In the last article, we mentioned that most readers aren’t getting the most out of their nonfiction reading. This is because, as discussed in the article, most readers don’t have the best reading habits.
If this is you (and it probably is), we can change this right now.
The information contained in this short article will help you dramatically improve your time efficiency, as well as the quality and quantity of information you get from any self-improvement oriented nonfiction book.
The benefits of this easy-to-use method are outstanding: you’ll be able to save a lot of time, retain a lot more useful information, and be able to greater utilize that information in your life.
If you make this method a habit right now, it will improve your life forever. That sounds like a lot of utility out of one short article, right?
Absolutely. But remember, we like to focus on quality information over quantity.
If you put in the time and effort to apply the information in this article, you will see results from this process very quickly — guaranteed.
Two Examples
The following process can be used in any self-improvement oriented nonfiction book.
Let’s say you’re interested in designing an online business around your lifestyle. You would probably want to read a book such as The Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferris.
If you were interested in a primer on learning meditation and reducing stress, Self Compassion and Mindfulness for Healing and Acceptance by Jason Jacobsmith would be ideal for you.
No matter what subject or what book you read, you have to get the most out of it. You want to maximize your use of the information within to improve your life the best way possible.
The Reading and Highlighting Process
With any nonfiction book, you have to be an active learner and reader. Here are the first two steps of this process:
- Read through the book as you normally would with no distractions. Take time to comprehend and understand the information.
- Highlight the most important information. With any phrase, sentence, or concept that seems important, you must have a way to mark it.
As pretty much everyone knows, the most common strategy is to highlight any parts of the book that you want to come back to.
You want to color-code when you highlight. You can color-code by one of at least two ways:
- Order of importance. For instance, yellow may be least important but still noteworthy, orange may be of medium importance, and pink may be the most important concepts in the book.
- Meaning. For example, if you use blue, maybe it’s to dedicate highlighting sections for a book review, or because you’re highlighting important terminology or vocabulary.
You can also do both methods together if you would like.
If you are reading a physical book, you want to use a cheap pack of good multi-colored highlighters.
Some people prefer not to highlight because they don’t want to mark the book. This is up to you; but remember, if you don’t highlight, you still need to have a method of marking the book’s most important concepts.
If you are using an e-reader, especially a Kindle or most reading apps on your smartphone, highlighting is an easy-to-use function of the app. You can easily change or remove any highlights later. You can skim through the book (the Kindle app has a skim option) and look for your highlighted sections very quickly.
Many people prefer to use colored post-it tabs to mark important pages. These are very effective because they’re color-coded, inexpensive, removable, and don’t clutter the book. You can color-code the same way you would with highlighters as well. You may want to mix it color-coded tabs with on-page highlights.
If you are listening to an Audiobook using Audible, use the bookmark feature in the app to mark the section you desire to come back to later. Under the bookmarks section of the app, you can review a 30-second clip of where you bookmarked, or you can directly go back to the bookmarked section. You can also send 30-second clips of the bookmarked section to friends if you like.
You can also write down any important lessons if you wish. Some people prefer to do this by writing important pages down, or by writing out the most important content in their own words.
If you’re a book reviewer, the process of writing a book review makes you comprehend the information within much better. Sometimes people write reviews on books just to have a greater understanding of the book.
No matter what method you use to mark important concepts, you must do something. Relying strictly on memory will not be nearly as effective!
The Learning Method
Once you figure out your method of highlighting the most important points, do the following:
- When you identify a lesson is important, you must assign its importance in your own mind. Do this by:
- Restating the lesson in your own words.
- Visualizing yourself using the lesson.
- Actually applying the lesson by putting the information into practice.
- Review and repeat as necessary. Spaced repetition helps you consolidate and solidify the information that you learned.
You can come back at any interval you want. If the information you wish to review is very important, you should come back to the book anyway to review the information you highlighted.
The more you utilize the information from the book, the less you’ll have to review it. The actual use of the book’s material means you will have internalized the information you’re using. Regardless, you’ll always want it as an available reference down the road.
An Example of the Technique
Again, if you’re interested in the subject of meditation and stress relief, you’d want to grab a copy of Self Compassion and Mindfulness for Healing and Acceptance by Jason Jacobsmith on Amazon for $2.99.
Toward the end of this book, there is a table about reframing negative thoughts into positive thoughts. In this section, Mr. Jacobsmith mentions the exercise must be carried out by the reader in order to truly be effective.
The contents of the chart are below:
Trigger Thought: I can stand him/her/this.
Reframe: Wow, this is really aggravating, but I’m patient enough to bear it. No matter what, it’ll be over soon.
Trigger Thought: I sounded so stupid/I seemed so stupid right now.
Reframe: If these people are worth hanging around with, they’d never judge me for my awkward moments.
Trigger Thought: Why did this have to happen?
Reframe: So it goes.
Trigger Thought: (thoughts of horrible future event/accident death)
Reframe: How likely is that to happen? Worse-case scenario, even if it that did happen, how big of a deal would it actually be? If it is a big deal, I’m still strong enough to get through it.
If you were very interested this material, you would want to mark the chart in a color that indicates high importance to you. Afterwards, go through the chart and:
- State the differences between the trigger thoughts and the reframes. Verbalize the difference between the negative and the positively framed thoughts. Ask yourself how and why this information would help you.
- Visualize yourself using the reframes in various situations that provoke negative thoughts.
- Commit to the information. Apply the information to your own life by practicing positive thoughts every time a negative situation comes up.
- Talk about the method as if you were teaching it to someone else. Better yet, actually teach it to someone! Teaching a subject makes you learn the subject more thoroughly!
- Come back to the section again down the road, especially if you feel like you haven’t been utilizing the information as well as you could have. Remember that it should be highlighted a color of priority. You want to have a method to remember this; so it’s probably best to put it on a to-do list.
And that’s it! You have to be an active, engaged learner to maximize what you get out of a lesson. This is exactly how you do it.
Conclusion
You must have some type of efficient method in place to get the most out of your non-fiction reading!
Your method only needs to contain the basic principles explained above. Practice this routine until it becomes second nature, and adjust anything as necessary and see what works for you.
This is not a difficult thing to do, but it takes practice, effort, and internalization before it comes second nature to you! Once it becomes second nature, it’s easy!
Even if your method ends up being slightly different, if you follow these principles, it’s absolutely guaranteed that you will get a lot more out of your reading.
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