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Eddie Hood
I'm in a really weird mood today. I feel like giving a little tough love for lifelong learners or readers of any kind. Now, this is not to say that I have the answers to these things. I am working on this stuff just as much as anybody. In fact, these tough love tips I've got, 20 of them are really more a reminder for myself. These are things that I'm working on. These are things that have helped me become a better reader over time. But if you. If you identify with them, then great. Now, this all started because I went to the gas station today and I bought this water. I never buy water in a bottle, but I've got this Fiji water. This is the first time I've ever bought this stuff. And I thought to myself, I wonder if this is better than my normal tap water. It was $3. 69. I'm mostly done with it. And the verdict is that it tastes like water. It. Yeah. And so I'm not. I don't feel like it was worth the cost. Now, that's not to say that, like, you should go out and buy nice water, but I don't taste the difference. And that is the tough love example I want to share with you here. We're going to apply that same concept to reading a book. Sometimes the advice out there or the excuses are just that they are superficial. Let's get into it. Welcome to this week's episode of the Read well podcast. My name is Eddie Hood and I'm your host, where I believe it's more important to read well than to be well read. So grab your favorite book, open up your notes, and let's get ready to learn something fascinating. Okay. My name is Eddie Hood with the Read well podcast and I've been building this community for about two years now. And I get a chance to speak with all of you behind the scenes. So many great comments and so many wonderful people out there. But I hear a lot of the same thing in terms of wanting to get more focused, wanting to do more valuable things with your time. Ultimately, it comes down to. To wanting to be a better reader and a better thinker. So, 20 tough love tips. Here we go. The first one, stop saying you don't have enough time. Now, you do have enough time, and you know you have enough time. If you're being honest with yourself, it really is that you're giving your time to things that don't matter. If you have the ability, obviously, to sit in the bathroom on YouTube for five minutes or watch the latest, you know, basketball scores and see what's going on there. You know, you have time for things that actually will enrich your life. You're just not accumulating all of those little pockets of time into something meaningful. So it's not about having enough time. It's about deciding to use that time well. Number two, quit reading aimlessly. This is something that I do a lot, and it's something I'm trying to get better at. I love going to bookstores and just browsing the shelves. And I find myself buying books that I, you know, I didn't plan on reading before. I've never heard of, but the COVID was beautiful or something similar. And so I buy it and I get into it, and I really don't have a plan. Now, I'm not suggesting you need to have a business plan of reading ahead of you or you know exactly what you're getting into. But if you're going to open a book and you want to be a lifelong learner, then, yeah, you really should be in a book with purpose. If you're merely reading for entertainment alone, then feel free to wander aimlessly through the woods of fiction. But if you want to learn something, I would suggest trying to get very clear about what you want your life to be about first and then finding books that challenge that way of thinking and help you grow in that sort of skill set. Number three, reread and read the hard stuff. So I think a lot of the times we tell ourselves that certain books are just beyond our capability or we don't have enough time. And so we're looking for the Cliff Notes version of a book. Give me the quick, immediate summary so I can get on with my life. That's not okay. We need to actually spend time with great thinkers if we want to be great thinkers ourselves. Again, I'm not saying I am this. I'm not saying I've got it all figured out. All I'm suggesting is that when I do set aside time to read a book that is really well put together, I benefit from it because of the time I sit with it. Cliff Notes have never been able to supply that for me. It really is about the time I put in. Okay, four is kind of like number two, but a little different. Stop collecting books you're never going to read. Sometimes we like to collect books just to have a bigger home library. Now, I love that. I love the home library, but again, you're not going to read it. And there, at least for me, when I go into a room with too many books, I feel overwhelmed because I don't know where to start. I, I, I will open a book, I'll read a couple pages and then I'll look over and I'll think, maybe that book's better. So I'll put this one down and pick that one up. By having too many books around you, I know it feels good and I know it's nice to be bookish, but you might actually be hurting your ability to read by creating a lot of distractions. Number five, you don't need the perfect system. I have a lot of people that email me or ask questions related to my note taking system or my reading system, how to create a daily habit, and so on. And we spend so much time trying to figure out the perfect system. There's something about us that says we need to apply the way we perform at work to how we perform in our habits. We somehow squeeze all of the curiosity and wonder out of our habits and we want them to be very, very clinical and very efficient and effective and yada yada, yada, right? So instead of actually becoming a reader or a lifelong learner, we just spend all the time in the world trying to figure out how to build the right system so that one day we can be a good lifelong learner. Don't do that. Number six. Stop hiding behind I'm not smart enough. None of us are smart enough. That's the point, right? We're here to learn. So if you were coming into a book thinking, I'm not capable of reading this right now, I'll put that off until later. You might actually be surprised when you open up the book and read it. Now, the real truth here maybe isn't that you're not smart enough. It might be that you're not dedicating enough time to it. Anytime you read something that's technical or somewhat heavy in its message and you're trying to apply the old habits of speed reading or being efficient, you're not going to understand it. And that's perfectly understandable, right? If you're reading something difficult, you need to dedicate the appropriate amount of time to it. Number seven, if you're only reading stuff that you agree with, then you're not really learning. So look, confirmation bias is a real thing. It bites all of us in the backside and it feels like we're progressing by reading the same books again and again and again and always moving down the same alley or climbing the same tree. But I've got to say that Learning is a 360 degree experience that we have to come at a topic from Every angle. And so if you're only reading books that agree with your perspective, your political party, your religious views, your family views, then I would question whether you're actually learning something. Number eight, you are not too old. Now. Yes, the best time to become a lifelong learner is probably when you're 20, right? And you're trying to figure yourself out in your career. But the next best time to be a lifelong learner is right now. And you. You simply have to decide that going forward, you're going to stop wasting time on things that don't matter, and you're going to start reading books that will make a difference in how you live, act, and behave. Number nine, don't confuse scrolling on your phone with learning something. Scrolling is not learning. Scrolling is exposure. It is allowing other entities, marketers, other thought leaders to send their ideas to you. And you're swimming everybody's conversations. Right? It is not actively learning. I know it feels like it does to get on YouTube and just scroll through until you see something that is intriguing or curious and then to watch that. But I would argue that that is not learning, that is passive time spending. I'm not going to call it wasting because I enjoy YouTube, I enjoy social media, but I'm. I'm absolutely not learning when I do that. For me, learning is deciding to set aside a block of time, call it 30 minutes or an hour, where I turn all of that off, I get out my notebooks and I try to spend time with a real thinker. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Hannah Arendt, somebody who is miles and miles and miles ahead of me. Right? So scrolling is not learning. Okay, number 10 is going to sound harsh. I don't mean it to be, but stop bragging about your TBR list, what you're going to read. Oh, you know, next I'm going to read Anna Karenina, or next I'm going to read Behave by Sapolsky or whatever it is. And look, I'm guilty of this, too. When I'm in circles and people ask for book recommendations, I will often say where I'm headed next. And it's not that we're bragging, but our TBR lists can become unwieldy sometimes. And they. They grow and expand in ways we can't always control. And sometimes we get in the trap of not actually opening those books, just talking about them as though we're going to get into them. Right. We never actually start on the TBR list. And so I would say stop focusing so much on what you're going to read and Just pick one of those books up off the shelf and start reading it halfway through the list. Now again, don't shoot the messenger. All of these apply to me. I have committed all of these literary, fictional, whatever sins we're going to call them. No means perfect over here. Definitely trying to improve myself. But again, these are hard truths, tough love ideas that I think we could all probably benefit from and some of them hopefully will help you out. I don't know. All 20 though, are definitely applicable to me. So the next one is Learning without Reflection. I think that's probably pretty useless if you're, if you're reading a book and you're really enjoying it and the moment you get to that last page, you close it, you put it on the shelf, you grab the next book and you keep reading. And you don't take time to go for a walk or reflect or journal or apply or do something with that knowledge. You haven't learned anything. You might, you know, retain 5% of that book, but it won't be much. And like, geez, a book takes what, 10, 15, 20 hours, maybe more, depending on the book to read. That's a lot of your life wasted. And wasted is a strong term, right? But that's a lot of your time invested with such little return. Look at me, I'm saving the conversation, right? We're not wasting time. Being in a book is always valuable, but let's be honest, you can get a better return on your investment if you just take a minute to think about what you've read. Number 12, reading hard books will not kill you. This is the truth. Actually, I've really enjoyed being in book club and some of the books we've gotten into have been quite difficult. And I think my favorite comments have been people jumping in or chiming in, saying, I never thought I could read this. And it has been such a pleasure to go from page to page and actually not just get through the book, but get something from the book. It's really fun to watch people realize just how smart they are and how capable they are. If they put their darn phones down and open a book, that will make a difference for them. So you can do this, whatever book you've always wanted to read, open the book, just give it a shot. Just remember that if you try to read it quickly or efficiently or effectively or whatever, you're probably going to miss the meat of that book. Just slow down, take notes, apply the ideas, and you're going to get something out of it. Number 13, quit waiting for the right Mood to strike you to be a reader. Now here's, here's a tough love truth. I think a lot of the times we feel like we need to be in that sort of pensive literary mood or that thoughtful mood in order to really get something from a book. Therefore, I can't read in the mornings because I'm busy and I gotta get to work. I can't read after work because I'm exhausted and tired and I gotta make dinner and so on. Really being a good reader is about deciding to show up, getting your butt in the chair and doing the work. Reading actively reading deeply is work. And again, it's different from reading for entertainment, which can be done on the whim. It can be done standing in a grocery aisle line while you're waiting for the checkout. It can be done on the audiobooks or whatever. But to actively read deeply and make a practice of lifelong learning, it is real work. It's like going back to school and you have to stop. Well, you have to make the decision, right, to become a student and do the work even when it's hard. If you think about like a, a virtuoso piano player, there are days where they don't want to show up and play the piano. But how do they get there? They still show it up at 8 every morning. And they did the work for 20 plus years or whatever it was, and they became great because of that. The people that just show up kind of when they're feeling it, which is never, most of the time, never get anywhere on their piano. They just kind of can play chopsticks after 20 years. So what are you going to be? Chopsticks or virtuoso? That's really up to you and the commitment you make. Number 14, tough love is if you read a book and you can't explain it in simple words when you're done, you have not learned it. If you hem and haw and you use big fancy words to try and expand on this book of these ideas and you're still searching for the meaning. Now this one absolutely applies to me. I do this. I often over explain a book or whatever, mainly because I haven't put in the work yet to reflect on it and to boil it down to what it actually means, I haven't spent the time with it. And because of that I'm thinking as I'm talking, I'm exploring the ideas and people can tell right when they say what was that book about? And I go on for 20 minutes, they kind of glaze over and they stop caring. But that time can be spent on my own with a journal, thinking through that reflection. I can boil it down to what it really means, and then I can explain it. Then I will have learned it. Tough love. 15. Stop worshiping speed. Our culture is so fascinated by speed reading and getting through 100 books a year or 500 books a year. My question to you is this. Is it such a bad thing if you read three books this year, but you read them really well? You started off as person A on January 1st, and you really put yourself into three books and studied them and annotated them and thought about them and journaled about them. And at the end of the year, you became person B. Who is smarter, I don't know, wealthier, better at relationships, more thoughtful, blah, Whatever. Whatever, Whatever, right? Is that such a bad thing? That seems to me like a good thing, actually. So, yeah, stop worshiping speed. There's no benefit to reading books quickly, especially if you don't retain what you're reading when you're done. 16. Stop letting your phone ruin your focus. We all have this thing in our pockets. It beeps and buzzes and hums and whatever, and we are so addicted to it. I am the same again. I am no different here. But my goodness, we are. We are really good at wanting to look at that thing. So stop using it as an excuse. A lot of the times we. We turn to it because we feel like we have to stay updated on things. If you're going to be a lifelong learner, there is a point where you must realize that the Internet does not have the answer for you. What has the answer is going to be thoughtful time with great books, with other great thinkers, journaling, putting ideas together, not a quick Internet search. So put the phone away. Give yourself 30 minutes of unfiltered thinking for 10. Just a minute each day. Number 17 in the tough love journey here. A few more left. Learning is supposed to be hard. That's the thing, right? If this was the Matrix. Have you all seen the Matrix where, you know, Neo just plugs into the machine and then, like, he downloads all sorts of crazy information into his brain in half a second? I know we want that for ourselves. I know we want the quick fix, the magic bullet, the system that makes it all work. You know, better. But the honest truth is the great thinkers of the past were great because they sat down and they worked at it. They just worked and worked. And the more I spend time with people who are way smarter than me, the more I realized that they are Spending their free time thinking about hard things. They are working on hard problems. They are putting the effort in. If you want to be a lifelong learner and you want to do something valuable, you're signing up for hard work. Get over it. 18 is all about comparison. So stop comparing yourself and your learning journey to everybody else. I think we. We have this tendency to look at ourself and go, oh, my gosh, I've put in X number of years or whatever it is, and that person is making more money, is more advanced, is smarter, is. I don't even know what it is. But we're really good at comparing ourselves and we shouldn't do that. You know, being a lifelong learner is about moving yourself forward. It is not a game of competition. So, so put all that aside, stop worrying about everybody else, and just dig into your books. Number 19 is my favorite, so I want you to. Well, I can't say I want you to. This isn't. This isn't dad talking to kids. But what this is, I want for myself especially to stop consuming so much and start creating. Right? So number 19 is stop constantly reading. I know reading is good. I know we love reading. This is a reading community. But stop doing so much of that and use some of that information to make something else, to create something, to add your voice to the conversation. Right? If all we're doing is consuming, then it can feel like even after having read many, many, many great books, that maybe we're misunderstood or we're not being heard, we're not being valued because we're not doing anything. The last and final tough love tip for you. Again, I absolutely love you and care about you and hope that you got something out of this video today. But the 20th tough love tip is this. Stop making excuses and be honest with yourself. Know when you're making excuses, you've got this little voice in the back of your head that is saying things. Your subconscious, it's telling you all this stuff. I don't have time. I'm too old. I'm not smart enough. I don't. Whatever. And you have to get really good at saying, aha, there's that voice. I'm going to turn it off because it's making excuses for me. And then you just have to get down to work. You know, I like giving book recommendations. And so on this week's episode, I'd like to share one with you. And I'm actually going to read the first paragraph because it is wild. So one of my favorite thinkers of all time, since we're talking about people who sit down and put, you know, really valuable time into thinking is Ralph Waldo Emerson. And this is a book written by Robert D. Richardson Jr. It's titled Emerson the Mind on Fire. If you've wanted to understand transcendentalism at all or how to be a better thinker, Emerson is a pretty good thought model. He is somebody who was a scholar, well thought out, didn't always get things right, admitted when he was wrong, but also had essays and thought topics on many, many areas of life. And look, the guy was also a little strange, right? Did some crazy stuff in the prologue. Here I want to read to you the first passage. This is going to blow your mind and might might induce you to purchase this book. This is not a book I sell in my bookstore, so you'd have to get this online or elsewhere. But I just want to make the recommendation. Here we go. On March 29, 1832, the 28 year old Emerson visited the tomb of his young wife Ellen, who had been buried a year and two months earlier. He was in the habit of walking from Boston out to her grave in Roxbury every day. But on this particular day he did more than commune with the spirit of the depart at Ellen. He opened the coffin. Ellen had been a young and pretty. She was 17 when they were engaged, 18 when married, and barely 20 when she died of advanced tuberculosis. They had made frantic efforts at a cure, including long open air, carriage rides and massive doses of country air. Their life together had been stained almost from the start by the bright blood of Ellen's coughing. Opening the coffin was not a grisly gothic gesture, not just the wild aberration of an unhinged lover. What Emerson was doing was not unheard of. At least two of Emerson's contemporaries did the same thing. A Unitarian minister and a good friend of Margaret Fuller's, James Freeman Clark, once opened the coffin of the woman he had been in love with when he was an undergraduate. Edgar Allen Poe's literary executor, the anthologist Rufus Griswold, opened the coffin of his dead wife. 40 days from the funeral, Emerson opened not only the tomb of a family vault, but but the coffin itself. The act was essential. Emerson he had to see for himself. Some part of him was not able to believe she was dead. He was still writing to her in his journals as though she was alive. Perhaps the very deadness of the body would help a belief in the life of the spirit. Okay, so look, this is a crazy tale of Emerson and you can kind of imagine him going off and opening up this coffin. It just blows my mind. But he wrote some fantastic essays on living well. One of his most popular, of course is an essay called Self Reliance. I think you'll absolutely love this book if you want to find a mentor to help you think clearly. Anyway, that is my book recommendation for this week. I hope you got something out of this. I hope that one of the 20 tough love ideas struck home for you. And as always, remember to read slowly, take notes and apply the ideas. I'll see you all next time. If you'd like to take your reading to the next level, then head on over to the Read well podcast. There you'll find daily posts on how to read well. You'll also get access to all of my book notes and tools for becoming a better reader. And as always, don't forget to read slowly, take notes and apply the ideas. Thank you for listening to the Read well Podcast.