*enter cute derivative word for quarantine* Diaries — PART VI

I figured it out:

The convenience of finding information on internet is what's keeping me from concentrating on reading.

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I made a calculation, — after I listened to Tim Ferriss do one for himself, of how many more books I would read for the rest of my life span.

If I live until I'm 70 (family average if I'm lucky), I have 32 years left on earth. (wow just made me realise the better half of it is gone pouf.)

If I read 1 book a month on average, that makes 384 books in 32 years.

This doesn't leave room for much and makes me wonder if I should really read that Ernest Cline's Armada or Carol Tavris' Mistakes Were Made (but Not by Me). Shouldn't I invest more time in books like Carlo Rovelli's The Order Of Time and Soren Kierkegaard's Either/Or.

I think one answer to this dilemma is speed reading. I first learnt it on a Mindvalley video with Jim Kwik (it was a private link but there are many videos of Jim Kwik on YouTube explaining his method). And my reading speed tripled in 15 minutes! Later I stumbled upon a video from Tim Ferriss explaining his own method.

By speed reading I don't mean using apps such as Blinkist or Joosr to listen to the gist of a book according to that 'specific' person who wrote it, I don't also mean apps like Spritz which Ryan Holiday passionately spits on in his article about how speed reading misses the point. Ryan has got a point on the most important thing, reading should be a habit not something you rush about. (and he's right about every other thing he mentions in that article but...)

I want to speed read because I want to squeeze more books in my short existence. I don't want to die without reading some important books. There are already around 100 in my reading queue that I already bought. Another 100 in my Amazon wish list. All staples of world literature, science and philosophy. I don't really have time for Lena Dunham's Not That Kind Of Girl.

Let's get back to Jim Kwik's method a little bit. 

It is about minimising the wandering of the eye throughout the book's periphery by using a pen to follow where we are on a page, and by this I mean follow each and every line all the way from left to right. (If you only move the pen over the middle of the lines, your brain won't retain the information on the two sides) The pen doesn't have to touch the paper (you don't want to cause a fire). This method improves concentration and visualisation, thus reading speed, and it helps us remember what we just read.

Now time 1 minute and start reading something how you would normally read. When the time is up count how many words you read. Repeat it reading another part (so you're not familiar with the content) with the above technique. How many words did you read this time? Did you have to go back? Did you understand everything you read. 

Trust me it gets better with practice. Being able to fully concentrate on the book, I even end up reading longer periods of time. I'm not reading a book in a day, but I fully grasp what I read and I remember more of it. (Because I read mostly non-fiction books, another thing I do is underlining, taking notes on the book, going back to these parts later on and engrave the knowledge in my head. I think it was Ryan Holiday who said something like this, "If I'm not going back to the books I read, what's the use of having a library?")

Eliminating the obvious distractions like mobile phone, any kind of notifications with sound or with vibration has been very useful for me. Instead of my phone (on which I habitually take notes) I started keeping a pen and a notebook with me while reading.

But the ultimate tweaking of course concerns a behaviour that is engulfing a good part of my personal time: streaming. 

If I establish the discipline of reading a book instead of streaming, I can double my reading average to a whopping 768 books! Then I would easily have more time to explore books like James Franco's Palo Alto or David Marsh' For Who the Bell Tolls.

PS1: Not so many years ago, books used to paint our minds with so many emotions. Still no screen adaptation can capture and reflect the true essence of written form (although I think the first Harry Potter film was spot on and Miyazaki's adaptation of Howl's Moving Castle surpasses the book, but those are exceptions).

PS2: When I was living in Japan and immersing myself in mangas, I remember thinking their black and white nature with simple pen strokes left so much more space for imagination as opposed to western comics that I was used to reading.

PS3: I never read a book digital, never will. I need to see the physical book with all its physical pages in front of me at all times.

#justpondering