ladies and gentlemen reading is one of the most transformative habits i ever implemented in my life and to be honest i think i can heavily credit it as one of the main reasons that i made my first million at the age of 18 and have multiplied it ever since so i actually started reading a book a week at the age of 14 and i'm so grateful that i did you know i carried that habit from the age of 14 to 17 and then from there you know that's kind of when my business really started to
take off and you know it's a little more tough to get in reading a book a week but yeah i'm especially grateful that i started reading at such a young age because of that age you're so like malleable like you know i was reading all these non-fiction books all of these self-development books finance books business books uh biohacking and health books sleep meditation books philosophy like it just a whole plethora of reading material and i never questioned anything you know if i would read something i would just take action on it immediately because as i
said at that age i don't think you have as big of an ego or you're not as jaded or you assume that you know everything so as i said at the age of 17 and 18 as my businesses really started to pick up i slowed down my reading habit tried to pick it up 2019 started reading two books a month and then now here in 2020 i am back to reading a book a week now i know reading is one of those habits that is immensely difficult to pick up and just get in the habit
of and once again if you fall off it is just as difficult to make it a routine and make it a habit again as i have found out this year so in today's video i'm going to give you five practical tips to read more books and really break down how i mash read a book a week so tip number one is build it into your routine like solidifying any habit in life you need to assign a specific time to it now earlier this year i was actually reading just after meditation i was reading the 30
minutes right before i jumped into work now usually i actually train and work out in the mornings although you know things have been a little different in 2020 as you know so that's why i mix things up a little i actually prefer to read at night before bed now 99 of the books i read are non-fiction so i know for a lot of people reading before bed it gets your mind racing gets you very technical and that actually impedes your ability to fall asleep but for me for some reason i have my chamomile tea i've
got my classical music playing in the background i've got my book i've turned off all my electronics an hour before bed and for me i actually find it very very relaxing and i can get to bed very very easily also i think there is something there there's some something holy about that hour about that 30 minutes where you're where you're just in a different state and i feel as though i'm able to internalize information in books a lot better before bed even non-fiction books and as i said you need to test and try out what
works for you not everyone can read right before they fall asleep in the same way for me in the morning you know uh when things are back to my normal schedule and gyms are open and this and that like i much prefer working out meditating and getting straight to work so as i said really just find out whatever works for you and stick to that same routine every day same thing applies first if you're trying to build a meditation habit a mindfulness habit pick a specific time every day and make it a habit make it
a ritual tip number two is have intent going into the book now really this only applies to non-fiction but as i said 99 of the books that i read are non-fiction and to be honest even most the fiction books i read uh for example some of my favorites atlas shrugged 1984 brave new world um the great gatsby uh mayor of casterbridge those sort of books most of the time i'm reading books with meaning to them so even in those instances when i know that there's a modern classic that i really should have read even with
a lot of those books i'm going in with intent it's just every once in a while there will be a book that i'm you know is a autobiography or a fiction book and there's no real intent like i'm actually just trying to enjoy myself in those cases obviously i don't go in with an intent but the reason i say this is because right before i start reading a book i actually like to go online and read summaries of the book i like to read a cliff notes and you know i know some of you guys
may be thinking oh but that's a spoiler alert well not really when you're reading a non-fiction book like i'm there to extract as much value out of that book as humanly possible so i don't care if it's like if there's a spoiler alert because that allows me to that allows me to get some context as to what i'm about to read and also allows my res my reticular activation system to kind of focus in and specifically hone in on parts of the book where i know it's most applicable to me and where because i've set
my intent i know that that part of the book will give me what i want out of it so wherever you're writing notes say for example some of you guys may be writing notes in the notes section of your your phone or maybe using notion or bear or where whatever it is that you're using to take notes at the top of your book notes or your summary or whatever you make for yourself go ahead and set an intent for that book what do you actually want to get out of it and actually brings us to
tip number three which is you don't need to finish every single book now i know that every single reading purist is about to comment in the comments section that they vehemently disagree with me and that i'm an idiot and this and that but hear me out if you were watching an educational youtube video online and you saw that either that it didn't deliver on the promise of the title or they were just very poorly made you'd click away and you would feel absolutely zero remorse for doing so so why do us as reading purists think
that like once you start a book you can't stop or you can't you know or you can't just accept the sunk cost and go yo this is not a good book this is not a good book the title is misleading or a lot of times most of times what authors do is they just keep spinning around the same topic and rephrasing it 80 different times because they can't make a book that's 60 pages long they have to beef it up to 300 pages even though there's really only 60 pages worth of value you know i
finish around 80 of books and i'm glad that i don't finish those other 20 that you know that i only get maybe one third of the way through or half the way through because those are really those books and we we all know what it's like to have that book where you are adam and you are gonna finish it and it just ends up sitting on your bookshelf for three months and you're just you're trying to get through it and you're hustling your way through and you're trying to make it happen when you could have
just put that book to the side and just you know realize like look this didn't give me what i wanted out of it and just moved on to the next one and it would have been so much more efficient and so much more practical and enjoyable for you now tip number four is actually use a kindle now once again this may be a controversial one and up until 2019 i'd say 90 of the books i read were paperback or hardcover and you know i'm an old soul i enjoyed you know getting on the tube once
a month going to brixton in london where my favorite used bookstore is and you know just spending you know a couple hours there you know reading 10 20 pages of a few different books and then picking out my four books for that month you know that ritual has a lot of sentimental value to me that's what i started doing at the age of 14 and you know that means a lot to me that said i realized like look it's just so much more practical to read books on a kindle you know you ask yourself if
you're laying on the couch or in your bed or wherever like how many positions can you actually read a book in you know like if you've got a book just you know if you've got a book especially if you've got to highlight it as well like it's it's tough whereas with a kindle like i can i don't even need to hold the book open you know with a kindle uh sometimes i can be eating food and i can just crane my neck over as i'm eating food i can just hold it up like this i
can hold it up like this you know there's the pushers on both sides i can you know uh when you're in a plane it's so much more convenient when you're on the couch you can you know you can read it like this it's just everything about this thing is so much more convenient and you know don't get me started when you go on holiday like i remember vividly many times where i would go on a holiday and you know i'd be by the beach or whatever and you just end up ruining your book whereas this
i actually use the kindle oasis um i think some of the other models as well now are waterproof but um i got this like almost two years ago at this point and i've put this thing through the ringer like this has been to probably 20 plus different countries it has been high up in the mountains in nepal has been to you know beach clubs because i'm the weirdo and little nerd who you know all my friends are in the pool and i'm just sat there reading a book uh and i'm just still back at the
the day beds you know enjoying my book or whatever so you know this thing really has been through the ringer and this thing is is a brick it's withstood everything and um sounds weird but seriously when you go on holiday like i read in the pool sometimes i'll admit it that's what you guys caught me and yeah this thing's waterproof so it's quite nice to know that if you drop your kindle in the pool uh which i've never done but it's nice to know you can uh it's waterproof and even just like you know going
from you know the ocean and then coming back and like having water in your kindle and just knowing that okay nothing's gonna happen it's not gonna break or like paperback you're not gonna ruin your book so yeah when i was really trying to pick up the pace uh in 2019 and kind of get back to a decent pace of reading a book every two weeks i picked up the kindle oasis and i made the full switch to the kindle ecosystem once again with the amount of traveling that i do i can have thousands of books
on there and i actually haven't had a home for eight months i've been traveling and i just can't imagine what it'd be like to lug around all of these books when they're just all on there a highlight on there and then that gets uploaded straight to their cloud system so you can go on uh the internet and type in like cloud.kindle.com i think and you actually have all of your highlights and then it's easy to move that over to for me i use notion and then from there i make my book summaries and all this
all this good stuff and it's just so much easier and the other thing is at my old place in london you know i actually put in the master bedroom ensuite i put not this one this one would lay uh in a different part of the house like my designated coffee reading area that would lay there but i actually had my old kindle like the older uh like standard model more beat up i actually had that in the toilet and i'm sorry if there's you know tmi too much information but yeah rather than wasting my time
when i went to the bathroom you know on my phone or something like that like i would just read my kindle and it was great i had and i would just skim read old books that i'd already read refer to some of the highlights and this and that and very productive use of time so yeah ladies and gentlemen i implore all of you if you're still a little apprehensive towards moving towards the kindle ecosystem i understand but definitely definitely give it a good shot now tip number five is learn how to speed read now i
don't want to get into specifics of this because it's different if you're reading paperback versus kindle for example all i will say is that you should learn how to read twice the amount of books in the same amount of time now once again this really only applies to non-fiction because that's where you're trying to extract as much value and information while retaining as much as you can from the book you know it doesn't apply to fiction where you know maybe you're on holiday whatever you're just trying to enjoy yourself by the beach now the best
place to start is actually to go online and you can take a test that gives you a number in terms of how quickly you can read also while retaining the information and that'll really give you a good set point and give you a bit of context to say like how much could you improve and potentially how many more books could you read this year so ladies and gentlemen that wraps it up for my five tips i'm super curious to see what do you guys prefer kindle or paperbacks so go ahead and do this if you
prefer paperback drop a like and if you prefer kindle just comment kindle in the comment section and apart from that in the comments section you'll be able to find the winner of gadget so for any of you newcomers here on the channel gadget is actually my bespoke clothing line everything is done in-house i'm actually wearing one of the previous seasons hoodies every single video if you aren't already subscribed just go ahead and hit subscribe turn on post notifications and anytime you see a new video within the first two hours comment because every single video i
do a giveaway of gadget my team sends it out to you free of charge straight to your doorstep and as i said in the comments section you can find today's giveaway winner from last video so ladies and gentlemen i hope you guys enjoyed and i'll see in the next one you
