Ep. #409: The Simple System I Use to Find, Choose, Read, and Remember Great Books

Hey, this is Mike from muscle for life and welcome to another episode of my podcast. This episode is part of a weekly series that I have dubbed motivation Monday. Yes, I know. So creative of me. What can I say? I’m just a genius. Seriously, though, the idea here is It’s simple. Every Monday morning I am going to post a short and punchy episode that I hope gets you fired up to tackle the workouts, work, and everything else that you have planned for the week ahead.

Because it’s one thing to know what you want to do, but it’s something else altogether to actually make yourself do it. And I hope that this series gives you a jolt of energy and encouragement to go ahead and do all of those things that you want to do. So if you like what you hear, then make sure to check back every Monday morning for the latest and greatest installment.

This is where I would normally plug a sponsor to pay the bills. But I’m not big on promoting stuff that I don’t personally use and believe in. So instead, I’m just going to quickly tell you about something of mine, specifically my newest book, the little black book of workout motivation. Now, this book was fun to write because it really is my personal and 100 percent practical and hands on blueprint for transformation, both inside and outside of the gym.

And I promise you that it will provide you with new and valuable knowledge and skills that you will use for the rest of your life. In short, I wrote this book to help you fix the things that are most holding you back from doing and achieving the things you care most about. So if you want to learn how to overcome the mental blocks that are making you unmotivated, unhappy, and unhealthy, then the Little Black Book of Workout Motivation is for you.

And you can find it on all major online retailers like Audible, Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, and Amazon Google play. And I should also mention that you can get the audio book 100 percent free when you sign up for an audible account, which I highly recommend that you do. If you’re not currently listening to audio books, I love them myself because they let me make the decisions.

The time that I spend commuting, prepping food, walking my dog and so forth, more valuable and productive. If you want to take Audible up on this offer and get my audiobook for free, simply go to www. workoutmotivationbook. com slash Audible. Audio book, click the sign up today and save button, create your account.

And voila, you get to listen to my little black book for free. Alrighty. That is enough shameless plugging for now. At least let’s get to the show. Hello and good day. I am Mike Matthews, and this is the muscle for life podcast. Welcome. Welcome. If my voice sounds a bit off is because my throat was bothering me this week, had a cold a couple of weeks ago and that lasted a few days.

And then I had like the post nasal drip for a week and then my throat started to bother me. So this week I took off the gym and waited for my throat to not hurt anymore. But now I just sound gravelly. This is my Alex Jones voice. And I’m here to tell you that they are turning the frickin frogs gay, which ironically actually is happening.

If you Google Atrazine gay frogs, you will see for yourself. Anyways, we’re not here to talk about gay frogs or Alex Jones. We’re here to talk about reading books. And I’m going to classify this episode as a motivation Monday episode, which I apologize for not putting these up more frequently. I’ve been busy with a lot of other things and let them fall out temporarily, but now I’m back on my normal routine, my normal schedule, which means that I’ll be putting up motivational episodes every other week.

I think we have right now on the rotation. It’s either every other week or once per month. Anyways, as it is a motivation Monday episode, let us start with a quote. This is a little bit of a longer quote from Seneca, the younger. But a good one. So here it is. No person would give up even an inch of their estate, and the slightest dispute with a neighbor can mean hell to pay.

Yet we easily let others encroach on our lives. Worse, we often pave the way for those who will take it over. No person hands out their money to passerby, but to how many do each of us hand out our lives? We are tight fisted with property and money, yet think too little of wasting money. Time, the one thing about which we should all be the toughest misers.

So years ago, I came across a story of a business professor who shared an insightful statement about studying. He said that if you spend an hour or two every day studying. Any field you are actively involved in within two to three years, you’d be in the top one to 5 percent of that field. And he came to that conclusion after many years of meeting, talking with and reading about successful people.

He found that many of these men and women were self taught and all of them We’re diehard students of their disciplines. They were always learning something new. They never felt they knew it all. And in fact, we’re more interested in what they didn’t know than what they did know. And the reason for this phenomenon is probably that consistently studying benefits you much like compound interest in that the more you learn, The more, and the more, the more you can do, and the more you can do, the more opportunities you have to succeed.

And then on the flip side, prospects are grim for people who are not perpetual learners. Life is complex. Life is chaotic, and it slowly suffocates and smashes. The lazy and the ignorant in the book, Alice in Wonderland, the red queen says that in her race, you have to run as fast as you can just to stay in place and twice as fast as that to go anywhere.

And I think that is a perfect. Metaphor for life, you have to hustle just to pass muster and you have to work twice as hard as that to actually gain ground and an essential part of that work that you have to do is learning what to do and what not to do to achieve your goals. Piss and vinegar alone is not enough.

Now, many people think they can just learn through experience. And yeah, they’re right. There are many important and useful things you can learn through experience, but at what cost? How many missteps and mistakes can you make? And how much pain and plight can you endure before you start to drag? Anchor and eventually give up Benjamin Franklin said that experience keeps a dear school But fools will learn in no other and scarce in that so in other words learning through experience is expensive and learning exclusively through experience is foolish and often deficient and why do that When you can learn from other people’s experience Instead, so think about it for a second.

How fortunate are we that right now we can often instantly access the hard one wisdom of hundreds of thousands of people who not only spent much or most of their lives in the trenches mastering some topic or discipline, but also took the time and energy to openly and honestly share their biggest insights and lessons with the rest of us.

How? Phenomenal is it that for 20 bucks or less, we can enlist billionaires, artists, professors, athletes, philosophers, theologians, politicians, and soldiers as our own personal mentors? And how ridiculous is it to ignore this opportunity and insist on figuring it all out ourselves instead? That is exactly what people are doing when they do not read.

Instead of climbing onto the shoulders of giants, they are thumbing their noses at them. Here’s how Charlie Munger put it in his book, Poor Charlie’s Almanac. In my whole life, I have known no wise people over a broad subject matter area. Who didn’t read all the time, none zero now, how and what you read matters as well, because speed reading your way through a bunch of material is not learning so much as turning pages quickly.

And young adult novels are great for distraction, but not personal development. Think of it like your diet. If you want a healthy, strong, vital body, it is not only the calories and the macros that matter, but the nutrition as well. So the bottom line here is thoughtful, intelligent, and diligent reading. Is one of the simplest and most effective ways to get ahead in life.

It really is the ultimate unfair advantage. And in this podcast, I’m going to share my personal system, my processes and strategies for selecting reading and remembering books. That helped me get the absolute most out of my studies and I hope they help you as much as they have helped me. Okay. So let’s start with when do I read and for how long, because if you are going to be a regular reader, the first hurdle you are going to have to clear is time.

And to do that, you need to get specific about when you’re going to read and for how long. So for me, I The two prime reading slots are early in the morning before I go to the gym and toward the end of the workday before I go home. Now, specifically, I wake up between 545 and 615, assuming I slept well and I don’t need more sleep.

And after using the bathroom and drinking a liter of water and gargling with some mouthwash so I don’t forget, I spend the next 45 to 60 minutes in my infrared sauna. Reading. Then about 12 to 13 hours later, I spend the final 30 to 45 minutes at the office reading, usually 6. or so. And then on the weekends, I usually wake up an hour or so later, but still spend the first 45 to 60 minutes reading in the sauna, usually after making my kids breakfast and spending some time with my wife.

Now, sometimes I read a bit more before I go to bed. But most of my reading gets done in the mornings and the afternoons, and I particularly enjoy the morning reading because assuming I’ve slept well, I’m sharp and fresh, which makes it easy to focus, and it’s also just a great way to start the day in a good mood because by the time I leave the house to head off to the gym I’ve already completed an important and meaningful task.

And I used to only read in the mornings, but I wasn’t getting through books as quickly as I’d wanted. So I added the second end of day reading session and I chose the end of my work day because when I get home, my wife and I have about two hours of cooking, eating, getting our kids to bed and showering to do.

And quite frankly, after all that, I would rather spend the last hour. Sometimes it’s less, sometimes it’s 30 minutes with her. Then a book. Now, as far as my daily reading goal, it’s pretty modest. It’s 40 to 60 pages per day, or about one book per week. And sometimes I’m able to do more, sometimes less, but that’s my normal pace.

And if that sounds low to you, given the time Investment. I do understand because I’m not a particularly fast reader, but this is intentional. And I will be talking about this soon. All right. The next question, hard copy ebook or audio book. Much of what I read is digital in the form of Kindle eBooks, Blinkist, or insta read summaries and online articles that I read in Instapaper.

I add them to Instapaper and then read them later. Now, as much as I like to hold and smell, don’t judge me, a physical book and I know that research indicates that we may remember more of what we read physically than digitally. Digital reading is just too tempting to pass up because not only does it give you instant smartphone access to your books, which comes in handy at random times where I’ll pull up a book from waiting in line or doing something else that requires just sitting there and staring off into the distance, but also.

You get your highlights and your notes automatically synced to the cloud, which then makes them very easy to download and catalog for review, which is something that I do and we’ll be talking about in a few minutes. That said, there are many worthwhile books that are not available as eBooks. And so I will read hard copies when I have to.

Now I used to supplement my reading with audio book listening while I drove, made food, or Locked my dogs and did other unthinking things, but I stopped for a few reasons. One, I found that information retention was lower, which is no surprise, of course, and especially if the book contained a lot of facts and figures to the more sophisticated books that I read hard to follow.

They were hard to digest, and especially when driving, I often found myself having to rewind And re-listen to some of the more dense passages. Three. Whenever I wanted to make a highlighter note, I’d have to pause the audio book and flip to the Kindle version, which was fine. But if I was driving, that meant pausing and then just waiting for red lights.

And four. If the author had a robust vocabulary, I would often have to pause to clarify words that I couldn’t define, and if I was driving, I could use voice search on my phone. Define vexing, but if the first definition served up wasn’t the correct one that I’d have to wait for a red light to go and look for it.

So now, instead of listening to audio books during downtime, I listen to lectures, interviews, and the like as they require less focus. There are no highlights or notes to make, and I rarely have to make notes. Spend much time in the dictionary. All right. Now let’s talk about choosing books. Here’s how I choose books to read.

Now I used to choose books to read based on whatever was most on my mind or caught my eye at the time. And as a result, my book choices would cluster around a single topic or genre for a while until my initial questions were answered or interest was exhausted. At which point I would move on to the next topic.

In short, I was reading mostly to satisfy my intellectual whims, which ranged from ancient history to political intrigues, war, writing, philosophy, marketing, storytelling, and other things, golf. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. It definitely led me down some interesting rabbit holes, but my purpose or reading has evolved and so have my habits.

Now I read for A few very specific reasons and here they are in order of importance to me. First is to expand my vocabulary. Second is to challenge myself intellectually. Third is to improve my fluency. Fourth is to get better at my work and working in general my business and making money. And fifth is to better understand other people and the world around me.

And to accomplish those things, what I do is I follow two topical rotations. In my reading one for my morning slots and another for my afternoon sessions. So the morning rotation looks like this. One the first on the list is biography or history. The second is be smarter or better. The third is fiction, literature, or poetry.

The fourth is financial or just miscellaneous. And the afternoon currently goes like this. We have one art creativity or writing to marketing or persuasion, three business or work and four health diet or fitness. As you can see, my morning reading is devoted to non professional stuff and my afternoons are for getting ahead in my work.

And I prefer this two track approach over just reading one book at a time simply because I enjoy reading. Two books at a time. And as far as how the rotations work, it’s pretty simple. I read one book on a given topic and then I move on to the next on the list, eventually coming back to the beginning.

And as to selecting specific books to read, I tend to prefer older books. to newer ones and fundamentals to complexities. And this is especially true when I am new to a subject or discipline or mostly looking for practical knowledge. And the reasons for this are twofold. One, deeply understanding the basics of something is far superior to lightly understanding more complicated ideas.

And if you don’t really get the basics, you will never really get the rest anyway. Two, older books that are still in currency often have stood the test of time for a reason. They usually deliver the goods. Hence, they’ve been able to survive the scrutiny of decades or even centuries and still earn new readers each and every day.

In other words, the longer books have lived, the more valuable they are. They likely are, and according to the Lindy effect, the longer their lifespans will likely be. And this is why I expect to get more from a book written 30, 50, or 100 years ago that’s still around than a book on the same topic written just a year ago.

Of course, it doesn’t always work out like that, but it is definitely a valuable rule of thumb. And so I often first read older classic books on subjects. That were written by people who made the original discoveries and breakthroughs themselves before moving on to more modern books that may or may not add anything significant to the seminal works.

For instance, in the case of marketing, which is an area that I’ve read a lot on, you can learn more or less everything you need to know, at least in the way of fundamentals by reading and applying. The following older books, you have scientific advertising, tested advertising methods, breakthrough advertising, the Robert Collier letterbook influence how to write a good advertisement and the ultimate sales letter.

Now, there are many other. Great marketing books, but if you actually just ignored them all and just carefully read and applied the information in those seven books that I just shared, you may not become a world class marketer, but you would never struggle to make money as one. And the same goes for many interests and activities.

The key to competence is not the quantity of information that you have consumed or consume, but the quality. How you comprehend it and ultimately what you can do with it. So once I have worked through the top timeless books on a subject and any other time proven ones that have stood out, I’ll move on to books recommended by people I admire and especially the books they feel most changed their minds, shaped their careers and informed their character.

Quake book says. Tyler Cohen calls them. And to find these books, all it usually takes is a little Googling. There are many lists online, but if that comes up empty, a quick email or social media message will often get a reply. And especially from other authors. Now, lastly, if I can’t find or am now out of personal recommendations on a topic, I’ll check out best books on lists online and poke around Amazon or my local bookstore to find.

Potential reads. So let’s talk about now choosing one book to read out of a number of worthy candidates for me. I actually keep this pretty simple. I usually just pick one that feels like the best fit for my current needs or circumstances or simply interests me. The most before I start it, however, I first see if there is a summary that’s available on Blinkist, Instaread, or GetAbstract, although I find GetAbstract’s summaries tend to be the worst out of the three options, but if there is a summary that’s available, I will read that first before the book, because I’ve found that if I don’t like the summary, if I don’t find it interesting, then chances are I’m not going to like or find the book interesting either.

What I don’t do, however, is I do not substitute reading book summaries for reading. Books themselves perusing a 20 somethings book report is not the same as getting the information and getting all of it straight from the horse’s mouth. Now, if there is not a book summary available, I will first screen the book by skimming the preface table of contents index and inside jacket to see if it deserves more of my time and attention.

Okay. So now I’ve started a book. What I do here is I consider the first 50 pages as probation or dating. If you want to use a softer metaphor. In other words, if by page 51, I am thoroughly unimpressed. I quit the book and I move on to another one. And I used to never quit books. I used to hate quitting books.

But that was a mistake because we are only going to be able to read so much in our lifetimes. So why waste any of that opportunity on mediocre material? And while I don’t abandon many books these days, mostly due to everything I’ve explained so far in terms of finding, choosing and vetting books, unsurprisingly, most of the books I’ve quit have been newer ones that I’ve read.

Simply didn’t live up to their promises. Hey, quickly, before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, would you please help spread the word about it because no amount of marketing or advertising gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth. So if you are enjoying this episode and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well.

Please do tell them about it. It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say thank you. You can find me on Instagram at muscleforlifefitness, Twitter at muscleforlife, and Facebook at muscleforlifefitness. All right, moving along, I’m reading now. So here’s how I read for maximum comprehension and retention.

So choosing the right books is half of the reading battle. And then the other half is how you actually read them. And there are definitely more and less effective ways of reading. And from what I’ve seen, most people read rather ineffectively. Namely, they make one or more of the following mistakes. They skim or speed read.

They go by words that they don’t understand. They don’t clarify them in the dictionary. They read very passively. They don’t highlight. They don’t take notes. They don’t stop to reflect. There’s no internal dialogue. There’s no connecting information dots. And they also often fail to focus. They check social media.

They check email. They check Twitter. Texts and so forth to read better. I basically do the opposite. I do not skim or speed read because while these things do allow you to get through books quickly, they do not result in first rate learning. If you want to misunderstand. Forget just about everything you read, skim and speed read when I’m reading, I’m always on the lookout for words that I don’t fully or correctly understand.

And I always stop to clarify them in the dictionary. And yes, this is annoying sometimes. And yes, it makes for fewer pages read per hour, but it greatly increases my comprehension of the material. As well as my vocabulary, which I believe is one of the primary reasons to read. And I recorded a podcast on that point in particular a couple months ago.

If you go to my feed and search for read, you’ll find it. And just to expand a little bit more on this point, paying close attention to your understanding of words has another very practical benefit. It forces you to slow down and absorb and analyze what you’re reading. Word by word, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, as opposed to just sailing through sentences and passages, believing that you are understanding and retaining more than you really are.

And in case you are wondering, I have three favorite dictionaries, and they are in this order. Let’s take a look. Word. Word. The New Oxford American Dictionary, 3rd Edition, the Webster’s 3rd New International Dictionary, Unabridged, and Random House Unabridged Dictionary. I also read actively by highlighting important and memorable passages, by recording interesting thoughts, perceptions, and sometimes epiphanies as notes in the margins of a book.

If I’m reading a hard copy, yes, writing in the book, that’s also something you can do. Something that we were probably discouraged from doing as kids, but is valuable. And if I’m reading digitally, I save them as notes in the Kindle app. And I also, when I’m reading, I’m striving to connect what I’m learning with other things that I’ve already learned because that not only improves comprehension, but also retention.

Also, when I’m reading, I focus on what I’m reading. And nothing else. I don’t check social media. I don’t check email. I don’t send text messages. I don’t have a TV on in the background and I don’t randomly just stare off into the distance. And a little tip on that is if you read on a Kindle paperwhite, it will help because there are no opportunities for distractions like with a smartphone.

And if you are going to read on a smartphone, which I often do. You can put it in, do not disturb mode or just turn off notifications in general. That would probably be a smart move. I’ve done that. I get notifications for text messages, but my phone is always on vibrate or silent. So I’m not hearing anything.

I check my phone then when I want to check it and don’t have it constantly enticing me to pick it up. Now, when I’m reading, I also Save words that I like that tickle my processors to Google keep. So I’ll take a screenshot of usually their words that I have to clarify in the dictionary. Usually their words that I just didn’t know, or maybe had a wrong definition for or something.

So I’ll take a screenshot of usually it’s the dictionary and I’ll save that to Google keep just cause it’s easy. And then later move those words into a Google sheet that I use to create SRS flashcards. And I use Anki is the app that I use that I then go through every day or two for 15, maybe 20 minutes as a kind of custom vocabulary building exercise of sorts.

Also a memory exercise. All right. So now I have finished reading a book and what comes next? Is the dessert. I’m not done yet. So here’s how I process and review what I’ve read. Now, we all know that repetition is a powerful way to increase the stickiness of any information. The number of times we hear something, see something, go over something, the better we will understand it and remember it.

And the more influence it’ll have over us. Repetition, for example, is one of the Fundamental principles of advertising repetition, it takes, they say on average seven exposures to a message before it’ll really penetrate into somebody’s mind and have a chance at influencing them to buy.

And so repetition is why I extract all highlights and all notes from every book that I read and put them into Google docs. I have one document per book. And as I mostly read. I’m going to type everything out digitally. This is pretty quick and easy, but in the case of hard copies, it means that yes, I have to type everything out by hand.

Now, some people like Ryan Holiday and Robert Green prefer to handwrite highlights and notes onto note cards while others prefer to handwrite into notes. Notebooks. I say do whatever works for you. I prefer my digital system over a note card, a physical note card system, because my system is faster. It is safer.

There’s virtually no way to lose the work. And especially considering that I save everything digital that I care about to an external hard drive every six months. So I have a backup and also it makes everything very easily searchable, which comes in very handy. When your library gets large. So after I have dumped all of my highlights and all of my notes into a Google doc, I then read through everything again and separate out the key takeaways, the highlights and notes that struck me the most.

And I also save any particularly interesting quotes, passages, and anecdotes in particular in Evernote. And I tag them accordingly. When I am writing and I want to include something about, let’s say, courage, I can quickly pull up interesting tidbits and information. And I know that process sounds like absolute drudgery, but I’ve actually come to enjoy it because it not only immediately boosts retention of the material, it also makes it very easy to later review a book’s key points without having to.

Fully reread it, which is warranted in some cases, but I think often is not often. I would rather just go through the key messages, the key things that I got from a book, unless I’m reading it again at a later point in life with a different perspective on things. And I want to see what else I can get from the book.

But if it’s a practical kind of how to like how to be good at email marketing book, chances are, I’m going to get just as much out of reviewing My highlights and notes as rereading the book, which of course would still have my highlights and notes saved in it. And another thing that I like about my process is it helps me produce higher quality writing.

It’s helpful to have my own personal digital. Reservoir of quotes and stories and facts and pieces of information that I find interesting and that I can then include in my writing. All right. So that’s it. That’s my simple system that I use to find, choose, read, and remember great books. And I want to leave you with this.

In his book Principles, which I highly recommend, Ray Dalio said the following. He said, it seems to me that if you look back on yourself a year ago and aren’t shocked by how stupid you were, you haven’t learned much. Now, I agree with this. I think that things either get better or worse. They never truly stay the same.

And so if we are not continually getting better by educating and improving ourselves, it’s safe to assume we are continually getting worse. We’re getting dumber, we’re getting lazier, and quite frankly, less valuable as people, even if by small degrees. Now, if you agree or are at least inclined to agree with that, then you also have to agree or be inclined to agree with the importance of.

Persistent studying. Similar to exercise, it is not a luxury, but a necessity for living a highly productive and fulfilling life. And accordingly, neglecting such a fundamental need inevitably leads to underperformance, stagnation, and dysfunction. Neglect reading and studying at any cost. But, let’s not end there.

Let’s go out on a positive note, shall we? Here’s what Henry David Thoreau had to say on the matter. He said, Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. Books, the oldest and the best, stand naturally and rightfully on the shelves of every cottage. They have no cause of their own to plead, but while they enlighten and sustain the reader, his common sense will not refuse them.

Their authors are a natural and irresistible aristocracy in every society, and more than kings or emperors,

Hey there, it is Mike again. I hope you enjoyed this episode and found it interesting and helpful. And if you did and don’t mind doing me a favor and want to help me make this the most popular health and fitness podcast on the internet, then please leave a quick review of it on iTunes or wherever you’re listening from.

This not only convinces people that they should check the show out, it also increases its search visibility. And thus helps more people find their way to me and learn how to build their best bodies ever too. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then just subscribe to the podcast and you won’t miss out on any of the new goodies.

Lastly, if you didn’t like something about the show, then definitely shoot me an email at mike at muscle for life. com and share your thoughts on how you think it could be better. I read everything myself and I’m always looking for constructive feedback. So please do reach out. All right, that’s it. Thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon.

And lastly, this episode is brought to you by me. Seriously though, you. I’m not big on promoting stuff that I don’t personally use and believe in, so instead I’m going to just quickly tell you about something of mine. Oh, and if you liked this episode, then you are going to love my newest book, The Little Black Book of Workout Motivation.

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