← The Read Well Podcast
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Today, I want to dig into what I mean when I say read slowly, take notes, and apply the ideas. This is the motto I put on everything I create, from blog posts to podcasts that I record, to YouTube videos that I make. It is the heart and soul of my reading community, and I want to open that up today. Let's go. 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. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Read well podcast. My name is Eddie Hood, and today we're talking about the motto that we say around here. Again, it is to read slowly, take notes, and apply the ideas. Now, this started because a long time ago, I was getting really frustrated with myself as a reader. I was surrounded by all these great books. I was motivated by them. I felt passionate about them. And then I would go onto YouTube or I would talk to somebody else who was a reader, and it was this sort of badge of honor to say that, you know, I've read a hundred books this year, or this year I'm going for 200 books. And I'm just thinking in the back of my mind, how do you have time for that? I mean, I've got kids and I've got a job, and I've got other responsibilities. Like, maybe if I just did reading and this is all I did constantly, maybe I could get through 100 books a year or 200 books a year. But I got stuff to do. People like, how are you doing this? And. And so, one, I felt guilty and frustrated about myself as a reader. But two, as I tried to achieve those higher goals, I noticed that my retention was tanking. Yes, I was getting through the pages. Yes, I was checking books off my list, but I had no idea what was happening in the book. I was fulfilling an ego thing. So I thought, you know what? I'm going to have to read fewer books in my life, but I want to read them well. So what does it mean to actually read slowly? Does it mean to, like, go word for word and really just, you know, spend half an hour on a page? Sometimes Maybe it does. It depends on what you're reading. But it's more about not trying to get to the next page, not trying to get to the end of the book, but instead being with the page that you're on and sort of a quick story. I Was driving home a few days ago and I'm. I've got a lot of tension in my life right now because I'm trying to buy a building and turn it into a physical bookstore called Edgewater Bookstore. And lo and behold, real estate transactions are stressful. And so I've had like this like anxious thing going on and I can't seem to calm down. And as I was driving home, I was thinking about all the emails I had to send. I was thinking about the projects I had to finish up. I had to go to the building and do some inspections and on and on. And my brain started to spiral downward into this like mass pit of anxiety. And. And I realized that if I were to apply this concept of reading slowly to the act of living slowly, I might actually be able to calm myself down. So on the drive home, I made a promise to myself. I said, eddie, I didn't actually close my eyes cause I was driving. But I said, eddie, I want you to do one thing well between the point of leaving your office and driving home. Now, I currently work about four minutes away from my house. So for four minutes I made the promise to myself to do nothing other than be the most present calm driver possible. I wasn't going to listen to music, I wasn't going to like, you know, anything. I was just going to be in that drive. Now here's what happened. As I was driving home, I started to experience things I would have normally missed. My senses started picking up on things. I started noticing the color of the leaves as they were changing. I could smell that fall smell in the air. I actually could feel the steering wheel in my hands. All of these things I would normally have just glazed over to just try and get home quickly to do the next thing. And I thought, this is really great. I feel connected in my drive and my heartbeat slowed down too. I relaxed and I enjoyed the process of getting home. Something that normally is just a bother, right? And I thought, this is great. This is just like reading a book where let's say I'm reading Behave by Robert Sapolsky. And this is a big book and sure it's great. Great to be able to say, hey, friends and family. I read Behave by Robert Sapolsky. But there's a lot of information in here. And I can either read through it quickly or I can slow down and be with the page. And when I do that, my retention goes way up because all of my senses come into play. Just like when I'm driving home and I can smell the smells and See the sights and all that stuff when I slow down and I decide to just be with the book. And I'm not playing with my phone, I'm not checking my email and I'm not talking to a friend while I'm reading my book. And I'm not, I'm nothing, I'm just with the page. And I'm also not trying to get to the end of the book. I'm just with the page. Then all of a sudden I start to see things I normally would not have seen and experience things and ideas I would not normally have experienced. So that's the first part of our motto. Read slowly, take a moment and just decide that from now on you're no longer going to be reading for speed or for checklists or to say that by the time I die, I will have read the hundred greatest books of all time. Now, while that is a good, fine goal, it is a fine goal. Does it really matter if you read all 100 of those greatest books of all time before you die? Or is it better to read one of them well and go, wow, that changed my life. That was really good. Now the next part of the motto is to take notes. So for us in our book club, books are more than just entertainment. Now, they provide immense amounts of entertainment, but there is a conversation, conversation happening here. And yes, you can take notes in both fiction and non fiction books. So here's how we structure this in the Readwell community. What we do is we keep highlighters with this. I've got a couple right here, right? Just basic highlighters, nothing fancy. And as, as I'm reading, I will write in my books. Now for some of you, that will make you cringe. I get that. And that's fine. You don't have to write in your books. You can have a separate notebook. But it is really critical that you are in the first passage of a book. You're flagging the sections that stick out to you. So if you're reading nonfiction and there's an idea that just pings, you're like, wow, I can use that in my work. I can use that to better my life. What I do is make a quick note of that passage and then I move on. I don't spend weeks or hours right there because I get entrenched in the book and I get lost. But I will, I will make a note of it in my notebook or I will highlight it and then I will keep going. Now in book club, what we do, and I think this is quite helpful, is we set up our schedule so that when a book is finished, because we read, you know, every Tuesday night, we get together and hang out. But we're reading 10 to 15 pages a day of a book. When that book is finished, what I do is I put a week of no reading in between the end of that book and the start of the next book. And so during that week, we go back to our book and we find all of those passages that we've highlighted. Or we look at our notebook to see where we've captured those best ideas and we reread those sections. Okay, now what happens is that let's say you get a hundred passages that you've highlighted and thought, oh, this is really great. You might find that of the hundred, really only 20 are like, life changing. You want to implement them in your life. What I would do during that week off of reading is I would journal about those 20 passages and I would expand those into notes. I would make notes for each of those ideas. Okay, so this is really critical to not only read slowly, but then give yourself a week of time after a book to process the best ideas in that book. Okay, so you've read the book slowly. You've given yourself a week in between the finishing of this book and the start of the next one to review those great notes and build them out. Then what I try to do is I try to apply the ideas in my own personal life. This means literally going out the door and doing something with that information. So, case in point, let's see here. We just finished. I think I have it somewhere. The Remains of the Day. It's right here on my desk. I apologize. I have a lot of books on my desk at the moment. We just finished the Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. Now, this is a fictional tale of a butler who has spent his whole life in service to another person. And he defines his value in terms of that service. Not in terms of his relationships or the quality. Quality of his own life or the things that he does or accomplishes, but on the accomplishments of his employer. Now, this is as a fictional book. There's a lot to be learned here in terms of how it applies to my own personal life. And we, as we read about Mr. Stevens, we read about his failed relationships with key people that could really bring him joy and why that is a bit of a tragedy. We took notes in this book and we. We took a week off in between finishing it and the start of the next book, which I'll talk about in a minute. But during that week, I analyz Mr. Stevens approach to his relationships. And then I thought about my own relationships and I thought, where in my life am I being a Mr. Stevens? And I don't want to have those same filled relationships. So what are the hard conversations I need to have? And I actually went out and applied this. There is a specific relationship in my life right now that is a professional relationship that is very, I'm not going to say tender, but sensitive. Right. Like we're kind of walking on eggshells. And it's because some assumptions have been made and emotions are in play and e goes around place and it's been really hard. And I went to that person after I sat down and journaled about the remains of the day and got my thoughts together, I went to that person and I had the conversation, the hard conversation that I think Mr. Stevens should have had with some of the people in his life. And that relationship for me opened up and blossomed and bloomed. And now myself and that person are on a whole new footing and an understanding with each other. And. And I am so relieved and grateful that I did that. So this is an example of reading slowly and then taking the notes and then going outside and applying those ideas. Now, before we get into this week's book recommendation, I actually have a couple books for you this week. But I want to point out that reading in this style is probably pretty new for a lot of people in terms of, first of all, finding great books that are worth your time to read because there are millions of them out there. How do you pick a good one and then slowing down appropriately to actually, you know, implement that into your life and then having a group that keeps you accountable so that you can stay on with these great books and build a really good reading habit. If you've been struggling with that and you want to read great books but you don't have a system in place, then I would just say, come try and join our book club. It's 12amonth. The first month is free. I'll put a link down below. But it's a ton of fun. There are over 500 members in that thing and they are really passionate about books and reading well and helping you get them the most out of every page in your book. I think you'll love it. So come give it a try down below in the links. You'll get free 30 days. Okay, let's do some book recommendations. I have, like way too many this week. Usually I do one, but I just couldn't control myself here. So, first of all, I want to point out that we're about to start in book club a new book called An Immense World by Ed Young. This is a book that is nonfiction, and it looks at how animals process the world around them in terms of their senses and their acuity and all of these things. I have not read this yet, but I'm interested in it because I like books with a philosophical concept to them. And you might be asking, how is this at all? Philosophy? This is a book about animals, and it's a science book, and it's about their perception of the world. Well, in philosophy, we're very fascinated with the concept of consciousness and free will and so many other things. And many philosophers have argued that what makes us human, what makes us different than the other animals, is our ability to rationalize, our ability. Ability to not only make rational decisions, but. But to think about our own existence. Right. Most animals are just. We believe, are just out there living their life, to eat and breed and sleep. But humans are able to look back and have thoughts about our own existence, the meaning of life, as it were. So this is an interesting book for me because I'm curious to get into the heads of some of these scientists and learn more about what animals are thinking. I've got two little corgi puppies. They're a year old, Lulu and Poncho. And they are the sweetest things the world. And as I've gotten to know them, it is clear to me that they have a level of consciousness that I didn't think was possible in the animal world. So there you have it. I'm excited to learn about that. The next book recommendation I'd like to give you is the Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy. This is a great book. I'm actually teaching a course on this that the registration for that course is now closed. But that's okay. We'll be doing future courses on books like this down the road. But the Death of Ivan Ilyich is a small thing. It's tiny. It's a little over 50 pages. And probably one of the most impactful books in fictional history. Whatever. Again, Leo Tolstoy, and he's writing about a man on his deathbed and how he has, you know, he's looking back and realizing that maybe his life really didn't have a whole lot of meaning. And he's trying to make sense of what meaning even is and how to find that before he dies. It's really good because it makes you look back at your own life and think, oh, I'm, in my case, 45 years old. Am I creating real meaning? Am I doing the thing that I should that makes my life feel like it is accomplishing something great? Okay, a few more book recommendations here. I am loving this. I'm halfway through it. It's the Titanic Survivors Book Club by Timothy Shaffer. And I'm really excited because Timothy is going to be in our book club. So we have a really fun feature called An Evening with Authors, where great authors like Timothy will be spending the evening with us discussing books, discussing his work or her work, whoever it might be. And we've had so many great authors on. So if you want to meet Timothy, a great way to do that is to come and again try out our book club. It's free for 30 days, but we always have a nice lineup of really great authors that will be speaking with us as well. Okay. The last book that I wanted to give you a recommendation on is the Intellectual Life by AG Sertelange. Now, I have talked about this book in the past, but I was thinking about it today, and I think this is a really good book to go along with our concept of this week's episode to read slowly, take notes, and apply the ideas. This is a little book. It's kind of hard to find in publication. You can get it on my bookstore@edgewaterbookstore.com but this is an interesting book because Sirtolange was a guy who was writing to prepare young men for service in the church, in the Catholic Church. And so this book essentially was meant to be a handbook for those young men, but it took off in so many other avenues. It kind of became a cult classic for people who are notetakers and for people who like to be lifelong learners. And so while there are concepts in here that are applicable to the church and sin and worthiness and all of those things, whether that applies to you or not. Maybe you can look past that or dig into it, but I love the this book because it is, Chuck, full of finding your work, doing your work, and being a scholar and really paying attention to what matters. So, for example, the chapters in here are the organization of life, the time of work, the field of work, so where you put your energy, the spirit of work, like how you show up to your work with some passion every day, preparation for work. I just love this book because it's so, so well done in terms of getting you to slow down, take notes, and actually apply the ideas. Okay, that's it for this week's episode of the Read well Podcast. A whole lot going on. But again, whether you join us in book club or you continue to go out on your own, I hope the message of reading slowly, taking notes and applying the ideas resonates with you. I get emails from readers every day that that concept is refreshing because they are just so tired of being hustled into more and more without the idea of actually retaining what they read and benefiting from it. So with whatever book you're reading right now, I hope you get the chance today to hit pause and to really get the most from the page that you're on. As always, thank you for being with me. And until next week, remember to read slowly, take notes, and apply the ideas. See y' all. If you'd like to take your reading to the next level, then head on over to the reading readwellpodcast.com 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.