How to Speed Read - And When NOT To | Ask Altucher! EP06

25:33So Jay Shetty essentially wrote sort of memoir of his experiences and what he learned as a monk. The book is over 300 pages long and I never read it because I got it in anticipation. I've been on Jay's podcast and I thought maybe Jay would come on my podcast, but he didn't really do that many podcasts when the book came out and whatever. It never happened. Okay. I'm looking at, so I've never read this book. So I'm looking at the very first page and it says, when I was 18 years old in my first year of college at Cass Business School in London. One of my friends asked me to go with him to hear a monk give a talk.

26:09I resisted. Why would I want to go hear some monk? And then he says, third paragraph, I often went to see CEOs, celebrities, and other successful people lecture on campus, but I had zero interest in a monk. I preferred to hear speakers who'd actually accomplished things in life. Okay. So just from these three paragraphs, what have we learned? Well, Jay, you tell me what have we learned in these first three paragraphs uh he only listened to people that are successful and then he has some sort of judgmental mind that like you think that monk's not uh you know successful and eventually he's going to be monk because that's how like usually story plays out right well the book's titled think like a monk yeah so we assume at some point he learned to think like a monk whether he became a monk or he interviewed monks we don't we technically don't know that yet if we don't know anything about Jay.

27:01But there's a lot of things I will point out about these first three paragraphs. First off, you have to respect when a good writer writes something, every sentence is important. As Kurt Bonnegut once said, every sentence must either give you more information about a character or must move the plot forward. So we know he's 18 years old, so he's fairly young, and he's at the Cass Business School. So that tells me a lot. He wants to be a businessman. He wants to be rich. So he went to business school instead of some other kind of college. In the second line, it says, I resisted. Why would I want to go hear some monk?

27:34So now we know two things from that. One is we think about the arc of the hero. So in the arc of the hero, the hero in the very first section is reluctant to go on an adventure. So Luke Skywalker is reluctant. He wants to explore space. He wants to be a pilot in space, but his uncle tells him, you know, you have to work on the farm another year at least. So he's reluctant to go on. And then Obi-Wan Kenobi says later to him, you have to go save the empire or rescue the princess. And he says, I can't do that. He's reluctant because I've got to help my, I promised my uncle. So every hero is a reluctant hero at first.

28:15So Jay Shetty is saying, I resisted. Why would I want to go hear some monk? And he describes even further, he likes to see CEOs, celebrities. He defines success by money or fame. He uses the example of CEOs and celebrities. CEOs usually have money, and they're usually leaders of some sort. And celebrities are famous. That's why they're celebrities. And then he even further underlines it. He had zero interest in a monk. And then he further underlines it, doesn't think a monk accomplished anything. He says, I prefer to hear about speakers who actually accomplish things in life. And so you learn a lot from the first three paragraphs.

28:51So now what I also can guess from these first three paragraphs is obviously he's wrong, okay, because the arc of the hero usually turns the opposite of reluctant later. So we have to assume based on the title and these first three paragraphs that he's going to completely reverse his opinion about monks. And then his friend persisted and finally said, as long as we go to a bar afterwards, I'm in. But he says, but that night as I listened to the monk talk about his experience, I fell in love. His head was shaved. he wore a saffron robe he was intelligent eloquent and charismatic so and he said he spoke about the principle of selfless sacrifice when he said that we should plant trees i felt an unfamiliar thrill run through my body i was especially impressed when i found out he'd been a student at iit bombay which is the mit of india nearly impossible to get into he traded that opportunity to become a monk walking away from everything that my friends and i were chasing either he was crazy he was on to something.

29:49So I almost don't even have to read any more of the first chapter. I know what this book is going to be. We're not talking about super speed reading. We're just talking about speed reading. So if you continue reading this first chapter, and I'm just kind of now moving along, I see he has examples of Matthew Ricard, who's labeled the world's happiest man, was a biologist, and then he became some sort of monk. Again, I'm not trying to speed read right here, but he became a Buddhist monk. Then he talks about how he didn't grow up in an ashram. He had a very normal upbringing. He talks about Albert Einstein said, if you can't explain something simply, you don't understand it well enough.

30:27So he started to bring in stories of other people, maybe had a monk way of thinking. And then nonfiction writers will often do something to help you speed read. They'll have charts and diagrams. Remember, you remember 80 % of what you see versus 20 % of what you read. So right in chapter one, in the introduction, Jay Shetty has a chart which lists the differences between the monkey mind and the monk mind. So the monkey mind overthinks and procrastinates. The monk mind analyzes and articulates. The monkey mind is distracted by small things. The monk mind is disciplined. The monkey mind focuses on short-term gratification.

31:07The monk mind looks at long-term. And then of course, Jay decides to become a monk. And he says, I vividly remember my first day of monk school. I had just shaved my head, but I wasn't wearing robes yet. And I still look like I was from London. We know later on in the book, we're going to learn all about his experiences in monk school. Finally, he puts in bold, remember the visual, how would a monk think about life? This may not be a question you ask yourself right now, he says, probably isn't close at all, but it will be by the end of the book. So now we know, we have a guide. This first chapter tells us everything we're going to learn from the book.

31:44We're going to learn how a monk thinks, and we're going to learn Jay's first experiences getting into the mindset of a monk. And we learn his story about Einstein, about Matthew Ricard. There's a few other people I didn't mention. We're going to remember this chart between the monkey mind and the monk mind. We already have enough information that potentially if Jay Shetty was in five minutes going to be on this podcast, we have a good start about what questions to ask. Now I could look at the table of contents. Okay, this is a little bit more. Let's not look at the table of contents yet. Let's just go immediately to the last chapter.

32:17I said the first thing to be a super speed reader is read just the first and last chapter. So the conclusion, which is the last chapter, I hope this book has inspired you. And that's in the first sentence. And then he has a section and it's in bold, the monk method. So he gives a technique that monks, I guess, use for meditation and visualization. And it's a whole steps one through 12. And then he has a section, how to know if it's working. And then he says, try this, two death meditations. And that's a section in gray and bold. So it stands out. So basically, if I read this conclusion, and by the way, I haven't read the conclusion.

32:55I just read these highlighted points. And he also has stories about Mr. Miyagi and the Karate Kid. I'm just seeing what stands out as I skim through this. Life begins with breath. So I know the meditation techniques are gonna be related to how you use your breath. And then why does he wanna do death meditations? You know, oh, I read this section here. How long will it take me to attain enlightenment? The teacher replied, 10 years. But what if I work very hard? The teacher says, 20 years. So again, I haven't read the conclusion, but just from even the small sections of the introduction and the conclusion that I read, almost have enough information to interview Jay Shetty.

33:33I could talk to him about his early life and what was different from being in monk school. I could also talk about why is death meditation important? Why is breath meditation important? By the way, if I wanted to not read anything else in the book, have a really great interview with, let's say, Jay Shetty based on this book, I'll look at the back cover. Oh, I see Will Smith made a blurb. Oh, how'd you get Will Smith to write a blurb? Deepak Chopra wrote a blurb. By the way, two people who have been on our podcast wrote a blurb. Arianna Huffington and Robert Waldinger. Remember Robert Waldinger came on to talk about...

34:13Happiness. Yeah, happiness, right. Robert says, grab this book, find a comfortable chair. Jay guides us with warmth and clarity on a path to greater joy and purpose. So you learned a lot about the book from what these people are saying were the important things to them.

34:43Let me ask you this. So like you said, the first chapter and the last chapter, and then you fill in the blanks sort of, right? Well, no, you don't have to fill in any blanks. Like if I had truly read the first chapter and the last chapter, I would know a lot more. I would know. Right. I'm not saying that is enough to know what is in the book, but just reading the first chapter and the last chapter, I probably know at least 10%, maybe even more, of what the book's about, what points the book's making, what else is in the book. And then I'm about to interview Jay, let's say, because let's say I'm speed reading this for a podcast, I'll have him fill in the blanks.

35:16I'm just curious, let's say if I don't have to interview anyone, I wonder if filling in the blanks, sort of like bad terms, it's more like your intuitions kind of know what the book is about. Is it from experience, your experience of reading so many books? No, because let's say I've never read a book on Buddhism or Hinduism or whatever kind of monkey was. Again, if I read the first chapter, I would have, there's several stories in the first chapter I didn't go through. There's Matthew Ricard's story. There's Garanga Das's story. There's Albert Einstein, the Bhavagad Gita. There's Jay's experience with reading the Bhavagad Gita before and after he became a monk.

35:53And there's also this chart, monkey mind versus monk mind. So I'm going to think about, like if all you did was read this first chapter, it says monkey mind. The person with monkey mind is self-centered and obsessed. The monk mind, the person does self-care in order to be of more service. The monkey mind person looks for pleasure. The monk mind looks for meaning. So you're actually going to understand, and then you're going to see about his first day at monk school. So you're going to learn a little bit what monk school is like. you know and then he already starts in the first chapter he says when we're born the first thing we must do is breathe and then in the i see in the last chapter in the conclusion he talks about a breath meditation he has other stories and there's other stuff of the uh in the last chapter i didn't mention there's a the vedic personality test and so on also if i wanted to spend a few more minutes on the book i can read the table of contents part one is about letting go so letting go your identity, your negativity, your fear, your intention, and he gives a breathing meditation.

36:56The second part, part two, is called grow. And it talks about how you find your purpose, what's your routine, how you cleanse the mind, how you get rid of your ego. And then there's a meditation called visualize. And then the part three is called give, gratitude, relationships, service. So from all of this, if you truly read, and again, I'm only summarizing the first chapter. I didn't read it. I'm only summarizing the conclusion. But even with what I just described to you about the first chapter, the last chapter, and the table of contents, you already have a sense of what the book is about. You probably know about 10 % of the book, maybe even 15%, which is close to what you would know about the book even after you read the whole thing.

37:43So now this is part one of speed reading. If you only had 20 minutes to get, if you want, let's say you're going to, okay, this is what I am ashamed to admit. This is what I used to do all the way back in like, let's say 2009. I'm about to go on a date with somebody and I look up what their interests are on Facebook. I would go to the bookstore and I would, if all I did was pick out five books about their interests and read the first chapter and the last chapter the table of contents and maybe even skim through and find a story in the middle that I could quote, then boom, I could talk about their interests almost as if I've read the entire book.

38:23They wouldn't be able to tell if I've read the entire book or not because it's normal for people to forget parts of the book. Or if I was going to a cocktail party and people were talking about being a monk, I could already talk about at least cocktail party level, Jay Shetty's biography of how he became a monk and learned to be a monk. Now, if I wanted to be a little bit more sophisticated, and I haven't spoken about the fractal aspect yet, but if I wanted to be a little bit more sophisticated, of course, read the table of contents. But it's good to look at the acknowledgments, actually, when you speed read, because then I know how these different people helped him.

39:09So he thanks, for instance, the Oxford Center for Hindu Studies and specifically Shanaka Rishi Das for assisting in verifying our sources and credits. Thank you, Laurie Santos, for her kindness in connecting me with research on monks by some of the world's leading scientists. So this may or may not give me information, but for instance, I know Laurie Santos teaches the very famous course at Yale about happiness. And so I know that part of his quest towards becoming a monk was that he became a happier person, most likely. And also he thanks the Dalai Lama. So he says he basically thanks the Dalai Lama for meeting him and so on.

39:53And then here's another thing I will look at. I'll kind of just open up randomly to the middle of the book and I'll try to find one story. So like on page 117, there's a story, Joseph Campbell. We just quoted the Ark of the Hero, which was developed by Joseph Campbell. And growing up, Joseph Campbell had no model. This is what's on page 117. Growing up, Joseph Campbell had no model of a career that fit his diverse interests. As a child in the early 1900s, he became fascinated by Native American culture and studied everything he could about it. During college, he became entranced with the rituals and symbols of Catholicism.

40:26While studying abroad, his interests expanded to include the theories of Jung and Freud, and on and on. So what basically, and I'm just skimming along here about Joseph Campbell, but why would he write about Joseph Campbell in his quest to become a monk and then describe what he learned becoming a monk? First off, what Joseph Campbell discovered was that whether he was looking at Native American culture or Jung and Freud or Joseph Campbell's interest in art or Joseph Campbell's interest in religion, what Joseph Campbell noticed was that every kind of storytelling, whether it's religious or from psychiatry or from art, they all have the same structure.

41:09So if I was talking to Jay, I would say something like, you know, talk a little bit about the relationship between all stories and how Joseph Campbell discovered the arc of the hero in all stories and how it applies to being a monk. That would be an interesting thing to see how Jay connects being a monk to how all religions developed and even how art developed and how theories about the mind developed. So if you just kind of skim over a few stories on random pages, you're going to even have more information about the book. So if you're at a cocktail party later and you want to prove you read a book, you could say, oh, on page 117, when he talks about Joseph Campbell, he figures out what he found from being a monk you could find in every religious tradition.

41:55It's common to all men, just like the Ark of the Hero is, and on and on. So that's the very basic, if you only had 10 to 20 minutes to read a book, this is speed reading. So a speed reader, if you use the pointer method I described earlier, a speed reader can read a thousand words a minute. But using my method right now and knowing the fact that the average person only remembers 10 to 20 % of a book, you could speed read 60 ,000. This book here, it's like 300 pages. This book here is about 80 ,000 words. So you could speed read 80 ,000 words essentially just using the simple technique I just described.

42:39Now, there's one more step, which is this idea that's a fractal. So I'm going to turn to a random chapter. And so what I mean again by fractal is that I could read the first chapter of a book and the last chapter of a book and I could tell you essentially what the book is about, what the conclusions of the book. And then, by the way, if I read the table of contents and I focus on the highlighted parts in the chapters I read, then I'll even be able to tell you more about the book. But now I'm going to open up to a random chapter here, chapter five, purpose. And so how do I read this, speed read this chapter?

43:14Let's say I don't want to read the whole chapter. It's, let me see how many pages is it. It starts on page 93. It goes to page 122. So it's almost 30 pages. So here's how you speed read a chapter, a 30-page chapter. I would read the first one to three paragraphs, and I would read the last page, the last one to three paragraphs. And so again, that is just as powerful as reading the first chapter of the book and the last chapter of the book. If I wanna know, so this chapter's purpose and his first paragraph roughly, I'll just skim it. Being a monk looks like it's fundamentally about letting go. Like you shave your head, you strip away all distractions, you give away your things, you wear robes.

43:58It's not just about letting go. He says, second paragraph, we spent our days in service. In the course of the service, we weren't supposed to gravitate to our favorite ways to serve, but rather to help out wherever and however it was needed. You do chores, you do cooking, cleaning, gardening, meditating, caring for the cows, studying, praying, teaching. So, oh, now I understand that a monk is not just about surrendering your old life and going into this monastic kind of life, but it's also about service. And so since the title of the chapter is purpose, I'm assuming that service is going to somehow lead to purpose.

44:35And now, and then in the third paragraph, he says, look, it becomes clear though that each of us had natural affinities. One person, one monk might be drawn to tending the animals. Another might take pleasure in cooking. Another might get great satisfaction from gardening. So, you know, why do we have these natural affinities? And I'll go to the fourth paragraph here. Basically, you find what your natural affinities are. You know that service is important. So that starts to become, you know, your purpose in life is that what the kind of service you enjoyed was cooking, it becomes a compass towards what your real purpose in life is, which is to serve, but maybe you can best serve humanity through cooking or through teaching or whatever.

45:16And he says, exploring our strengths and weaknesses in the self-contained universe of the ashram helped lead each of us to our dharma. And dharma roughly means your calling. Now, Let's go to the very last chapter. It's 30 pages later. He says, remember the whole equation of Dharma. Dharma isn't just passion and skills. Dharma is passion in the service of others. Your passion is for you, but your purpose for others. Your passion becomes a purpose when you use it to serve. Okay, I just read a few sentences from the last page. The last page also includes the story of a woman, Emma Slade, who gives a TED Talk about service.

45:53She became a Buddhist nun for a while, and it goes into her whole thing and it describes how she found her purpose. I'm not going to read the whole thing. But you see now, I was able to skip 30 pages just by reading the first page and the last page. I read two pages out of 30, so about 8 % of the chapter. But I basically could tell you what this chapter is about and I could discuss it with anybody at a cocktail party and I could even learn from it. Like I didn't know that that's how a monk necessarily finds their purpose. And by the way, I've been on meditation retreats and so on, and it brings, we all have some experiences we can relate to.

46:30And this particular section just reminded me of how the monks at this meditation retreat lived and so on. So I just speed read a chapter. I speed read in a very superficial way the book by reading the first and last chapter. Now I speed read this chapter in the middle by reading the first page and the last page, the first three paragraphs and the last three paragraphs. What if I wanted to read the whole book, but I still didn't have time. I only had a couple of days. I would speed read each paragraph. And you probably know what I'm already gonna say. How do you speed read a paragraph? read the first sentence and the last sentence.

47:09So I'm going to take a random paragraph in the middle of a random chapter. So there is a chapter called intention. And I'm going to just read a random paragraph. I've never read this book before. I've never read this paragraph before. The paragraph starts, the best way to research the work required to fulfill your intention is to look for role models. And then the last sentence of this paragraph is, focus especially on what they did at your stage in order to get where they are now. Okay, so if there's someone I admired and I want to figure out my way to figure out what my life's intention is, the best way to research the work required to fulfill your intention is to look for role models.

47:46So let's say there's someone I admired. I can look for, let's say Gandhi. His life's meaning was to stop the oppression that was happening in India and focus especially on what they did at your stage in order to get where they are now. Well, he started doing these sit-ins And he had a whole philosophy of peaceful protest. Now I've taken an important lesson from this chapter by speed reading this paragraph and finding for myself what a good example is. And presumably, by the way, I've also read the first page of this chapter, so I know what intention means and so on. So essentially, that's the basic technique for speed reading an entire book.

48:29Read the first and last chapter. And then if you wanna go further, read the first and last page of every chapter. And if you want to go further, read the first and last sentence of every paragraph. Now, in nonfiction books, like I mentioned earlier, there's a technique, the author usually helps you. So there are charts and other techniques. So in the chapter on breathe, I see that in gray and in bold, there is a section called try this breath work. And so he gives a whole exercise for breath work. So if I really want to understand this section, Breathe, or this chapter called Breathe, I'll probably read the first page and then I'll read this kind of section that is highlighted.

49:10Here's a chapter on fear. And he says, try this, rate your fear. And that's highlighted. So essentially, just then, we didn't even read the first and last chapter. We didn't even read the chapter on purpose. But already, we probably know enough about this book that we just speed read 80 ,000 words in a few minutes and I wasn't even really speed reading. I was just kind of skimming the parts, just show as an example what kind of results speed reading could give. But now I know enough. I understand a little bit about what it's like. It sounds ludicrous to say, but I know a little bit about what Jay Shetty learned on his quest towards being a monk.

49:49I learned why he decided to become a monk, more or less. I learned about breath work. I learned about finding your intention and finding your purpose in life, all from mildly using this speed reading technique. And it works. Now, if I really wanted to enjoy this book and get all the information, I would read the entire book. But if I had to go to a cocktail party with Jay Shetty in 15 minutes, maybe I would use this technique. Or if I had to do a podcast with him and I forgot to read the book, maybe I would use this technique to do that. I'm just curious. So do you find it, I don't know if you've ever done this, Do you find that you retain more information after you speed read a book and then you go back and reread it again?

50:35Well, first off, when you speed read, by the way, you might even remember more than if you've read the book. And why is that? Because you only have to focus on 10 things as opposed to 200 things. There might be 200 great points that Jay makes in the book and then you might forget some of them. But I'm pretty sure right now, I can tell you 100 % of the points that I just, by quote unquote, roughly speed reading this book. So it could be the case that you remember more. But again, if you're very excited about a subject and you read the whole book and it's very inspirational to you, you might read more.

51:13But no matter what, short-term memory degrades. And the only way it goes from short-term memory to long-term memory is if you repeat, meaning you read it over, or maybe I listened to my own podcast that I did with him, or if I love the subject, I'm more likely to form myelin, which is thicker connections between neurons. I might form a thicker connection between the neurons about this topic by reading this book because I love the topic, hypothetically, if I love the topic. Memory is really more about repetition and how much you love something, and then you're more likely to remember more. But in this case, because I don't have, when you speed read, you don't have to remember as many things, I'm more likely to remember the fewer things I read rather than reading the whole book, particularly if I'm not interested in a topic.

51:58Right. Let me ask you, can you speed read the article? If you use the same technique with the article, does it work? Well, let me ask you that question. How I describe speed reading, can I speed read an article? I think you could, but I felt like article has a lot more... So let's say if it's not academic, let's say if it's a newsletter article, they will have random stats in there. So does that mean take your technique, you just break it down to a smaller scale, treating one article as its whole book. An article might be like a chapter in a book. Here's the speed reading technique for an article.

52:31Read the first paragraph. Read the whole first paragraph. Read the whole last paragraph. Maybe read the second paragraph too. I don't know. Maybe read the second to last paragraph as well. It depends on how the article is. Then, what's the next speed reading technique? Read the first sentence and the last sentence of every paragraph in the article. and read anything that's highlighted. So I guarantee you, if there's a statistic and it's important, it'll be highlighted or it'll be in the first sentence or the last sentence of a paragraph or it'll be in the introduction or the conclusion of the article.

53:00So yes, you can absolutely speed read an article. I'm looking at the website for the Atlantic Magazine, okay? And I'm gonna pick a random article. It's about some 60 Minutes correspondent named Lara Logan. And the first sentence is, Lara Logan was once a respected 60 Minutes correspondent. Now she trades in conspiracy theories that even far-right media disavow. What happened? So now I know a lot about what this article is about. It's about someone named Lara Logan, who was a 60 Minutes correspondent. Now she's big into conspiracy theories. Oh, I can't read the end of the article because you have to be a subscriber to the Atlantic Magazine.

53:40But I'm assuming by the end of the article, the last paragraph, it's going to be a conclusion like, oh, you know, this is how she became a conspiracy theorist. That's basically it. The answer is yes. You could speed read an article the same way. And again, don't forget in an article, I wouldn't just read the first paragraph and last paragraph. I would also read the first sentence and last sentence of every paragraph. Note in the Jay Shetty paragraph that I read, when I read the first sentence and the last sentence, it almost sounded like a complete paragraph by itself. The paragraph was a big paragraph.

54:12There were many more sentences, but I didn't have to read any of the other sentences for you to understand completely what that paragraph was about. I think that was in the purpose section. You know what? Because he didn't take your writing course. He didn't write a whole passage and then take out the first paragraph and last paragraph and see if it makes sense. Right. Because then you avoid the people who are trying to speed read too. They have to read the whole thing. Now, you leave them on cliffhangers. It's a better way to leave them on cliffhangers, so they have to keep reading. So I will admit, with really great writers, people who focus their lives on writing, it is much harder to do a speed reading technique on what they're writing because they're going to...

54:51So again, like Kurt Vonnegut said, every sentence is going to be important. This is why you cannot... Do not rely on any speed reading technique for fiction. Like if you have to go to a book club and you didn't read the book, just skip that meeting because you will have not read or really fully understood the book just by speed reading it using that pointer method. That's why that pointer method doesn't really work. That's a really just stupid method. A scam. And it has that whole stress of you still have to read the whole book, but you just have to train your eyes to read faster. It's stressful to me.

55:26Like, oh my God, did I understand what I just read? You're going to have to reread things. Right. So let me break down your technique. So essentially, your technique is the first and the last, and then… The first and last chapter. I'm not putting in numbers. So it's always the first and the last and then numbers and pictures. Right. Not even numbers really. Pictures. Pictures. Pictures are things that are highlighted. But again, like the full technique, if you're reading, if you want to speed read a book, let's say you want to speed read a book in an hour or less. Read the first chapter, read the last chapter.

55:59The full chapters. Read the first paragraph, every chapter in between, and the last paragraph of every chapter in between. Then for each paragraph in between those, read the first sentence and the last sentence. If you want to read even faster, skip that last part. Don't read the first sentence and last sentence of every paragraph. Just read the first paragraph and the last paragraph of every chapter. And if you want to be even faster, read only the first chapter and only the last chapter and read any charts that you see. Try to find a random story in the middle so you could refer to something in the middle and read the table of contents and read the blurbs on the back of the book.

56:38If you want to read even faster, read just the first paragraph of the first chapter and the last paragraph of the first chapter and the same thing for the conclusion. Read the first paragraph of the conclusion and the last paragraph of the conclusion. And if you want to even read faster, this won't really work. I was going to say just read the table of contents, but that doesn't really tell you anything. You got to at least read the first page and the last page of the book to kind of get a feeling, a little feeling. And even that will only work so much. It's very important to read the first full chapter and the last full chapter, and then kind of try to read the first and last paragraph of every chapter in between.

57:16And again, if you're trying to get a little deeper, read the first sentence and last sentence of every paragraph. And again, read the highlights, read the table of contents, and so on. And I guarantee you will know just as much about the book as anybody else who read the book more than a few weeks ago. You might even know more about the book than someone who only has remembered now 10 % to 20 % of that book. If you just speed read it. Right, because you probably skip a lot of non-essential things. Right, you skipped a lot of non-essential information. Also, everything you read is still in your short-term memory.

57:53It hasn't yet moved to long-term memory where you're going to drop a lot of stuff. And for everybody who's read it more than like a week or two ago, they have moved the information from short-term to long-term memory. So they may not even remember as many things as you remember if you've just speed read the book like in the past 24 hours. So this is a valuable technique. I don't like to recommend it. I don't like to do it. I always make sure to read the whole book for everyone on the podcast. But there has been instances where I've had to speed read. like let's say I was on vacation, I just got back, I forgot there was a podcast that afternoon, I'll speed read the book.

58:34And I can guarantee you, nobody knows. And I'm not even trying to be like, to cheat the system or to be tricky. I legitimately want to know information about the person I'm about to interview, but I might be forced due to circumstances to speed read. I don't use that scan technique because I don't think it's useful and I don't think it'll remember or anything, but I know where in a book the most important information is, and I know how memory works. This is the speed rating technique that works. Again, don't use it for fiction. It doesn't really work for fiction, but it works great for nonfiction.

59:10All right. I'm going to start my New Year resolutions like, hey, I want to read 100 books, and I'm going to start using it. Yeah. By the way, I challenge you, Jay, and I challenge all the listeners, Pick three books you'd love to read. Let's say you've never read Robert Greene's book, Mastery. Or let's say you've never read Matt Ridley's book, The Rational Optimist. Go out and buy those two books that you were never planning on reading because they looked too big or you like to read fiction or whatever. For whatever reason, you weren't planning on reading these books. I bet you you could speed read these books and learn a lot of information about them in an hour with the speed reading technique.

59:47Do this for an hour a day and you will have read and know just as much as anyone else about 365 books over the next year. With fiction, instead of recommending speed reading, I'm gonna recommend slow reading because remember when I gave two examples from Ernest Hemingway's books, it's very important to read every line and think about why this great writer included this line in the book. Every line will contribute to your feeling of the beauty and wisdom of that book. And that's why if you want to be a better writer and a better reader overall, it's so useful to slow read great fiction by great writers.

1:00:29Whatever your tastes are for fiction, get the best writers and get those books and you will become a much better reader even by slow reading one book, thinking about every single sentence and why they wrote that sentence. And if you want to be good at writing, make sure you take up James' writing course at jamesaltershowshow.com slash writing. jamesaltershowshow.com slash writing. Also, didn't we have a choose yourself URL? Yeah. It's also chooseyourselfacademy.com. Yeah. Write and publish a book in 30 days, which seems like an impossible task, but I show you in that course how it could be done.

1:01:08And it's really important in many careers and industries to write a book. And also, you know what? It's very healing to write a book about yourself. Like whenever I have a problem or whenever I regret something from the past, it's so valuable for me to just write about it. And it forces me to think about it. But in terms of writing a book, there's a real good career reason to write a book. Let's say two people of equal skill are competing for the same position. Like let's say a consulting gig or a public speaking gig, or even a place in the school of your choice. You have equal skills with your competitor, but you wrote a book and your competitor did not.

1:01:47The person who wrote the book will get the job, the gig, will get accepted to the school and so on. And here's another important reason to write a book. My great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandkids might want to know something about their great, great, great, great, great, great granddad. And oh, lo and behold, they can read my book and learn how I lived. Even if nobody else reads it, but my great, great, great, great, great grandkids, that'll be worth it to me to write a book. So enjoy. You can write a book and publish it in the next 30 days. I also talk about marketing it. That's about that course.

1:02:20That's not what this podcast episode is about. We talked about speed reading, but I challenge you, find a nonfiction book you've been dying to read, but it looks so big and complex. You haven't read it yet, go out and buy it. Try the speed reading technique. You could tweet me at Jay Altucher and let me know how the speed reading technique worked. Because this, I could tell you, I only talk about techniques that I have used that work for me. This works for me. Awesome. Thank you, James. I'm going to use it now. I'm going to start reading a lot more books so that I can prepare for a podcast. Okay.

1:02:51I challenge you to read 300 books over the next year. Okay. I would try. I'm going to hold you to it in a year. Yeah. And then if I lose, we're going to play more checkers. No, we're going to play more checkers right after this podcast is over, Jay. Because you won one game out of four or five, and I still need revenge. I need at least 10 wins for every loss. I was so proud, man. I was so proud. Anyway, thanks, James. Thank you, Jay.

1:03:43We'll see you next time.

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