The objective is to get wiser!
This can be done by learning from one’s own experiences. But this takes time. The learning happens at the cost of one’s own lifetime. What’s the point of gaining wisdom by an age, by which you are unlikely to use it yourself. As the German folk saying goes,
“We are old too soon and smart too late.” You can at best share your wisdom with your younger ones.”
Thus, a good way to learn is by listening to elders and following their advice. But, even that is not fast enough. And what if, the elder you lend your ear to, learnt the wrong lessons! Or, what if, the elders have not learnt enough relevant lessons! Or, what if, there aren’t enough elders around!
“A man does not have to be able to lay an egg to be qualified to tell a good one from a bad one.”
– Thomas W Phelps, 100 to 1 in the Stock Market
Enter books – The Force Multiplier. There are people who have dedicated their whole life, or at least a part of it for a cause. They, then, transferred all that knowledge and the wisdom distilled from it in books. And, there are so many of them, who have done similar things in so many domains. Collectively, this becomes a treasure trove of wisdom, gained from the smartest people in various domains and put down on paper by the most articulate.
The objective then is to get wiser by gaining worldly wisdom from the best (wisest, most articulate) in the world & history soon enough so that you can apply it in your own life.
Reading Slow
There is a person on the other side of the book, who has excelled in the field under consideration. There is a person on this side of the book, who’s relatively novice…that’s you!
When the person on this side (you) traverses through the book to emerge on the other side, he becomes that person (the author) in that domain, or at least to some extent.
If you have traversed through the book well enough, the author becomes a part of you. You do that by reading it mindfully, spending time with the author, interacting, agreeing & arguing with her, making notes, associating the learning with something that you’ve already learnt, known or experienced. When you read a book, you not only read it, but ruminate on it during the breaks. You may even refer to some other books or articles on related topics. The author herself might have mentioned some references in her book. You may delve into some of those references as well.
You do all of this & more to inculcate & imbibe the learning in flesh & blood to such an extent that it reflects in your future thoughts & actions. Next time in life, whenever you deal in the domain under consideration, you behave like the author’s self. It’s almost as if the author has stepped in momentarily for you, while you’re dealing in her domain. This is a bit like the good & bad companionship and the influence that it can have on you.
In his book, Think & Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill talks about having invisible counsellors. He suggests that one can call on any of the invisible counsellors when you need their wisdom in their domain.
Paraphrasing & culling some text from the book…
“Imaginary council meeting with one’s idols.Just before going to sleep, shut your eyes, and see in the imagination, the group of your idols seated at a conference table. You serve as the chairman. The definite purpose of doing this is to rebuild your character, so it would represent a composite of the characters of the imaginary counselors. In the imaginary meetings, you would seek specific knowledge or qualities from each expert. The method of addressing the members would vary according to the traits of character in which you are most interested. To achieve this you’ll have to study the records of their lives with painstaking care.”
As you can see, reading is not a race. It is not about how many books you’ve read. It is often said that even one great book is good enough to change your life. What’s needed is a deliberate effort to bridge the gap of wisdom, rather than a superficial race to the finish. This calls for introspection, rumination, making notes, association with existing knowledge, linking with learning from other spheres of life, connecting the dots and applying the learning in real life. All this call of slow, deliberate effort, not superficial race to the finish.
“….But that’s (reading a lot) not enough: You have to have a temperament to grab ideas and do sensible things. Most people don’t grab the right ideas or don’t know what to do with them.”
– Poor Charlie’s Almanac
As a result of Reading Slow..
- You derive a lot of value rather than superficial race to the finish
- You become wiser
- You start thinking and acting like the author, as you imbibe the wisdom
- You learn to connect the dots
- You make notes for future reference
- You apply the learning to real life
- You take better decisions
Reading Fast
Reading the books with painstaking care & rigour and internalising the learning does not mean reading slowly, literally. It is a figurative expression for rigour. Slow reading (in terms of speed) is a very poor style of reading. I will go to the extent that reading slowly is not reading at all.
Trying to read slowly, with the intent of reading carefully or deeply is counter productive. To some of you, it may come as a surprise, but here’s the thing…
Deep & focussed reading is done by reading fast, not slow. To understand why, we need to understand the process of reading and a very special quality of our mind.
First let’s take a look at the very special quality of mind – Are you with me…
The Brain
When you are sitting or standing at one place idly, you can think of a lot of ideas and gossip. It’s almost as if you are talking to yourself. You can sing a song, or count the numbers in reverse order. If I am standing beside you and reading these numbers – 2735.84, 373.1, 222.55, you can repeat these numbers after me or even type these on your mobile. Now start walking gently. You’ll probably still be able to retain most of your ability. Increase your speed…now you are jogging. Your mind’s ability to meander or gossip with yourself is diminishing. Run harder. Now you are struggling to repeat these numbers. Now sprint…as fast as you can..as if a dog or a goon is chasing you. At this stage, your mind has channelled all its energy to just running. Your vision is enhanced & tunnelled, you can see obstacles ahead and adjust your strides accordingly. You managed to jump over stones & pot holes with ease. Your legs are pumped, hands moving in conjunction with legs so as to orient your sprinting better. Inside your body, all the redundant functions like digestion etc have been halted. In such a state, you mind cannot afford to wander, to allow you to gossip, sing or count numbers…it just can’t be distracted. It is too focused on the task at hand – sprinting!
Mind is immensely capable, far far more capable than we can imagine. It is continuously working. Mind & its thoughts cannot be controlled. It’s always wandering. It’s always churning thoughts. However, it has a very special quality. It senses the stressors and whenever required it is quick to orient its attention from less urgent matters to more urgent matters. When idle, it goes in all directions, but when under stress, it switches off all the redundant functions and focuses on the task at hand. In his book, “Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking”, Malcolm Gladwell puts it aptly:
“…extreme visual clarity, tunnel vision, diminished sound. This is how the human body reacts to extreme stress and it makes sense. Our mind, when faced with life-threatening situations, drastically limits the range and amount of information that we have to deal with.”
The brain is extremely versatile. In easy times, it spreads thin & wide, meandering across freely. Under stress, it narrows its bandwidth, switching off the senses that are not needed, and enhancing the ones that are in the forefront. There have been umpteen examples when people have managed to carry unbelievable feats (like lifting heavy objects, jumping long distances or heights) under a high emotive state….reading fast is a walk in the park for the brain!
The point that I am trying to make is that when you read at a slow pace, you allow the mind to wander. You read a few lines, then realise that your mind went astray, come back and read all over again. This breaks the momentum and flow. Reading at a fast pace, does not allow the mind to digress. On the contrary, the mind acknowledges & relishes the pressure. It sharpens the focus and concentrates on assimilating the information that is getting dumped by the eyes at a frenetic pace.
Only the guy who isn’t rowing has time to rock the boat.
– Jean-Paul Sartre
Just as the guy who isn’t rowing the boat has time to rock it, at easy pace, the mind gets the bandwidth to digress. A mind tasked with “rowing” fast, will not get the time to “rock the boat”.
That was the special quality of the mind. Now let’s understand the reading process:
The Reading Process
Reading is a 2 stage process
Eyes capture words and send them to the brain. The brain receives the data, processes & comprehends it into meaningful information and stores it somewhere as short term memory. Let’s look at the role of the eyes.
Eyes
Let’s go back a few years. As a child you took baby steps.
Step 1: picked alphabets Step 2: read alphabets in a 3-letter words and formed a word. C A T - Cat. Step 3: picked full words, one at a time. Cat Bat Dog Step 4: Learnt to read small sentences, one word at a time. This is a cat. Step 5: Progressed to reading bigger sentences with difficult words, but still one word at a time. Step 6: Started reading faster, primarily one word at a time And then you stopped progressing.
From there on till date, your reading style stagnated. Your eyes continue to pick one word at a time. It’s a bit like you have grown up, but you still haven’t learnt to take bigger strides. You still take baby steps. In an attempt to walk fast with baby steps you often tumble and have to get up and attempt walking all over again. This is exactly what happens when you try to read fast, but one word at a time!
What to do?
Take bigger steps. Scan one phrase at a time, not word. We can borrow a concept from elementary mathematics, called Subitising – it is a technique to do a quick, but approximate count of objects by clubbing them into groups and just counting the groups.
You can view a line or a paragraph in a book, in a similar fashion. Train your eyes to pick a collection of words as if you are subitising. In your existing slow reading avatar, you are like a type-guide of a typewriter, rolling over eyes across every line, word by word. Now imagine yourself to be a woodpecker and your eyes as its beak. Train your eyes to peck your vision on two (max three, if the line is too big) spots on a line like a woodpecker. These packs can be roughly at the 25% mark and 75% mark of a line. In other words, starting from the leftmost point of the line, strike your first peck at 1/4th distance and the second peck at the 3/4th distance from the start of the line. Train your eyes to strike at these pecks on all the lines, as if you are a woodpecker.
[Please don’t literally bang your head against the book. Just imagine striking each line at two points, 1/4th distance from either side.]
This enables you to send more data input at each go…more bang for each buck! You will be surprised that within a few hours of practice, the eyes learn to broaden their span. You learn to pick a few key words and ignore the smaller & common words and yet construct a meaningful sentence. A guide or a pointer can help a lot in focusing your eyes to pecks in each line. This can be a pencil if you are reading a physical book, or this can be a paint brush if your reading on an electronic device like a Kindle or a Tablet. Eyes learn to pick a few words on both sides of the pointer very easily.
As far as the brain is concerned, as we have seen already, there is no need to worry about it at all, for it is far more capable than we think. Even while we are asleep, the brain is working at very high speed processing the data captured during the day as short term memory, creating and deciphering patterns. Even the dreams that we see are played at a frenetic pace apparently. Picking chunks of phrases at a time is easy-peasy for the brain. It removes all distractions and focuses on assimilating the data dump.
One more thing..reading fast needs a proper setting. You need to have a calm mind, peaceful & distraction free setting, be properly seated on your study table, erect back, alert mind and a pencil or a paintbrush in hand. Reading amidst distractions like kids playing or TV noise is very inefficient. Reading while lying on a sofa or while sunbathing on a beach, can be done for fun, relaxation or light reading (and it has its own charm!); reading on the bed can have sleep inducing effects; but if you want to read to gain knowledge, you must read fast – with rapt attention and proper setting.
As a result..
- You read faster.
- You complete the book faster
- You read more per sitting
- You mind doesn’t wander
- You stay connected with the book’s central idea. You don’t get lost. You don’t miss the forest for the trees
- You don’t treat reading as a burden because it takes you months to finish a book. With fast reading, you look forward to picking more & more books.
Reading books is the best force multiplier for gaining wisdom. What I prescribe is the exact opposite of what an inefficient reader does. An inefficient reader reads superficially, without making any notes, without connecting any dots (fast) and does so by reading at a painfully slow pace such that he gets lost in the details, misses the context of the book, takes months to finish it or even leaves it incomplete (slow). An efficient reader, as I prescribe, does the exact opposite. He reads with a purpose, makes notes, connects the dots (slow) and does so by reading at a fast pace such that he gets the central idea, finish the book in a matter of days, if not hours.
Reading slowly makes you absorb the wisdom from a book and reading fast enables you to do that quickly & effectively and iterate the process. This ability to read slowly and do it quickly & effectively gives you a pass to the gateway of “Worldly Wisdom”.
‘Upon the shelves of our libraries, the world’s greatest teachers await our questions.’
~ Louis L’Amour