7 things about books and life that I learned by reading 100 books a year

After reading the hundredth book, I realized that reading is not only an opportunity to gain new skills. Reading can make a difference. And I'm not talking about lists of books that change people's lives. I am talking about an activity that imperceptibly penetrates into all spheres of our life and gradually transforms them. That year greatly influenced my development. I decided to find out why and singled out 7 main points that I will share with you.

Answers to frequently asked questions

My selection of sensible books caused a lot of questions in the comments and social services. networks. To prevent this from happening again, I decided to immediately answer the frequently asked questions.

How to read quickly and understand?
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Most decided to read 100 books a year to read quickly. I tried to artificially increase the speed of reading, but nothing sensible came of it. The reading speed increases by yourself if you read a lot. But it's not about speed, but about the time that you set aside for this activity.

The book is read from 1 to 6 hours. It turns out that in order to read 100 books per year it is necessary to read no more than 2 hours per day. Many will meet this quota on their way to work and home.

It’s also true that just reading a book is not enough. I love paper books, but I mostly use iBooks, thanks to the ability to export notes to mail. After I add them to the general knowledge base in Evernote, broken down into categories. You may not even have to look into this database again. The necessary information itself appears at the right time, because you interacted with it several times.

What books have I read?

90% is non-fiction. Fiction took 10-20 minutes before bedtime. I never read sammari books.

Where did I get the books?

I buy books. Now it is much easier to buy than to download illegally. Books on litres.ru are like 1-2 cups of coffee, and the benefits are much greater. At the end of the year, I began to work with the business literature publishing houses Alpina Publisher and Mann, Ivanov and Ferber and began to receive books for free.

Why did I read so much? Question of motivation

I do not know why. I love books, and this idea sparked me. The motivational support was provided by the online community. Then I did not know about the service to achieve the goals of SmartProgress and shared success on the social page. network. A public promise increases the chances of success at times. People are interested, support, and sometimes, even join you.

How did I pick the books?

I compare the ratings of Ozone, Amazon and listen to the recommendations of interesting and successful people. Sometimes I write to the authors by email and 9 out of 10 are responsible.

Where and when did I read?

Any pause is a reason to read, so I read several books in parallel. Paper, phone, tablet - everything is involved.

So, 7 things about books and life that I learned by reading 100 books in a year

1. Ideas come while reading

I really do not like losing ideas, so I always keep a pack of stickers on the table. At some point, I got the idea to conduct a small experiment and understand what activities contribute to the emergence of ideas. Then, in addition to the idea, I began to record the context of its appearance. For several months I folded the stickers in a plastic bag and looked forward to the result. As a result, I received the following statistics:

Reading - 43 ideas
Sleeping - 23 ideas
Shower - 7 ideas

Results:

- Do not stockpile ideas. View records once a week and try to implement at least some of them. Throw away the rest.
- Do not try to remember. Always keep a notebook or phone nearby.

2. All Most do not care about you

Accepted call was an excellent test environment. It is logical that I have less time for stupid conversations on the network. Communication was limited to a few people, which helped me to select real friends and weed out simple contacts.

Results:

- The environment strongly influences us. Communicating with interesting, successful people we become better. Around there are several real success stories that motivate. Besides, there is always someone to ask for advice.
- Finding interesting people is easy. Look for bloggers, book authors, entrepreneurs. Write to them, chat online, and then make an appointment. Personally, I managed to talk with 5 best-selling authors, including foreign ones.

3. We have more time than we think.

I am sure that you have met students who complain about the lack of time. This is ridiculous. We know dozens of examples of successful people who are developing a business, are actively involved in sports, have a family, and all are doing well.

It is not easy to abandon the information needle, to which we are taught from childhood. It takes time. Starting to read a lot, I restricted the reading of the media and found that, not knowing the current political or economic situation, I did not turn into an Aboriginal. The internal state improved, and the brain got more time to think.

Results:

- Conduct an experiment. Disconnect from the entertainment sites for a week. If not, then do not go online until 16:00. I'm pretty sure your life will change.
- Determine how much time you will spend reading each day.

4. Books change

They say that books do not change, and only circumstances can affect a person’s life. I do not agree. The book "Number 1" awakened in me an interest in self-development, Tim Ferris showed that you can live and work differently.

Reading teaches us to competently express thoughts, which is very important, because we communicate every day. And the success of a business or career at a certain stage may depend on some dialogues (or letters).

The books that influenced me can look in this collection .

5. Money spent on books pays off

It is believed that out of ten startups pays for itself 3, and one pays for all 10. With books, the situation is slightly better. One in a hundred can change life, but more than half have a positive effect (with proper selection of literature). In my student years, I spent 3-5 thousand a month on books. A neighbor twisted his finger at his temple, and I believed that I was doing the right thing. A little later, I acquired an online design course from tilda.education for 8,000₽, which changed my approach to design. This course has paid for itself several times over the next month.

Results:

- Today it is a pity to spend several thousand for something that may not be useful tomorrow. But, only having tried, we have an opportunity to become better. Yes, one book may be confusing, but after reading 10 you will definitely not regret it.
- At the end of the experiment, I have accumulated dozens of paper books. They can be sold, donated or played.

6. Read carefully

Books are motivating and that is good. But it happens the other way around. You can sincerely believe that you need to write a book or start a company, and only after losing a few years you realize that all this was not necessary for you.

Results:

- Analyze read, argue with the author. It is useful to do this within the blog. Now not many people have an opinion.
- Check any goals and dreams. Who are they inspired by? Fashion, society or go from the inside?

7. We read books wrong

I thought that after reading 100 books, I would get a mountain of theoretical information that would be useful for the realization of ideas. This is partly true, but reading with this approach is not effective. From school we were taught to read word by word. So read fiction. Non-fiction requires a different approach. Opening the next book, you must understand what information you are looking for. If you don’t do this, you’re walking in a fog in an attempt to find something useful.

Results:

- Before reading a new book, write down a few questions, the answers to which you want to find.
- Try to understand the main idea of ​​the author. Even among the bestsellers there are books of one thought.

Conclusion

In the middle of the year I stopped. Reading turned into torture, and every paragraph into a commonplace. I have not read more than a month. Now interest in books has arisen with a new force. Understanding that the acquired skills in marketing, sales, design or programming can help you tomorrow, books turn into a bonanza. The main thing is not to become a passive knowledge base, and the very next day to apply the acquired skills in business.

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