How I read

I read many books, and reading is one of my favorite ways to spend time.

The habit of reading isn't prized as high as it should be within my circles (founders, builders) compared to its positive impact on the mind. Reading a book is akin to exploring a comprehensive, and carefully curated path through someone else's brain. Getting that level of intellectual intimacy, especially with sources being from some of the greatest thinkers in the world is priceless. Although it’s not always possible, I try to spend 10-20% of my waking time reading.

This essay isn't about what to read - that's highly subjective and depends on the circumstances and interests of the reader. If you'd like - you can browse my bookshelf to browse books I've read that I think are valuable. Instead, this essay is about how I read. The process itself. I'd like to share both my philosophy around reading, as well as the tactics - which are downstream of it.

Why read?

I read to understand the world, or at least the part that interests me at any given moment. Creating a coherent mental model of areas of the human experience is both virtuous and addictive. Few things are more intensely pleasurable than finding an “aha!” moment that connects things you already know in a new and unexpected way. For this reason, I read a lot of non-fiction and in such a way that maximizes the number of “aha!” moments per unit of time.

My interests are fluid and often triggered subconsciously - outside of my conscious, rational control. There are certainly themes to my interests that last months, years and decades - but the smaller pockets of unexplored terrain, the momentary curiosities are chaotic and unpredictable.

For this reason, my reading environment and habits are impulsive, rather than pre-planned. I treat reading as an all-you-can-eat buffet, than a regimented diet. This shifts my incentives when reading any book away from the norms typically accepted by the broader zeitgeist of readers.

Don’t read to finish

I finish a very small fraction of non-fiction books that I start. Finishing a book implies reading every chapter and every word, but the chances of every idea presented by an author being interesting or even relevant to you is near zero.

Let’s say you’re reading the perfect book. Each distinct idea, or paragraph, has a 90% probability of you learning something new and truly amazing. That’s an unrealistically high bar - I’d say 10% or lower is more realistic. There are around 600 paragraphs in the average non-fiction book. The probability of every paragraph you read being interesting to you is:

(0.9)^600 = 0.0000000000000000000000000035%

= effectively zero.

Reading to finish sets you up for boredom. I used to read to finish books because the abstract goal of reading every page made me feel good about myself. It seems like society prizes to some extent the novelty metrics around reading - how big the book was, how fast you read it, how many books you read in a year. These things are about status, not about reading. If you read to finish, you are undoubtedly also forcing yourself through uninteresting information. I read only when it's interesting, and skip or stop when it isn't.

Read many books at once

Since I don’t read to finish, I don’t treat unfinished books as open loops that must be closed. I never think “oh I’d love to read that now, but I’m already reading X - I’ll finish that first”. Therefore I read many books at once - somewhere between 2 and 6.

As my interests and curiosities are fluid, I start reading by picking up the book I’m most likely to enjoy in the moment. I’ll jump around what I’ve read already and review some highlights. Then I’ll either start where I left off, or jump to a random chapter (some books are more linear than others, so the approach differs).

Maximise “aha!” moments

When I encounter boredom it’s obvious to me - I start reading but not comprehending. The eyes move across the line, but my brain is thinking about something else. My goal is to aggressively eliminate these states. Here are my tactics:

Skip and skim. As soon as my interest wanes, I start reading faster and more selectively - usually just the first few words of the sentence of each paragraph. You don’t owe the author your full attenton for every word they’ve written. The author knows this, and so they introduce, conclude and summarise ideas frequently. Use that to your advantage. If a minute of doing this doesn’t lead me to a more interesting patch of knowledge, I skip chapters.
Change books. It might be that I’m interested in the author’s ideas, but they’ve caught me at a bad time. If I start thinking about other ideas else when I’m reading a book, I’d instead read a book that lets me explore them better. So that’s what I do.
Stop reading the book. If the author’s core thesis, writing style or both, isn’t interesting - I stop reading the book altogether. I may come back to it in the future, but I drop it from the stack I have on my desk, and put it back on my bookshelf.

These techniques are greedy rather than exhaustive - they help increase the chances of me stumbling upon interesting information in each reading session. That makes every session more enjoable.

I aim to make every session as enjoyable as possible. Great reading maximises enjoyment, enjoyment is key to great learning, great learning accumulates knowledge and the more you know, the more things you find interesting, and can read about.

Read actively

Passive reading is reading for the sake of moving your eyes across the page and counting the pages you’ve read. Active reading is reading to learn new things and let new ideas mingle with what you already know. Active reading is better than passive in the same way that an engaging conversation is better than listening to a monologue. I think while I read, and I usually think by writing and reflecting to what I’ve read at the same time as I read it.

Annotate the book. I treat physical books as a canvas for scribbles and annotations. I highlight interesting things and write my own ideas in the margins. I go back to these notes when I pick up a book for the first time in a while.
Connect disparate knowledge. I reflect on what I’ve learned and connect it to what I already know. I do this while I read. I use PKM systems to create graphs of knowledge and derive new ideas by connecting things I’ve read in the past - I wrote my own tool for this, Luhmann, which aids me in doing this more efficiently using AI.

If you ideas are the dish, books are the ingredients. Ingredients on their own often don’t taste as good as their combination. I cook whilst the ingredients are still fresh, and write derived thoughts as I read. Just as a cook uses their favorite ingredients in many of their dishes, so too I come back to my favorite books when I’m thinking about problems adjacent to their insights.

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These techniques make reading one of the most enjoyable and fruitful activities I do every day, maximising the time I spend engaged and excited by new thoughts and insights. My approach took years to evolve into something that feels personally optimal for me in the moment, but I don’t doubt that it will continue to evolve in the coming months, years and decades. I don’t expect my approach to work for you, but I’m genuinely intersted in learning how you read. You can drop me and email to shoot me a message over email or Farcaster. If you’d like to see what I’m reading, feel free to check out my bookshelf.

“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”

― Harper Lee