What reading level is my book

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📚 How many books to read per year

Successful entrepreneurs: Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett read books and periodicals several hours a day - up to 100 books a year. A VTsIOM survey in 2019 showed that reading Russians “swallow” about 12 books a year, and if they don’t surf the Internet, twice as much – half a book a week.

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📅 How much time you need to read per day

The average reading speed of an adult is about 50 pages per hour. A book of 250 pages can be mastered in a week if you devote a little less than an hour a day to this lesson. How much time to devote to reading, everyone decides for himself. If you devote an hour to books every day, you will approach the indicators of famous rich people.

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IVAN KARPENKO,

Lecturer at Foxford, Ph.D. I knew people who practically didn’t read anything, didn’t watch or listen, nevertheless, in communication they could show themselves to be interesting interlocutors (but not in terms of talking about culture) and subtle psychologists - connoisseurs of human souls.

But there is one caveat. It is better not to discuss literature, cinema and music with such people - they demonstrate such strange tastes that further communication may become impossible. And this is not surprising - taste, the ability to understand something, for example, in art, develops precisely in the process of consuming this art.

And one more small point: if you yourself are very fond of something, for example, astrophysics and are eager to talk about it, then, of course, you will be more pleasant with the interlocutor with whom you can discuss it.

However, if you are an introvert, it doesn't matter if your interlocutor has read anything. Most likely, you will not gravitate towards communication anyway.

Reading and other cultural consumption, of course, develops, forms the intellect and taste, in this sense, yes, if we understand rationality as a body of knowledge. However, as Heraclitus said, “much knowledge does not teach the mind, otherwise it would have taught Hesiod and Pythagoras, as well as Xenophanes and Hecateus,” hinting that the best erudite of that time were fools.

In general, reading provides a basis and an incentive for development, but if there is no mind, then it will not exist.

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🏆 How to make reading effective

• What matters is not the amount of reading, but the quality of understanding the material.
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• If you discuss, think about and put into practice the information you read, new connections are formed in the brain.
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• The more active the mental activity, the lower the probability of age-related disorders of the brain.
  
• If the text is hard to read visually, listen to audiobooks.
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• Unlike watching video content, reading activates the imagination.
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• Reading poetry causes increased activity in different areas of the brain due to the unusual structure of phrases and fictitious words.
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• Famous personalities - businessmen, inventors - read at least one book a week.
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• Reading is a tool for self-development. If you have a goal, reading will help you achieve it.

Your style of reading books says a lot about your intelligence - and here's why / Sudo Null IT News If you love to read as much as I do, then going to a bookstore is like going to a candy store for a child.

The shelves are lined with treasures of human wisdom, revelations that each of the authors has been polishing for years. It's all here, right at your fingertips, concentrated in a format that makes you want to curl up and under the covers.

Naturally, you pull out a credit card or press the "Buy" button.

And the books are piling up. On your shelves. In the bedroom. In car. Maybe even in the bathroom.

The most selfless bibliophiles are looking for a place where no one had ever guessed to put books before:

Source: http://bit.ly/2JRrqbk

And as books accumulate, so does your greed. No, not the desire to read all the books you buy. Thirst not to finish reading those books that you have started.

If the next sentence is about you, then I have to please you.

"Even if you don't have time to read them all, it's good for you to overfill your bookshelves or reader."
— Jessica Stillman

In this article, I will explain why, for those who really take the time to read and learn to learn, unread books scattered around the house just indicate high intelligence, and not its absence.

Transferred to Alconost

Not only are heaps of unread books scattered everywhere - this is the handwriting of a smart guy; such a person will make you an excellent company. I finally came to terms with my own greed when I got to know the reading habits of brilliant entrepreneurs in detail and interviewed my most successful friends in my own way. Most of them read only 20-40 percent of the books they buy. Many of them can read 10 books at a time. In fact, one of the most avid readers in the tech beau monde, a self-made billionaire entrepreneur, estimates that…

of them. I end up reading 1-2 books a week.”
— Patrick Collison

What is going on?

Studying the reading habits of others, coupled with the tremendous changes in our society, dominated by knowledge, I became convinced that our new times dictate new ways of searching, filtering, consuming and applying knowledge - the only way to change lives for the better.

The explosion of information in a variety of media and formats, new research tools to help us find the best information, and apps to help us absorb it not only encourage us to read more. They encourage us to read in a new way.

A big part of my reading life is the old fashioned way of getting into art, but when I read to learn rather than relax, I use a lot of tricks and strategies to figure out which books to buy and how to read them.

Here are some of the smartest non-fiction reading hacks I've picked up from world-class entrepreneurs.

Life hack one: Treating books as an experiment

My friend Emerson Spartz, a successful serial entrepreneur and investor who has read thousands of books, convincingly demonstrates that buying a book is an experiment. The costs are small: you have to pay $ 15 and spend a little time. However, if you're lucky, the book can change your life. The rates are very good!

It is known that the more "smart" experiments you do, the higher your chances of finding a breakthrough experiment that will change everything. The most celebrated scientists and the most successful companies are usually the ones that experiment the most.

My experience is that you need to study, buy and research 10 books before you find the one that, in my opinion, contains breakthrough knowledge.

A good experimenter is willing to take some losses. Thus: every time you get a book, and it turns out to be nonsense, you are still one step closer to the book that will change your life.

Life hack two: Practice fractal reading

We, as a knowledge society, have reached a tipping point. The metadata generated by books (ie, author's interviews, author's presentations, book abstracts, reviews, citations, first and last chapters, etc.) are often as valuable as the book itself.

Why?

• All this is free. This information allows you to try many more books before you buy. Consequently, in every "experiment" with the purchase of a book, our chances of success increase.
• This is multimedia. All of this information is available in text, audio, and video format, making it a better fit for your daily routine (for example, you can read it while traveling back and forth or at work).
• In this case, we have a high signal-to-noise ratio. In the abbreviated format, all the water is removed, the main ideas are presented immediately.

Just as a book is the quintessence of an author's best ideas, metadata is the quintessence of a book.

This is why I call this approach to reading "fractal"; because fractals are figures whose structure reveals identical patterns regardless of scale.

We have reached a point where it may be more useful and convenient to read non-fiction in the "fractal" mode, rather than the entire book from cover to cover. For example, I can estimate that I spend 50% of the purposeful study time on fractal reading, and not on deep sequential reading. This makes it easier for me to choose books to dive into and also to recognize the most important and essential sections of the book so that I can jump directly to them. In most cases, a fractal reading of five books will be more valuable and exciting for me than studying one book from cover to cover.

Here's how to do it:

• Read 2-3 book summaries (google search). For almost any book, you can find several annotations, which often contain the most sensible information from the book (20% of the ideas containing 80% of its value). Let me explain: here I mean only non-fiction books; This rule, of course, does not apply to fiction.
• Listening to the author's interview (podcasts, Google). The interviews are engaging, and the facilitator takes over your work, asking the author the most essential and intriguing questions that emerge from the book.
• Watching the author's presentation (TED, Google or university lecture). When an author is forced to pack a 200-page book into a 20-minute lecture, he shares his biggest ideas, merging them into an optimal story.
• Read the most helpful 1-star, 2-star, 3-star, 4-star and 5-star reviews (Amazon). Amazon helps everyone quickly sort through their most thoughtful reviews, from readers who fell in love with it to those who hated it.
• Reading the first and last chapters of the book. The first and last chapters of a book often contain the most valuable information (of course, this principle does not work if you want to plunge headlong into a novel). In addition, the first and last paragraphs of each chapter contain its most valuable ideas. Given that Google Books has free e-book samples and Amazon has a Look Inside feature, you can often get the first and last chapter of a book for free.

Life hack three: Unread books should remind us how little we really know

Intellectual humility is so valuable not only because it is a virtue. It is valuable because it allows us to more realistically conceptualize ourselves and our place in the world, and this helps us live more efficiently and harmoniously. For example, humility helps us make better decisions and inspires us to study and learn.

This is how I see it: there were billions of people in the world who accumulated knowledge and documented it for thousands of years. The knowledge of one person compared to the collective knowledge of all mankind is only a drop in the ocean. And this sea is expanding at an unfathomable rate. Most of the scientists who have ever lived in the world are our contemporaries!

Moreover, if we talk about all the knowledge that humanity is able to obtain, and about what we have already managed to discover, then the first is like the whole Universe, and the second is like a grain of sand. So, here are three levels for cultivating our humility:

1. Individual knowledge
2. Modern knowledge of mankind
3. All potential knowledge

However, at the level of everyday tangible experience, it seems that we know much more than we really do. When all is well, it seems to many that they have comprehended the notorious "meaning of life." It's like we're at the end of a cycle instead of the beginning. It’s just that we are constantly reminded of the already known and rarely (if ever) of the unknown.

Naturally, conceptually, we can realize that we know far from everything, but we do not physically feel it. I was reminded of this recently when I spent two hours touring two of Princeton's six libraries. I happened to pass a space the size of 10 football fields, filled with books and scientific journals. On the one hand, I was inspired by looking at all this and realizing that all this can be studied. On the other hand, he experienced extreme humility. Libraries have helped me to realize how little I currently know, and to understand that even if I spent my whole life only reading, I would learn a small fraction of what is collected in them.

Collecting anti-library , that is, collecting unread books at home, one can experience similar feelings. Nassim Taleb, a successful investor and best-selling author, brilliantly describes the value of an anti-library in his book Black Swan :

“A personal library is not an image accessory, but a working tool. Read books are far less important than unread ones. The library should contain as much of the unknown as your finances, mortgages, and the current difficult real estate market will allow you to fit into it. As the years go by, your knowledge and your library will grow, and the growing ranks of unread books will begin to look at you menacingly. In fact, the wider your horizons, the more shelves you have of unread books. Let's call this collection of unread books the anti-library."

Not only Taleb is of this opinion. The Italian writer and philosopher Umberto Eco collected over 30,000 books. Thomas Jefferson collected 6,000 books, thus, at that time, his library was the largest in the country. Jay Walker, the founder of Priceline. com, amassed such a huge library that he later built his house around it. Thomas Edison set up his desk in the center of his own three-story library. Bill Gates has many rooms in his house, but his favorite is his own colossal 2,100-square-foot library.

Personal Library of Jay Waker, founder Priceline.com

Tomasa Edison library

Bill Gates Personal Library 9000

Lifehac Fourth: Big Broups Great

only known. However, as soon as you find another book that seems more interesting or more important, the current handbook should not hesitate to discard ... any other algorithm will cause your reading to get worse and worse over time.

In other words, remember what you were taught and do exactly the opposite. Instead of trying hard to “finish off” any book you start, allow yourself to simply put this book aside - but only if you find a more valuable one. Life is too short and there are simply too many good books in the world. On the other hand, be careful and try not to go too far - that is, not to reject great books just because you got some new with a catchy title.

How do you know if you're jumping randomly from book to book? This is where fractal reading comes in handy. If the book's meta-information didn't grab your attention, then it's unlikely that the whole book will be enough.

Life hack five: Use the books you read to free up space in your head for great ideas to collide

It is known that targeted advertising is effective. The recipient perceives it both consciously and subconsciously. The same applies to those books that we correctly place in the existing context.

My mentor, business partner, and friend Eben Pagan compares a bookshelf to a playlist of timeless intellectual masterpieces:

“The most important book on your shelf is the one you haven't read yet. If you have a promising book, it may not be time to read it yet. Maybe you will ripen to it in a year, or maybe in ten years. However, if you spot a book at the right moment, you will be interested in it and take it off the shelf.”

Patrick Collison talks along the same lines:

“Another skill that I find very valuable is simply putting a book away. When someone recommends a book to me, I can often get myself a copy... and put it down. So, the books are in my kitchen. They lie in the bedroom. They are just scattered all over the place.

Moreover, the situation is surprisingly common when someone else recommends you a book, or some aspect of it, and it is still at hand. In sight. And you'll think, "Oh, really, you need to get to know this thing."

Or learn about the book's importance in some other way. Read in the article. You will begin to realize its zest, or the question posed in it, or something else.

So one of the reasons why I continue to appreciate paper books is that the book creates a kind of idea space for you, in which fruitful collisions occur between such ideas more often.

Life hack six: read books like magazines

"Journal" reading of a book is a powerful metaphor. Picking up a magazine, we do not feel embarrassed if we skip some pages in it, or scroll diagonally in 5 minutes. On the contrary, we will scan the magazine in such a way as to find the most interesting and important articles, and then, having found them, we will carefully and slowly read them. This approach is very powerful on several levels:

• Helps you find the most important information to study in depth.
• Helps slow down so we can get the most out of the information we decide to delve into.
• Makes it easier to read, making it easier for us to stay consistent.

Let's face it, it's not as easy to focus for long periods of time as it used to be. Yes, it would be great to sit and read for hours without distraction, but if this is not done properly, then the benefit is zero.

Avid reader and famed technology investor and entrepreneur Naval Ravikant has pioneered a reading system that helps to put even shortened periods of acute attention to good use.

Ravikant noticed that among the most valuable books there are a lot of old sources that form the basis for other books. He describes the value of these books in one of the Tim Ferriss podcast series:

“The older the problem, the older the solution. When it comes to old topics, such as how to keep your body healthy, stay calm and peaceful, what value systems are good, how to arrange a family ... for such problems, the old solutions are perhaps better than the new ones, as they have stood the test of time. Any book that has existed for 2,000 years is "filtered" by a lot of people."

However, Ravikant points out the important challenge of reading this kind of book:

“…but I knew it was a very difficult problem, because my brain is used to Facebook, Twitter and other sources where information is given by the teaspoon. So I used this tactic when I started thinking of books as one-off blog articles or miniature tweets or Facebook posts. I don't feel any obligation to finish the book. Now, when someone points me to a book, I buy it. At any given time, I read between 10 and 20 books. I flip through them, as soon as the book starts to get boring, I skip the uninteresting. Sometimes I start reading a book from the middle, because a paragraph caught my attention, and I continue from there. I don't feel the need to read at all. If at some point it seems to me that the book is boring due to clearly erroneous fragments (and I can no longer trust the rest of the information that is presented in it), I simply delete them and no longer remember them. Now I treat books like others - any other easy information that can be found on the Internet. All of a sudden, books are back in my circle of reading.”

Finally, it's not about how many books you finish reading

It is difficult to distinguish between just a book plush and a smart reader, if you just visit their homes. Both of them will have books all over the place. However, this similarity is superficial. In fact, there are three key differences between plushkin and a smart reader.

• Smart readers have a well-established learning ritual. I recommend sticking to the 5-hour rule: spend about an hour a day reading, following the example of many leading entrepreneurs and leaders. Today I devote 4-5 hours a day to systematic learning, while at the same time managing my company and raising two children.
• Smart reader learns to learn. In other words, he learns to make the best use of his reading time. I wrote a free email course to help you master mental models, one of the most important skills to help you learn faster and better. This course explains the models that billionaire investors use to make business and investment decisions. This is an arsenal that you can begin to apply in life and in business right now. You will also learn how to incorporate these patterns naturally into your daily life.
• Smart readers continue to act until they achieve the desired result. The value of theoretical knowledge lies in the ability to apply it in practice.

If you consistently adhere to these three principles, then the time will soon come to say goodbye to guilt. You don't have to read every book on your shelf. And when you take a book off the shelf, you don't have to read it to the end.

Plyushkin is proud of how many books he has, and an intelligent reader is proud of how much he was able to extract from his books.

About the translator

The article was translated by Alconost.

Alconost localizes games, applications and websites into 70 languages. Native translators, linguistic testing, cloud platform with API, continuous localization, project managers 24/7, any format of string resources.

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