Steven Cheah

Author @JamesClear is the world's #1 bestselling non-fiction author. He says "developing a reading habit is a crucial task for anyone interested in earning more money or accumulating wisdom." Here are 33 helpful reading tips from him: 1) Read 20 pages to start the day. 2) I usually wake up, drink a glass of water, write down 3 things I’m grateful for, and read 20 pages of a book. 3) 20 pages is small enough that it’s not intimidating. Most people can finish reading 20 pages within 30 minutes. And if you do it first thing in the morning, then the urgencies of the day don’t get in the way. 4) Select a time to read every day. I suggest you do it first thing in the morning, but the important thing is to read at the same time every day. 5) Choose a page goal. Again you can use my 20-page goal or formulate your own. Just make sure that the goal is easy enough that you can’t say no, but significant enough for you to feel like you’re making progress. 6) Find a book to read today. If you wait til tomorrow, your reading time will arrive and you’ll be empty-handed. 7) Find a place to read. Reading in the same place every day will help solidify this habit. Find a comfortable place in your home or office where you are away from distractions. 8) Set a reminder. Use your calendar app or even a simple post it on your bathroom mirror. Create a trigger that will remind you to read. 9) Tell somebody about your commitment. Habit change does not happen in isolation. You need to share your commitment with others in order to make it feel real in your own mind. Email, call or text three people you care about that you plan to read x number of pages everyday at x time. 10) Read books that are relevant to what you want to achieve and reading will never seem boring. 11) If you know how to read, then reading books is relatively easy. You simply have to make time to read. Easier said than done, of course. 12) What matters is not simply reading more books, but getting more out of each book you read. 13) Quit books quickly and without guilt or shame. 14) Life is too short to waste it on average books. The opportunity cost is too high. There are so many amazing things to read. 15) I think Patrick Collison, the founder of Stripe, put it nicely when he said, “Life is too short to not read the very best book you know of right now.” 16) One way to improve reading comprehension is to choose books you can immediately apply. Putting the ideas you read into action is one of the best ways to secure them in your mind. 17) Choosing a book that you can use also provides a strong incentive to pay attention and remember the material. If you’re starting a business, for example, then you have a lot of motivation to get everything you can out of the sales book you’re reading. 18) Keep notes on what you read. You can do this however you like. It doesn’t need to be a big production or a complicated system. Just do something to emphasize the important points and passages. 19) I do this in different ways depending on the format I’m consuming. I highlight passages when reading on Kindle. I type out interesting quotes as I listen to audiobooks. I dog-ear pages and transcribe notes when reading a print book. 20) Store your notes in a searchable format. There is no need to leave the task of reading comprehension solely up to your memory. I keep my notes in Evernote. I prefer Evernote over other options because 1) it is instantly searchable, 2) it is easy to use across multiple devices, and 3) you can create and save notes even when you’re not connected to the internet. 21) My preference is to listen to audiobooks on 1.25x speed and then press pause whenever I want to write something down. The faster playback speed and slower note-taking process tend to balance out and I usually finish each book in the same time as normal. 22) I often hear from friends and readers who suggest listening to audiobooks at some crazy speed like 2x or 3x. Maybe my brain is just slow, but this is way too fast for me. Furthermore, I feel like burning through books at that pace is an indication of the wrong approach. It seems like the goal is simply to check books off the list rather than to deeply understand what the book is about. My preferred pace is slower, but hopefully my understanding is better. 23) I try to consider how the book I’m reading connects with all of the ideas that are already knocking around inside my head. Whenever possible, I try to integrate the lessons I’m learning with previous ideas. 24) When you read something that reminds you of another topic or immediately sparks a connection or idea, don’t allow that thought to come and go without notice. Write about what you’ve learned and how it connects to other ideas. 25) As soon as I finish a book, I challenge myself to summarize the entire text in just three sentences. This constraint is just a game, of course, but it forces me to consider what was really important about the book. 26) Read a variety of books on the same topic. Dig in from different angles, look at the same problem through the eyes of various authors, and try to transcend the boundary of your own experience. 27) Read the great books twice. The philosopher Karl Popper explained the benefits nicely, “Anything worth reading is not only worth reading twice, but worth reading again and again. 28) If a book is worthwhile, then you will always be able to make new discoveries in it and find things in it that you didn’t notice before, even though you have read it many times. 29) Revisiting great books is helpful because the problems you deal with change over time. Sure, when you read a book twice maybe you’ll catch some stuff you missed the first time around, but it’s more likely that new passages and ideas will be relevant to you. It’s only natural for different sentences to leap out at you depending on the point you are at in life. 30) One book will rarely change your life, even if it does deliver a lightbulb moment of insight. The key is to get a little wiser each day. 31) Even if you didn’t get something new out of each reading, it would still be worthwhile to revisit great books because ideas need to be repeated to be remembered. 32) If you think you can learn a lot from reading books, try writing one. 33) Start more books. Quit most of them. Read the great ones twice.