My plan to read 1509 pages of self help in 20 days

Read time: 4 minutes

Welcome back, 1041 readers, to the Learning Lab.

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Confession:

I have been in a rut lately.

I am distracted from my ultimate goals.

If you would graph this, then I would be in the valley of despair.

Even with the best resources and support, I am the only one who can take myself out of this situation.

Things got worse when I listened to Tim Urban’s Ted Talk, "In the Mind of a Master Procrastinator."

Most were about stories of overcoming procrastination, but the last slide scared the hell out of me:

1080 boxes.

Each box represents one month of our lives.

If we cross them out one at a time, we find ourselves moving further away from our goals and closer to our deaths.

That’s when I realized how much time I had wasted.

My current day:

• Wake up at 8 a.m.

• Breakfast and planning until 9 am

• Studying time until 11:30 a.m.

• Lunch with family until 1:30 pm

• Afternoon recharge until 2:00 pm

• Afternoon studying until 4:30 pm

• Gym/football until 7:00 pm

• Dinner until 8:30 pm

• Content creation until 9:30 pm

• YouTube, gaming, cooling down until 11 pm

• Sleep at 11 pm.

And I am guilty of saying that this is a horrible schedule.

• 4 hours of studying

• 1 hour of content creation

• 3 hours exercising

But so many hours wasted…

That’s why I want to start this 1000+ page challenge.

I want to mix up my life and run some tiny experiments…

Hypotheses of experiments:

• Reading improves life perspective.

• Reading → Re-ignite the fire inside me.

• Reading → Test how much I recall from books.

On reflection, I found that most of my problems arise from bad habits, so for this reading challenge, I want to focus on learning about behavioral changes.

To get the benefit of syntopic reading , I will find 3–5 books to read simultaneously.

Here is my book selection:

• Tiny Habits → 320 pages

• Atomic Habits → 320 pages

• The Power of Habit → 371 pages

• Thinking, Fast and Slow → 499 pages

In total: 1510 pages

Originally, the plan was to read 1000/ 20 days, but I want to up the stake 🧑‍🚒 

Action plan:

I know that too many new habits will only result in overwhelming feelings and unsustainable changes.

So just one habit:

Schedule 30 minutes for reading /day

(Optional: +15 minutes of incremental every 4 days)

To gain the most knowledge, here are my reading strategies:

• Priming the book for the big picture first

  I will read through the Shortform to get a big picture overview of the books, find the main ideas and build the backbone for my learning

• Ask questions that I am curious about.

  • Now, instead of reading it in linear order, I will let my curiosity dictate the order of reading.

    • I will use HOTs to help you remember the concepts longer and avoid re-reading the books.

      

• Repeat this process until I master the topic.

• Represent it on a mindmap.

• Lastly, I will re-read it one last time, purely for enjoyment, and find anything that I missed.

If you want more specific tips about reading effectively, reply below and I will write a specific newsletter about it 🙂 

For now, if you want to read faster without sacrificing comprehension, watch this video:

Keeping myself accountable

1. You can expect at least 4 books summaries on your Twitter timeline

2. From next week on, I will update you on what I’ve been reading and some of the progress I've made.

3. Reply "ME" and I will send you $5 for every week that I don’t write a book summary thread ~ Extra motivation 😉 

That’s a wrap! 💃 

Thank you for reading until the end!

Final reminders:

1. Reply “me“ if you want to hold me accountable for this challenge (aka - I will pay you $5 every time I fail)

2. If you have any requests or suggestions for the Learning Lab, please let me know. I will reply to all your messages.

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