How to read 1-2 full books per day. No, seriously.

[GuestUser140]

If you read a book a day, how many books have you mastered?

The point isn't to read as many books as possible, it's to figure out the 20% and take action.

I have to agree.

Someone wise once said: "Read a lot, but not many books."

I only read the all-time best. Make notes. Apply things immediately. Read it again. Jot down more ideas and take action. The tangible results in your life, that's the real ROI of a book.

To give an example: many will read the 4HWW with a "that'd be cool" attitude. That way, it's an inspiring book but has no link to your life. How many of you do the comfort challenges? If you like the idea behind the text, when will you apply the wealth of knowledge to become time / location independent?

When you read a book about advertising, do you read/listen to it on fast-forward while driving? Or do you read it slowly, let every little nuance sink in, and already have your to do-list notepad handy so that next week, your business will be advertising better than ever?

 

[EvanOkanagan]

I love reading. No seriously, I love reading.

I have a special technique that let's me read 5-12 books per week, so please read this thread to the end. I promise I'm not crazy.

People were amazed at this tiny clip in The Matrix where he instantly was able to download a new skill into his brain in a few seconds.

The thing is, we have this technology today! They're called books and they've been around for centuries. Okay, okay, it's not as fast and convenient as Neo's Kung-Fu download, but it's pretty close. Here's the thing though... Your average sized book will take you about 5-8 hours to read. The problem is... 5-8 hours is a huge chunk of time to take out of your day. Who has the time to sit down every day for 5 hours and read? Herein lies the secret. Text to Speech software. You download a great eBook, have it converted to Audiobook format, put it on your iPod/iPhone/smartphone, bring your headphones and you'd be surprised at how many books you can bang out per week. Have a dead end job where you don't have to deal with customers? Hit Play. Stuck in Traffic? Hit Play. Driving anywhere? Hit Play. Mowing the lawn? Hit Play. You can literally blow through 5-12 books per week like this.

I like the idea. I'm much more of a visual learner though rather than auditory. I find myself getting distracted by what's going on around me visually and can miss a whole chapter listening to an audio book. That's great for someone with that type of learning style though.

As far as text to speech software goes. Do you find it much harder to keep attentive vs. Audio Books that are read? The monotone voice may lose my attention quick.

 

[Yasai]

That's a good tip for everyone who doesn't know about audiobooks (and their usefulness) yet.

There is a way to finish EVEN MORE books: Speed up the playback.
1.4x times the original speed should still sound very clear (and not like gibberish) plus: you'll get used to even higher playback speeds.

I'm currently consuming audiobooks and content at around 1.8 to 2 times the original speed, so I can get twice as many books/info into my brain.

3 times the speed will sound like gibberish in most cases, unless the speaker reads REALLY slow. With normal reading speed, everything above 3x times the speed will compress the auditory information too much and make it hard for the brain to interpret the data - which will reduce comprehension.

between 1.7 and and around 2.3 is usually the sweet spot.

Hope that was helpful

 

[Milkanic]

If you read a book a day, how many books have you mastered?

The point isn't to read as many books as possible, it's to figure out the 20% and take action.

 

[ChrisV]

I love reading. No seriously, I love reading.

I have a special technique that let's me read 5-12 books per week, so please read this thread to the end. I promise I'm not crazy.

People were amazed at this tiny clip in The Matrix where he instantly was able to download a new skill into his brain in a few seconds.

The thing is, we have this technology today! They're called books and they've been around for centuries. Okay, okay, it's not as fast and convenient as Neo's Kung-Fu download, but it's pretty close. Here's the thing though... Your average sized book will take you about 5-8 hours to read. The problem is... 5-8 hours is a huge chunk of time to take out of your day. Who has the time to sit down every day for 5 hours and read? Herein lies the secret. Text to Speech software. You download a great eBook, have it converted to Audiobook format, put it on your iPod/iPhone/smartphone, bring your headphones and you'd be surprised at how many books you can bang out per week. Have a dead end job where you don't have to deal with customers? Hit Play. Stuck in Traffic? Hit Play. Driving anywhere? Hit Play. Mowing the lawn? Hit Play. You can literally blow through 5-12 books per week like this.

If you have a Mac or iPhone it's super easy. There are a few different techniques. The first is you just convert the entire book to Audio. Macs have this feature built in. Second is, if you have an iPhone, you can just have it read to you using the Voiceover Feature. As far as Android, I'm gonna research it and update this thread after I run a few errands. I also know that Kindles have a feature to have them read books outlaid.

Speech to Text Tutorial​

iPhone users

Using Voiceover

Turn on Voiceover:

Settings > General > Accessibility > VoiceOver > On

This is a pain to do overtime you want to read a book, so there's a way to set it so that whenever you want to turn on VoiceOver, You just hit the Home Button 3x.

To do that:

Settings > General > Accessibility > Accessibility Shortcut [all the way at the bottom] > Voiceover

Or you can just ask SIRI to turn it on.

Mac Users

While on your Mac:

This method is only good when you're at your Mac, If you need them on the Go I suggest these two options:

Second Option: Add to iTunes as Spoken Track

I particularly like the Allison voice. But while using the above method, don't read the eBook in iBooks because iBooks limits how much you can Copy and Paste from a book, so you won't be able to translate the whole thing. Instead use Calibre, a free eBook reader and converter.

Android Users:

-this section coming soon-

Windows Users:

Since Windows doesn't have Built in Text to Voice functionality, you'll have to download a program.
Here are two lists of Text to Speech converters. Some are free, some are paid:

http://www.howtogeek.com/125305/the-best-text-to-speech-tts-software-programs-and-online-tools/

http://listoffreeware.com/list-of-best-free-text-to-speech-software/

Let us know which ones worked best for you!

Enjoy!!

 

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[Mattie]

One that reads a lot and listens to audio books, I don't think it really saves you that much more time, other then you can listen to it, while you're doing other things. It may seem like it, but if you look at the minutes on an audio book versus reading, I don't think you're speeding much up, it may just seem like it. And also the comprehension level and how much you really remember. I often find I have to back track because I read and listen to much, and overload my brain with material.

 

[Adam Secada]

So, heres a tactic I use for when I want to find the 20% of content I need to consume for a given skill I want to learn. I believe I originally got this from a blog post that highlighted the central thesis of "The First 20 Hours: How to Learn Anything... Fast!" (Too cheap to buy the book? TED Talk -- BOOM:

)

Suppose I want to learn Copywriting. That is a skillset that people tout as the bee's knees so frequently on the forum that we can all relate to this skill.

1. Crowdsource on online bookstores. Goto Amazon, and do a search for "Copywriting Books". Obviously, you want to sort your results by Most Reviews. Another way to do this is by clicking on the Top Result, and parsing through all of the related items: as a general rule of thumb, I only pick books that have at least 200 reviews with a 4.0 average. The idea here is that cream rises to the top: people will upvote shit that they like, and they think added value to them.
2. Open all these book pages. No, you aren't going to order them.
3. Click on the "Look Inside", and examine the Table of Contents for every single book.
4. Look for the common chapters, terms, and concepts between ALL of these books.
5. It is reasonable to assume that if
5a. You look at all of the Top Rated Books for copywriting, as determined by the populous at large, and
5b. All these books have the same 20% of content in common, that
5c. This is the 20% you need to know to become an amateur on copywriting.
6. Write down all these common concepts.
7. Do a search on "How to do X" for each concept in Google, AND YouTube (YouTube is a treasure trove of information, people need to stop watching the "Evolution of Dance" on it, its a waste of time.)
8. ???
9. PROFIT

Its important to point out that you can learn anything this way, find the 20% you need to get started, and self correct as you go. And you can charge people for this. I didn't think that was possible at first because I have had massive struggles with the Imposter Syndrome and whenever I put down a book or learned a new skill, all I had was more questions on the topic, which created a feedback loop making me realize how little I knew. HOWEVER, if you have a MARKETABLE skill, and you know MORE than someone does on that skill AND they are willing to open their checkbook to PAY for your knowledge, THAT makes you an expert. PERIOD.

 

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[MillionaireMe]

Mattie, I just like the idea of someone else reading the book to me. Chris provides a solution.

 

[Adam Secada]

Hmmmm, I think I have some of that, can you give some tips about how to get rid of it?

Sure, I can tell you what worked for me. I don't mean to hijack the thread, but I think I'm going to anyway.

We had these kids in my high school that were notoriously smart. They both got perfect SAT scores, and were straight A students. Our student newspaper released a parody paper on graduation, with the cover story being that these kids had been guessing on their exams the whole time. Maybe.

Firstly, one of the things thats kind of quirky about the Imposter Syndrome is that its a trait shared by high performers. So, while it may be kind of weird for me to say that if you think you're an imposter, you most likely aren't, thats actually a true statement I can make based on the research I looked at. (Something like 50% of wealthy people think they are frauds, and as many as 70% of all people feel like they are frauds at some point in their life.) Its actually the incompetents of the world that don't realize they have a lack of skill.

Lookup the Dunning-Kruger effect. All their research was born from the case of this guy named Wheeler, who read somewhere that Lemon Juice was usable as invisible ink like in so many spy movies. So of course he did the rational thing: he smothered his face in lemon juice and promptly robbed two banks, thinking the lemon juice would make him invisible to security cameras.

One of the takeaways of the study:
If you're incompetent, you can’t know you’re incompetent, the skills you need to produce a right answer are exactly the skills you need to recognize what a right answer is.

If you can't tell, thats the corollary of the thing I put in bold up there. If you think you're incompetent, you can't be because you have the skills, knowhow and savvy to know what incompetence looks like in the first place.

It took me a while to wrestle with this, because it seemed very circular logic to me at first. So, I shrunk the findings down into a mantra that I use whenever I hear the little voice in the back of my head telling me I'm dumb.

"Everyone on this planet is dumb. The only difference between the smart people and the really dumb people is that the smart people know how little they know." Confucius and Socrates have similar words of wisdom -- if you still have self doubt, I'd recommend you pick up some of their work. I know I'm dumb, but those dudes are F'n smart.

 

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[Adam Secada]

And the truth is that they're really bad in general, and that's what's bothering, if me, with obvious (at least for me) lack of skill I'm better than the average professional, the average service provided is crap.

The irony of this is that all the Fastlaners who read this should be emboldened and empassioned by this fact, not saddened.

But yes, back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Read Books. But then apply what you learn. Endless reading is being BUSY. It isn't being PRODUCTIVE.

 

[Mattie]

people that claim they can listen to an audio book and complete other tasks + get all the information from the book are full of shit...
I would have to agree. While I'm multi-tasking, I am really only focusing on the book partially. Sure, my subconscious mind might be hearing it, but to really catch the whole thing, while doing something else, not I don't believe you can. I usually have to stop the audio and go back to it, if i hear a certain part. Maybe if your taking a shower, doing dishes, or something where you're not actually having to think in two places, and aim your focus it might work.

 

[ChrisV]

Hey guys, I updated my original post with more specific instructions.

Audiobooks are a great way. But when I can't find an Audiobook Version, I just translate it. Audible is really coming up in the world though. They have a LOT of Audiobooks that aren't available anywhere else.

 

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[ChrisV]

Agreed Mattie... depending on your reading speed it's about the same. But the difference is, I can read while I'm at work. I love it because my job is physical, so I make money, stay in shape AND get unlimited knowledge downloads daily. It's awesome.

See the thing with me is, if I'm not learning something, I feel useless. I feel like I'm wasting time. I have to drive to the store? If I can't play that Audiobook for those 10 minutes I feel like I wasted them. Even when I go into the store I put my headphones in and such up some knowledge. I don't know about you guys, but for me I think it would be difficult for me to bang out 1-2 books daily if I had to read them physically and sit in one place.


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[ChrisV]

Same here.

Bump for the visual learners.

I like to do this
http://www.spritzinc.com/
with that website: http://www.readsy.co/web?url=http://www.spritzinc.com/where-can-i-experience-spritz/

You can do both. You can have it read to you while you watch it visually. There's a lot of evidence that that improves your learning and memorization significantly.

And as a side note, some people do learn better with certain ways, but remember that stuff about Auditory/Visual/Kinesthetic Learning Styles is actually a myth. They debunked that stuff not too long ago.

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/finding_common_ground/2014/04/the_myth_of_learning_styles.html

http://www.npr.org/sections/health-...or-visual-learner-scientists-say-its-unlikely

Also, while we're at it... remember the stuff about Left Brained/Right Brained, Creative/Logical types? that's also a bunch of bunk.

http://www.livescience.com/39373-left-brain-right-brain-myth.html

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blo...rain-right-brain-myth-will-probably-never-die


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[masterneme]

Why limit yourself? Do both, read new books everyday and study the great ones.

Bill Gates said in an interview that when he was at Microsoft he tried to read AT LEAST one book a day, and I think he knows a little bit about money...

 

[juggler619]

thanks for the tip, i'm frm middle east & today it's a day off, I'm done wit 2 books usin ur audio methods. This is super solid!

 

[masterneme]

Sure, I can tell you what worked for me. I don't mean to hijack the thread, but I think I'm going to anyway.

We had these kids in my high school that were notoriously smart. They both got perfect SAT scores, and were straight A students. Our student newspaper released a parody paper on graduation, with the cover story being that these kids had been guessing on their exams the whole time. Maybe.

Firstly, one of the things thats kind of quirky about the Imposter Syndrome is that its a trait shared by high performers. So, while it may be kind of weird for me to say that if you think you're an imposter, you most likely aren't, thats actually a true statement I can make based on the research I looked at. (Something like 50% of wealthy people think they are frauds, and as many as 70% of all people feel like they are frauds at some point in their life.) Its actually the incompetents of the world that don't realize they have a lack of skill.

Lookup the Dunning-Kruger effect. All their research was born from the case of this guy named Wheeler, who read somewhere that Lemon Juice was usable as invisible ink like in so many spy movies. So of course he did the rational thing: he smothered his face in lemon juice and promptly robbed two banks, thinking the lemon juice would make him invisible to security cameras.

One of the takeaways of the study:
If you're incompetent, you can’t know you’re incompetent, the skills you need to produce a right answer are exactly the skills you need to recognize what a right answer is.

If you can't tell, thats the corollary of the thing I put in bold up there. If you think you're incompetent, you can't be because you have the skills, knowhow and savvy to know what incompetence looks like in the first place.

It took me a while to wrestle with this, because it seemed very circular logic to me at first. So, I shrunk the findings down into a mantra that I use whenever I hear the little voice in the back of my head telling me I'm dumb.

"Everyone on this planet is dumb. The only difference between the smart people and the really dumb people is that the smart people know how little they know." Confucius and Socrates have similar words of wisdom -- if you still have self doubt, I'd recommend you pick up some of their work. I know I'm dumb, but those dudes are F'n smart.

Hey thank you very much for the effort, that's a very detailed explanation.

I've read about the Dunning-Kruger effect in the past, what a "coincidence" , but I haven't read their studies, very interesting stuff.

This makes a lot of sense and in some way it makes me sad, I'll explain why:

There are a couple of fields I've been involved professionally. Is in these areas where the Imposter Syndrome has affected me the most.

I didn't think I was skilled enough until I got enough clients telling me how bad other guys are.

I was so focused in developing myself that I didn't check the competence.

And the truth is that they're really bad in general, and that's what's bothering, if me, with obvious (at least for me) lack of skill I'm better than the average professional, the average service provided is crap.

On the positive side, this means that improving my skill I can own the market (and then the world :joyful.

I find direct correlation with the 4 stages of the learning model taught in NLP, being the first one Unconscious Incompetence.

In this stage, you not only don't know, you don't know that you don't know.

And ironically is because the natural overconfidence of the incompetent that is possible to progress to the Conscious Incompetence stage. The ignorance and overconfidence act as motivators.

When you realize that you suck, that confidence disappears and if you don't find any other motivator, the learning process stops because you give up.

But what happens with some people? When they realize that they suck, they use that let's call it low-self-steem-motivation in their favor.

This group of people often go through a fifth stage called Conscious of Unconscious Competence which means that they're aware of their uncosncious skills and behaviours.

This can happen when a person possess a highly developed self-awareness.

This being said, I can say that if the Imposter Syndrome is still affecting me, its effect has diminished but when I feel it is still uncomfortable.

If I can't get rid of it completely at least I'd like to make it so manageable that it doesn't bother me.

Now back to the topic... READ PEOPLE READ!

 

[daivey]

One that reads a lot and listens to audio books, I don't think it really saves you that much more time, other then you can listen to it, while you're doing other things. It may seem like it, but if you look at the minutes on an audio book versus reading, I don't think you're speeding much up, it may just seem like it. And also the comprehension level and how much you really remember. I often find I have to back track because I read and listen to much, and overload my brain with material.

exactly... and those no such thing as "true multi tasking". people that claim they can listen to an audio book and complete other tasks + get all the information from the book are full of shit... or child geniuses... and if you're a child genius, you can probably read the book faster than any other human being can read it back to you verbally.

there is no time savings, it's a pretend "action" to make you think you are doing something/being smarter.

there is no replacement for actually doing the work, that's the reality.

 

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[ChrisV]

As far as text to speech software goes. Do you find it much harder to keep attentive vs. Audio Books that are read? The monotone voice may lose my attention quick.

Two things. First is, these days there are a lot of natural sounding voices. I especially liked the voices from http://www.naturalreaders.com and the ones that come with the Mac.

Here's an example of Allison, one of my favorite voices: http://www74.zippyshare.com/v/Gb0cC3op/file.html

It's really not bad these days.

 

[MillionaireMe]

Chris your awesome thank you for the insight.

 

[ChrisV]

No problem sir.

 

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[Mattie]

Agreed Mattie... depending on your reading speed it's about the same. But the difference is, I can read while I'm at work. I love it because my job is physical, so I make money, stay in shape AND get unlimited knowledge downloads daily. It's awesome.

See the thing with me is, if I'm not learning something, I feel useless. I feel like I'm wasting time. I have to drive to the store? If I can't play that Audiobook for those 10 minutes I feel like I wasted them. Even when I go into the store I put my headphones in and such up some knowledge. I don't know about you guys, but for me I think it would be difficult for me to bang out 1-2 books daily if I had to read them physically and sit in one place.

Yes, I get what you're saying. I'm the same way. I just don't ever see that it really speeds up things. And like the last few weeks, been giving my brain a break. lol

 

[ChrisV]

Oh sweet, I just found an even easier solution. There's an app in the App Store called Natural Reader

It's awesome. You just upload your ebooks stuff to Dropbox and load it like that.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/naturalreader-text-to-speech/id598798210?mt=8

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/naturalreader-text-to-speech/id835387034?mt=8

I laughed at the book in the screenshot. "Rich Day/Poor Day" [sic]

As far as DRM, I use DeDRM to remove the Digital Rights Management from Kindle Books and iBooks.

 

[ChrisV]

Actually this app is even better. It syncs with Dropbox, Google Drive, Pocket (to save and read articles,) Instapaper, Evernote and Bookshare.

 

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[Dwight Schrute]

I'm much more of a visual learner though rather than auditory. I find myself getting distracted by what's going on around me visually and can miss a whole chapter listening to an audio book. That's great for someone with that type of learning style though.

Same here.

Bump for the visual learners.

I like to do this
http://www.spritzinc.com/
with that website: http://www.readsy.co/web?url=http://www.spritzinc.com/where-can-i-experience-spritz/

 

[ChrisV]

Also, I forgot to post the video demo of Voice Dream. God, I love this app.

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[ChrisV]

If you read a book a day, how many books have you mastered?

The point isn't to read as many books as possible, it's to figure out the 20% and take action.

Really? you're supposed to read to learn something? Wow here I was thinking this whole time it was simply to have an cool sounding number for bar stories.

Thanks for the advice.


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[ChrisV]

Anyway, I'm pretty sure no one implied that just reading books for the sake of turning pages was the purpose of anything. The purpose is to convert books into Audio Format so that you can spend time you'd normally doing something boring, tedious and/or time wasting (such as driving, mowing the lawn, whatever.) soaking up some knowledge instead.


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[ChrisV]

(deleted)

 

[tripvader]

That's a good tip for everyone who doesn't know about audiobooks (and their usefulness) yet.

There is a way to finish EVEN MORE books: Speed up the playback.
1.4x times the original speed should still sound very clear (and not like gibberish) plus: you'll get used to even higher playback speeds.

I'm currently consuming audiobooks and content at around 1.8 to 2 times the original speed, so I can get twice as many books/info into my brain.

3 times the speed will sound like gibberish in most cases, unless the speaker reads REALLY slow. With normal reading speed, everything above 3x times the speed will compress the auditory information too much and make it hard for the brain to interpret the data - which will reduce comprehension.

between 1.7 and and around 2.3 is usually the sweet spot.

Hope that was helpful

Great tip. I never thought about increasing the original speed. Will definitely try it out!