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Unfair Advantage: Unlock the Power of Reading

I love to read! But I’m always so annoyed at how little I retain. So, I developed a system to help make it stick. I hope it’s helpful to you as well. Reading is my unfair advantage, and it can be yours too!

Transcript

kasim: 00:00:11

Shot a video recently on how to not fight fair, the five outsized advantages,

: 00:00:15

and I actually got a better response on it

than I was expecting, which is good news.

: 00:00:19

So, I wanted to dive into my favorite

unfair advantage, which is reading.

: 00:00:23

I think reading is the most

important skill, habit you can

: 00:00:25

cultivate, as you can tell.

: 00:00:26

from the annoying virtue signaling

background that I have in my videos.

: 00:00:30

I read a lot believe it or not,

this is not the room in the

: 00:00:31

house that has the most books.

: 00:00:32

I've developed a protocol for my reading

that I'm actually really proud of.

: 00:00:36

I'm going to walk you through my system.

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You don't have to use my system

if you don't want to, but this is

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going to help you with retention.

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Maybe most importantly, but also

honestly just kind of makes I

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think reading more enjoyable.

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Feel free to customize this However, it is

you see fit the first and most important

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thing and this was actually I was

indoctrinated by a friend On this level

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is start is you need to use a pencil.

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So go by yourself I've got these real

fancy mechanical pencils because I

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just like nice writing utensils It

makes me enjoy the process more go

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get yourself some nice pencils Because

you're gonna start writing in your

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books, and I realized in the very

beginning that this feels sacrilegious.

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Don't write your antique

first editions, obviously.

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But I've had to change my mind on this.

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I used to feel like writing

in a book was disrespectful.

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Now I've decided that it's me.

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Communing with the book and I'm

having a conversation with the author.

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So just change what it means.

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you're not defacing it and and What's

really important about being able to

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write in the book is this is how you

can let yourself just enjoy the book

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because for so long what I would do

is I would be reading and then if I

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needed to take a note or Look up a

word was this constant back and forth

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and every time I would Take my eyes

off the page It would stop the flow.

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it would decrease my

reading time by multiples.

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So never stop reading, give yourself

the opportunity and you're just

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sitting there and you've got your book.

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Nice plug for Brandon Turner's

multifamily millionaire.

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And you've got your pencil and I

actually kind of generally like to

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follow along with my pencil because

I read a little bit on speed reading,

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which also really helps by the way.

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But if there's anything that's

notable, interesting, thought

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provoking underline it.

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And I've got a key for myself and you'll

want to develop your own key, but I

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put little symbols in the margins.

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So if there's a word that I don't know,

or that I really like the usage of, so a

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lot of being articulate isn't necessarily

knowing all the big fancy 12 words, it's

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knowing how to use, Normal words in unique

ways, and so if I ever see an author use

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words in ways that I'm like, oh, wow,

that's, that's brilliant, then I'll circle

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the word, so if I don't know the word or

if I just like the word uses, I'll just

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circle the word, and then in the margins I

put a V, and the V is for the vocabulary,

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and then I leave it and I continue to

read, so I don't have to stop and write

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it down or take notes I just have it and

we'll get to how we're gonna go and use

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this in a minute V is for vocabulary.

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Now, if there's a concept on the page

Or a person or a reference that I

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want to research and learn more about.

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somebody mentions the Magna Carta

and I'm like, you know what?

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I don't really know much

about the Magna Carta.

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Then I'll underline that.

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And then in the margins, I'll put a

question mark and I'll circle the question

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mark and the question mark lets me know

we're going to go research this later.

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And what's nice is this satiates my blood

lust for information because for so long

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I was like, oh crap I gotta go learn

everything about the Magna Carta and I

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swear to God, this is true I would be

reading a book and then the book would

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reference something I didn't know about

and then I'd go read three books about

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That thing before I could come back to the

book that I was reading which is just a

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horrible way to live your life So unless

you find yourself in a position where

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the foundational knowledge necessary to

understand the book you're reading Is

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a prerequisite Leave it for a moment.

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just put a little question mark.

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You know, hey, I'm

curious about this thing.

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And then the third symbol

that I use is a star.

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And I use a star for notable passages.

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there's a quote or a passage

that I want to save for later.

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Something that I really liked,

that I felt was really impactful,

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that I want to remember.

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Upon re reading, I'd

really want to highlight.

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Then I put a star next to it.

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And y'all, I'm as aggressive as I want

to be, and sometimes it depends on

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my mood, when I read Brené Brown's

Daring Greatly, there were whole

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chapters that were just underlined.

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That's okay.

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because we're going to talk

about what we're going to do

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with this stuff in just a moment.

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So, as you're reading, you follow along

with, your pencil, and you're using, and

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by the way, come up with your own key.

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If you're a content creator and you

come across something, you're like, Oh

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man, I should shoot a video on that.

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Or I should write a thread on

that or a carousel or whatever.

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See content, bam, move on, but give

yourself the ability to stay in flow.

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And what I like about this, what's cool

is it makes your first reading leisurely.

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You're giving yourself permission

to just read to read, just for the

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sake of reading, which is so helpful.

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So there's not that desperation

of like, oh, I need to drink every

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last ounce of value from this book.

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When you're done with the book, your

second reading what I like to do is,

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I go back through the book, but I

only pay attention to the notables.

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And so I get done with the book, and I

basically turn right back around, and,

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then in my journal I've got a Google Doc

that I keep all my notable vocabulary and

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I'll look at that every now and again.

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if I just find myself with time in

line at the grocery store, I pull

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up my vocab doc and I start looking

at some of the words that I like.

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And there's just something

about that that appeals to me.

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You don't have to do that.

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But whatever it is for you and then

anything that I want to look up, I'll

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look up and I'll play the research game.

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And then any notable passages, and this

is maybe where I go a little overboard,

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but I actually write those down in my

journal, which means I'm effectively

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rewriting the book, but I'm only rewriting

the parts that were notable for me.

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And what's cool about that is if I ever

want to go back to that book, I don't

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necessarily have to return to the book

as much as I return to my journal.

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And I can, I get all the distilled

value from that book from my journal.

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Now I'd caution against relying on

that too much because as you grow, you

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get different things from every book.

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You know, there's the old proverb

that nobody steps in the same

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river twice because the person

is different and so is the river.

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Books are like that.

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especially, I mean, really

good books are like that.

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Give yourself the

opportunity to revisit books.

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But, having your, distilled

notes is really helpful.

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And then it's really fun to say like,

Oh, I thought this was notable before,

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and now I actually, I, I resonate

with this passage a little bit more.

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like that with a one two punch and the

second reading isn't nearly as daunting

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as it sounds you're like, dude You're

gonna read every single book twice.

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No, not at all second time you're

basically paging through and it's shocking

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how quickly You can get through something

along those lines I hope then again it

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helps with retention, you know I mean,

there's all these studies done on writing

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things down and upon second review.

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There's a book.

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It's actually on my

bookshelf right up there.

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It's called Make It Stick.

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And it's an interesting

book about retention.

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really, all it says is effectively,

you need to test yourself at the

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end of anything that you read.

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And test yourself with

questions you come up with.

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doesn't matter, which

is really interesting.

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, that book's a good example.

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Some pro tips on reading.

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You have to pick your material properly.

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Make It Stick is a good example.

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And I'm not trying to bash those people.

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They took what should have been

a blog and they made it a book.

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it pisses me off because that

seems to be a trending theme.

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People are taking small concepts and

they're expanding it into full books.

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Now sometimes that works really well.

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That worked with The Gap and The Gain.

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Dan Sullivan.

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It worked with Zero to One, Peter Thiel.

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It worked with The One Thing, Gary Keller.

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Those are actually three of

my favorite recent books.

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And they're all very simple.

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But they're not written

in simplistic fashion.

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They just help reinforce this idea.

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I'd strongly recommend all three of those

books, and I read them cover to cover.

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But then there's books like Make It

Stick, or Mel Robbins Five Second

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Rule, where I'm like, man, I could

have gotten the value from...

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Like the cliff notes version of this

book and the way to protect yourself from

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that is what I do for all nonfictions

is I'll skim first in my opinion.

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It's on the author to

capture my attention.

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I didn't used to feel this way I

used to feel like I have to read

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everything cover to cover Otherwise,

I'm not a real reader But then what

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happened is I became fatigued of

reading which you don't want to do.

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It's so dangerous You have to

love the author art of reading.

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So now I'm skimming.

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And if something captures my attention,

then I'll dive a little deeper.

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And if it or retains my attention,

then I'll stay deep and maybe even go

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a little deeper and so on and so forth.

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But then there are books that

actually diminish in value as you go.

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One of those interestingly was Driven

by, I think it's Douglas Brackman.

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And I say it's interesting cause I have a,

a mastermind called the Driven Mastermind.

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The name of the mastermind

is based on this book.

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Here's what's funny.

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All of the value in the book,

the first three chapters.

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And then after that, it's just kind of

like this repetitive sort of reinforcement

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of his original thesis that I didn't need.

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And so first three chapters were great,

and then after that I started to, I

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went super deep, and then he lost me,

and then I zoomed out, got shallow, and

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then just paged through and took a hike.

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And you can do that too.

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It's okay to skim, skip, jump

around, choose your own adventure.

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Now, it's heavily dependent

upon the type of book.

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Right?

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So like, that's obviously far, it's

maybe only applicable for nonfiction.

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And then some books are

sequential in nature.

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I'm reading Brandon Turner's

Multifamily Millionaire right now,

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and it's a two volume book, and are

foundational components where you

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actually need to read section one

in order to understand section two.

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And then there's some components where...

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I can tell that I'm able to bounce

around and I'm like, you know what, I

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actually really understand this concept.

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I'm going to move on.

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And so, you get more sophisticated

as you get better at reading.

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But then there's books

like, you know, I've got C.

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Lewis's entire set here and I happen

to know for a fact, I've never

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read the screw tape letters, but

it's been recommended to me often.

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And that's probably going to be one

that I have to read cover to cover.

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So you'll get kind of good at figuring

out what it is that you want to read.

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Another really cool pro

tip is go use summary apps.

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There's Blinkist is one.

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ChatGPT now summarizes books really well.

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And what I like to do is summarize

a book before I read it, because

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it lets me know whether or not

I want to dive into this book.

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and there's ways to hack

that too, by the way.

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What is it?

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Chat prompting.

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Prompt engineering.

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Which is not my favorite term

but instead of asking, you know,

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I'll just summarize the seven

habits of highly effective people.

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What you can do is go in and say give me

a summary of the seven habits of highly

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effective people and give me the Ten

key takeaways and it gives you ten key

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takeaways and then say okay Give me 30

more key takeaways and you keep asking for

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that until you notice that the takeaways

get repetitious And what that exercise

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does is show you how dense that book is

because there are books that are Insanely

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dense from a value perspective prince

of principles by Ray Dalio so dense the

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seven habits so dense Neval Ravikant's

the Almanac of Raval or whatever.

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It's called like Not a long

read, but unbelievably dense.

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And when I say dense, I just mean

like, the value per word is high.

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And so, you could tell from ChatGPT

like, Okay, I need to go read Principles

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by Ray Dalio, because it's not

getting to the bottom of this well.

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But then, The 5 Second

Rule by Mel Robbins.

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Like, you could summarize that in a tweet.

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Sorry to go bash Mel.

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I just hated that book so much.

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I hated the fact that...

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I'm like, I can't believe

she's getting away with this.

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Anyway, that's one pro tip.

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Another pro tip that I'd have for

you is don't sleep on fiction.

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I get more out of fiction than I

do nonfiction, maybe by a multiple.

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And that's getting more

true as I get older.

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fiction requires more

participation on your part.

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You know, nonfiction is

like, here's the principle.

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You know, take it, run, here's how

to, here's how to execute on it.

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and that's fine, you need that.

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And, and I like to go from

non fiction to fiction.

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I always, I try to have one

fiction and one non fiction.

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So right now I'm reading The Multifamily

Millionaire, and then I'm also reading

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Tess of the Dubervilles, which was

recommended to me by a, a Twitter friend.

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but I'm reading Tess and I get a

little fictioned out, which really just

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means like, I mean, that's a really

emotionally capturing book and I just

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need a moment that I can go switch

over to the Multifamily Millionaire

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and they're so diametrically opposed.

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I'm not getting confused.

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If I read two fiction books at the same

time, I always, convolute the stories.

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And then if I read non fiction books,

I tend to be in different zones.

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Like I've got The Origins and Histories

of Consciousness by Eric Neumann.

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And I know that.

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for me to read this and this at

the same time, it requires just

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two different frames of mind.

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I don't want to shift in those gears.

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what's easy for me is to always have

one fiction and one non fiction.

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That I can bounce back and

forth between the two of.

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I have a dear friend who likes

to have four or five books

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running all at the same time.

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And she can do that.

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She can keep it in her mind.

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I can't.

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I'm incapable of it.

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whatever works for you.

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But again, please don't sleep on fiction.

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Some of the greatest pieces of

art that have ever existed are

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stories, stories, the oldest.

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Human art form.

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It predates language.

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It's how we think, it's how we dream.

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It's, the study of psychology

is rooted in the study of story.

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It's how you articulate your life,

both to yourself and to other people.

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Story's so important, and

there's so many lessons in story.

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All religion relies on story.

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Heavily.

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You could say all religion is

story, in a way, and that's

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not meant to be an indictment.

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I'm not saying anything's any less true.

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As a matter of fact,

it's probably more true.

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when you see, like, people, and

I'm stealing this from a thought

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leader I love, whose name I won't

say, because he's polarizing, but...

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You'd say, like, is Harry Potter true?

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No, of course not.

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But, the...

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Principles and values articulated in

Harry Potter are true on a meta level

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that maybe is more true than the things

that you think of as true, honesty,

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integrity, bravery, friendship legacy.

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Like, there's truth there that is

better articulated inside of fiction

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than it could ever be articulated

outside of, in non fiction in

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the quote unquote real world.

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So please don't sleep on fiction.

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And if you don't know where to start,

like just follow your passions.

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I love Victorian literature, I don't

know why, honestly it's popcorn

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movie type books that I love.

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I love Charles Dickens, which I know

is like supposed to be so pedestrian.

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But I don't care because I just,

I love how sarcastic he is.

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And he's so much fun and thoughtful.

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And his characters are amazing.

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But then I love swords

and sandals stuff too.

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I love Brandon Sanderson

and Patrick Rothfuss.

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I love George R.

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Martin.

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I love the Game of Thrones series.

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I love sci fi.

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I liked Orson Scott Card and

who's the Red Rising guy.

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I could just go figure out what appeals

to you and don't try to dive in.

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That's the other mistake I made

too is I try to eat like all

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of the densest meals first.

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You know, you don't go, you

can't go straight to Dostoevsky.

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You won't understand it.

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I didn't.

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I still can't tolerate Tolstoy as much

as I know he's supposed to be brilliant.

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But then over time, like you kind of

develop, it's like wine, I used to hate

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wine, but then you kind of develop a

taste for it and then you, and then

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your palate improves and And then you

find what you like, and it doesn't

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: 00:13:04

have to be what other people like.

311

: 00:13:05

I'd love to know what you read.

312

: 00:13:07

I'd love to know what book

recommendations you have.

313

: 00:13:09

I have a really good habit,

anytime anybody recommends

314

: 00:13:11

a book to me, I just buy it.

315

: 00:13:12

You know, if it's somebody that I respect.

316

: 00:13:14

And so if you have book

recommendations, fiction, non

317

: 00:13:16

fiction, I'd love to know what you

think I should be reading and why.

318

: 00:13:19

What books made the biggest

impact on you, and why?

319

: 00:13:23

What was the needle mover for you?

320

: 00:13:25

And my experience recently,

and I think I was...

321

: 00:13:28

Indoctrinated into this thinking

by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

322

: 00:13:32

Nassim wrote a book called Anti Fragile.

323

: 00:13:35

And I don't know if he said it in this

book or if he said it elsewhere, but

324

: 00:13:37

Anti Fragile is one of the most important

books I've ever been exposed to.

325

: 00:13:39

One of the most important thoughts

I've ever been exposed to.

326

: 00:13:41

And he's an obnoxious

person to read, by the way.

327

: 00:13:42

He's so arrogant.

328

: 00:13:44

But he talks about how the

longer a book has been around,

329

: 00:13:48

the more likely it is of value.

330

: 00:13:50

It's either an axiom or it's an

oversimplification depending on

331

: 00:13:54

where you sit philosophically in

terms of your view of the history.

332

: 00:13:58

But regardless, I've

just found it to be true.

333

: 00:14:01

I mean, go read The Republic, right?

334

: 00:14:03

Go read Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.

335

: 00:14:05

So much value there in the family Marcus

Aurelius is one of the smartest most

336

: 00:14:08

powerful people who's ever lived and you

can just read his Words, what a blessing

337

: 00:14:12

Anyway, it's got a little preachy.

338

: 00:14:13

Let me know what you read

like comment subscribe.

339

: 00:14:15

I'll see you tomorrow

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Unfair Advantage: Unlock the Power of Reading

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