time only where it pays best interests.
4. Volume does not count actually. What counts is how well you attained the information. You can read 150 books if you want, but the value you squeeze from it will only be very limited. The more books you read, naturally, the less you truly get out of the book. I started this challenge only to become a person who is a genuine reader. Now, since I consider this to be achieved, I will reduce the quantity of the books I read and will focus on fully understanding the concepts.
5. Making a summary of the book is essential to really and truly understand what you have read.
6. The easiest way to read a book is to Google the book summaries, take as many as you can find to be relevant, read them all, then copy-paste the best parts and sentences that you like and then connect them into one document by doing your own summary. This way you take all the most important information and tie it together, ignoring the details that most of the time does not matter that much. I assure you this is the easiest way to get to know what is inside the book and get to the source of the value. This could cut your learning speed at least by half. If you are not a reader yourself, then I highly recommend trying this technique out. Spend time studying the summary.
7. The second way, if reading from Kindle, is to make as many highlights as you feel a connection to, and then again, copy-paste the whole information into a document and connect the dots. Do your very own summary after reading the whole book. Simply you can’t grasp everything from the first time. If you want to read books without real benefit, then go ahead and skip this part. I can assure you, in 2 years, you won’t remember what the book was talking about nor do you have anything to go back to.
8. Reading and re-reading the summary is what actually gives you the edge from reading, not reading the book itself. Just by reading the summary you will get access to basically the whole book if you have read it previously. It’s in your memory, but it’s not reachable without reminding you through the summary. Reading the summary will remind you everything you went through and you will then again feel as you’ve read it, however, if you skip this part, most of your memory will not be reachable.
   I also suggest giving your summaries away to your closest people as this is something they can benefit from, too.
9. It is worth keeping a list of all the books you’ve read and then behind every book, it is worthwhile writing out 1 or 2 notes or learnings that you will take away from it and how it made you better. If a book can give you 1 key lesson or insight, divide this by 56 and you will become 56% better only from this alone. Obviously, you have to come back to these learnings as by human nature nothing sticks with the first time nor over time does it even with 3 times. It takes consistent reminding and conscious repetition & work to make it stick for a lifetime. Rather than reading one additional book per year, spend that time to study the summaries or making more of them.
10. In order to read books consistently, you have to be intrigued by the idea of self-development and hungriness for new knowledge, constantly looking for an edge in the marketplace. You actually have to become someone else — a reader. Someone, who reads without being forced to, because he likes it. And the only way to become such a person without first being it is to set yourself a goal to read every single day and first force it. Then, over time, it becomes second nature and you do it on autopilot.
11. Over these two years of immense reading, in hindsight, I am a hundred percent sure my mind has been fed with the right information and this has transformed me into someone I was previously not. In addition to that, it has improved my ability to understand English. A great technique is to read out loud — here you will be much more focused and can improve your ability to play with the tonality and voice which can be helpful in public speaking.

To wrap it up I guess it would be somewhat valuable to share a few gems that I’d recommend from my list of 111 books in 2 years.

“Essentialism,” “Surrender Experiment,” “Untethered Soul (& Untethered Soul at work)”, “Break the habit of being yourself”, “Start with Why”, “The Billion dollar secret”, “Miracle Equation”, and best authors — Dr. DeMartini, Grant Cardone, Benjamin Hardy, and of course Vadim Zeland, who is the first author I’ve ever read and he is my absolute favorite to this day. His books are my bibles and I’ve read them many times. Totally changed my life and I am sure it will change yours too if you fully grasp his teachings. “Transuring” is a book I’d start from.

Will I keep on reading 56 books per year? I don’t think so. Rather, I will listen to my own advice and try to focus more on creating high-quality summaries and re-reading them more often, reviewing my notes and giving it away to others. I listened to my own advice after writing another Medium post about 11 Things I’ve learned from doing 30 000 pullups in 1000 days and it’s working out very well so far. Sometimes we do something for years and then realize we could have been doing it so much better all the time. In every area of life, it is worth asking this simple little quality question — how I can improve what I am currently doing, just by 1%? Whether it is nutrition, sports, reading, meditation, selling or whatever. This exercise will open your eyes.

At least I know I am capable of reading with such pace and it’s possible that I will now, since reading has become a habit, reach the target, why not, even without setting an intention… Let’s see.

Thanks for your time and best of luck in smashing your intentions in 2020!

Max