How to Read more Books | 7 Day Reading Challenge | Filipa Canelas | Skillshare
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How to Read more Books | 7 Day Reading Challenge

teacher avatar Filipa Canelas, Content Strategist & Content Creator

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Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Reading Challenge Introduction

      4:19

    • 2.

      Day 0 — The Motivation for Reading

      10:09

    • 3.

      Day 1 — What to Read

      5:57

    • 4.

      Day 2 — Make Reading a Habit

      11:44

    • 5.

      Day 3 — How to Take Notes

      8:13

    • 6.

      Day 4 — Speed-Reading

      8:41

    • 7.

      Day 5 — How to Read more Books

      6:30

    • 8.

      Day 6 — Engage with Reading

      3:43

    • 9.

      Day 7 — Set a Reading Goal

      5:17

    • 10.

      Conclusion

      2:22

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About This Class

This Reading Challenge has the intent of making you read more books than you ever did before. And not reading for reading’s sake, but actually enjoying the books you are reading and taking advantage of each page your eyes pass over.

Hi, I’m Filipa. I am an online course creator, blogger and obsessed with books since I can remember. I am an avid reader, and in the last 5 years, I read more than 250 books, that is, 50 books per year. This is not pure luck or retirement in my early 20’s. This is the combination of a well-refined strategy, discipline and passion for reading.

Each day of the Challenge, there will be something new to learn, with a well-established outcome. That is, you will have a teaching and a practice, so you can better incorporate the teachings in your life as a reader. 

You can watch a lesson per day or watch them all at once and take notes on what to do each day. Either way, I highly recommend you grab a notebook or open a digital file and write the key insights of each daily lesson. If you do this, not only will you better absorb what is being taught, but you will also be making progress towards one specific lesson during this challenge, but you will have the opportunity to see that later.

  • Day 1: you will learn how to find the best books to read. Those are books that will resonate with you and fulfil what you are looking for.
  • Day 2: you will learn a 3-Step-Formula to develop the habit of reading. It’s crucial to make reading a habit if you are looking to increase the number of books you read.
  • Day 3: you will learn how to take notes of the books you read. This is particularly useful in non-fiction books, where you read to learn and apply.
  • Day 4: I will teach you something I’m really excited to share: speed-reading. Speed-Reading is all about maximizing your time, that is, reading more in less time, without sacrificing comprehension.
  • Day 5: you will be able to leverage the number of books you read.
  • Day 6: you are going to increase your engagement with reading by sharing!
  • Day 7: you will learn how to set a reading goal that you will accomplish!  

I’m really excited to go through this Reading Challenge with you! And remember, the purpose is to make you take action — that is, completing the daily challenges and taking a step towards your reading intentions.

Thank you very much, and I see you inside the class :)

 

Meet Your Teacher

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Filipa Canelas

Content Strategist & Content Creator

Teacher

 

Hi, I'm Filipa Canelas! I'm the founder of Able-Academy, a content strategist and author.

I Empower Businesses & Entrepreneurs to Build an Effective Content Marketing Strategy and Leverage their Content for Brand Awareness.

Content is my jam -- I've written 200+ blog posts, 50+ hours of video content, a 150+ page book on time management, and a LOT of social media posts.

I have been featured in Thrive Global by Arianna Huffington, the Authority Magazine & Billion Success. I've reached +40,000 people (just like you!), including professionals from NYSE, Airbus & Hitachi, just through the power of content marketing.

If you're frustrated with your content marketing strategy and are ready to accel... See full profile

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Transcripts

1. Reading Challenge Introduction: Books are everywhere. When you visit a friend's home, go having a walk around town, or even when scrolling through social media. Still most people claim not being able to reach their reading goals. They claim not having the time, the method, or even the intention to read more books. But they care about reading and they would certainly benefit from reading more books. And how do I know that these people actually care about reading? Because every year they set a new intention to read more books. They recognized the value of reading a book because it brings them you insights in ideas to apply to the different areas of their lives. Devalue of entering a new world in a fiction book. Or the value of accessing a mind of a brilliant thinker in just 300 pages. That are not enough excuses in the world for not reading a book. And surely all the benefits you can have from reading one will surpass all the excuses you can come up with. Hi, I'm Phillipa. I'm an online course creator and a blogger, and I'm obsessed with reading books since I was a kid. I'm an avid reader. And so in the past five years, I read more than 250 books. That basically means 50 books every year in debt is not pure luck or retirement at my early twenties, it's the combination of the well-thought-out strategy, my passion for reading and discipline, this Reading Challenge has the intent of launching new to the world of reading more books and accomplishing your reading goals. And not to reading for reading sake, but actually taking advantage of the information you're consuming, applying it to your life, and actually feeling good and happy when reading a book. In each day of the challenge, you will learn something new and you will have a specific goal to complete at the end of the day. That is, not only you will have the teachings, but also the practice. So you can better incorporate what you learn in your daily life. You can watch a lesson every day, or you can watch all the lessons today and then take notes of the challenges you need to go through each day. Either way, I highly recommend you to open a notebook, a physical one, or a digital document. Take notes along the way because I'm sure you will learn a lot of information that will be valuable to you, not only today, but also in the future. Just one note, the challenge does not start in day one, it starts in the 0 index 0, we will get the high dose of motivation that will make you excited to take on the challenge and to continue reading more books today, tomorrow and throughout your life. If you have trouble sticking to the habit of reading, I'm sure they 0 will be a great help for you. In day one, you will learn how to find great books to read. And those books should be specific to your needs into things you value in your life. Day two, you will learn a three-step formula to engage in the habit of reading, it's crucial that it actually becomes a habit. So you don't actually need to think much about it every day. In day three, you will learn how to take notes on the books you read. And this is particularly valuable when you're reading non-fiction books and you are absorbing a lot of information in there for, I will teach you something I'm really excited about. Speed reading. And speed reading is all about maximizing your time when reading without losing any comprehension of the material. In day five, you will learn my best tricks to maximize the number of books you read each year. In basics, you will learn how to increase your engagement when reading just by sharing information with other people. And finally, in the last day of the challenge, day seven, you will learn how to set a very clear goal that will lead you to a more fulfilling reading journey. I'm really excited to go through this reading challenge. And remember the purpose is to make you take action towards your reading goals and actually accomplishing the things you want to accomplish since a long time. Thank you very much and I'll see you inside the class. 2. Day 0 — The Motivation for Reading: Hi and welcome to the seven day reading challenge. I'm really excited to embark on this journey with all of you and I hope you make the progress you're looking for. Seriously reading seems to be one of the most engaging and exciting activities I do. And it's not because I'm a nerd, but because I actually value books and I know what benefits they have brought to me in the past years. As I've said in the first video, I'm an avid reader and I've been reading more than 50 books for the past five years. But it wasn't always like this. Even though I've always loved to read. And when I was a kid, I slept with books instead of toys. It's something that I discovered only 5-years ago. Those are the strategies that made me read so much more than I ever did before. It's been an incredible journey. And I've probably have read more than 4000 books during the course of my life. And more than half of those books were read just in this last five years because of all the strategies you are going to learn in this challenge during the conversations I had with my friends and also through the emails that you guys send me, I found that setting a reading goal in the beginning of each year is very common in still, the average number of books read per year in the world is very, very low. And I honestly doubt that those people, the people who read only a couple of books every year, actually just want to read those two or three or five. Most of them really want to achieve more in read more. And they usually set high, higher reading goals, but they can't accomplish them because they don't have the right strategies. After hearing these people talking about how they cannot accomplish their goals, I decided that I had to help them. Not because I think that my strategies are perfect, but at least they have been working and they are making me an avid reader every year recently. I've been also teaching these techniques to some of my students. And they are able now to read much more than they ever did before. And so my intention for creating this class is exactly that twin. Making you read so much more, making you absorb information about the books you read and actually feel excited about the whole experience. Seriously, reading is not supposed to be boring. It should be fun. And I believe most people want to start reading journeys for three reasons. Reading for fun, reading for inspiration, or reading for learning something new. When you're reading for fun, you usually read non-fiction books. When you read afforded learning, you read non-fiction books, especially the ones that have a lot of information and knowledge and content. And then you read for inspiration. Which can be those motivational books that will take you to the next level and make your progressing new goals. Actually, there are some books that fulfill the three motives for reading. So you might be reading Harry Potter for fun because you can actually get inspiration by the story and because you're learning something about magic. But most of the times we pick a book because we have one particular reason in mind. And I can give you examples for each of the three reasons from my particular stories. So when I was reading Harry Potter, I would wake up one or two hours previous two hour, I have to go to school just to finish the series. I remember waking up at 530 or 06:00 AM to read Harry Potter. And why was I reading it six AM? Because I could not think of a better activity than to read Harry Potter because I was having so much fun. I was discovering so many things about their world and I just loved it. And ideally, all the books you read should be fun. But of course, I don't expect a macro economics textbook to be as funny, has a Harry Potter book. And so the great thing about reading fiction is that you get to experience a different world. And sometimes you can even extrapolate some lessons to apply in your own life. But the main purpose is not that one. The main purpose is having fun and escaping reality in a healthy way, of course. And the second reason why people read is to learn something new. And this is where the macroeconomics textbook comes handy. You are reading to master indicators such as GDP, inflation, unemployment rate, and all of those stuff you are reading to improve, you're punished level or reading more about the brain is really not matter what you are learning because you might actually be learning how to improve your relationships, and that works too. But books can be an incredible resource to fulfill these learning necessities that we have inside us, we need to improve. And so books are a great help in that sense. As you can see, I keep reading books because they had so much, to my knowledge, they helped me so much to improve and different areas of my life. And so I read them because I'm acquiring information in a learning stuff. So if you want to learn about the brain and how to improve your cognitive function, you don't actually need to have a bachelor's degree in neuroscience. You can pick a book about the brain written by someone who has been spending all their life learning more about the brain. And you can absorb that information. You can learn the most important principles in just 300 pages. Seriously, I wish people looked at the books and saw them as a huge source of knowledge. The same goals from another CEO that has wrote a book before, and that you can use what they say to improve your chances of being hired in any company. Or you can read autobiographies, for example, from Nelson Mandela and learn how to be a better human being. What matters is developing the mindset in the intrest to immerse yourself in reading and to take so much more from the whole experience. If you're currently struggling with managing your money. There are so many books you can read to help you on that topic. That are hundreds of books that were written specifically to help people go from a tough financial situation to thrive it. So why not reading those? You don't need a PhD in finances to make better financial decisions. You can pick one book in the already takes so much to apply in your life. And yes, sometimes we need courage to admit We need help in a particular area of our lives. For example, I can totally remember when I was struggling with anxiety three years ago. And it took me a bit of courage to admit it to myself. But when I finally did, I started reading a lot of books about the topic and I immersed myself in meditation. Any two really helped me out. In the end. It's a choice. And we get to make that choice in use books as a powerful resource who learn more? Finally, the third reason to pick up a book is to get inspiration. I've certainly read many, many books to feel inspired, that are faster ways to get inspired and reading a book, like watching a YouTube video or a TED Talk. But books are so much more magical that I keep returning to them. As an example, I've read the biography of Arnold Schwarzenegger Because I was impressed by his work ethic and I wanted to get inspired about my work to picking the biography of Nelson Mandela can also mean something similar. You'll read it because you want inspiration to face some challenges in your life. It all depends on your intentions. You might be reading some of these biographies to learn something new, but you can also read them for inspiration. So what matters is figuring out your motives in picking up books that match those motives. And now you might be thinking, okay, so why do I care about these three motives for reading? Why is this? Why is this important? The first reason is I just shared this with you because I want you to be motivated for all the possibilities that reading a book, having your life. But second, this matters because the purpose of reading a book and that is reading for fun, reading for learning, or reading for inspiration also means a completely different approach when you are reading a book. So if you are reading to learn, you should not approach the book the same way you do when you are reading just for fun. If I'm reading Harry Potter, I'm not concerned with taking notes or trying to apply what I'm reading in my life. On the other hand, if I'm reading for inspiration, but I'm in the middle of the book and I don't feel inspired. Should I actually continue reading the book? Probably not. That's why it is so crucial to understand your motives for reading a book. Those motives determined the approach you take when reading one. When you're reading for fun, you are seeking some relaxation time and you're looking to feel good when you're reading for learning, you probably should actively be taking notes in trying to come up with ways to implement what you are learning in your own life. And when you're reading for inspiration, that implies you are seeking to feel more inspired and to use that inspiration to advance a certain area or project of your life. Basically, when you have a goal in mind, that same goal should be matched by a certain approach that will fit the book you're reading. For me, it's not enough to just pick a book and read it. I think it's crucial to understand beforehand Why I'm reading that book. And that for sure will give me more motivation and also to, to help me have a better approach towards it. And that's it. Thank you very much for watching day 0 of this challenge. I hope you are inspired. I hope you are motivated to continue reading. And let's move on to day one of the Reading Challenge. 3. Day 1 — What to Read: Hi and welcome to the first day or the first official day of their reading challenge. I'm really happy you have chosen to stick around and watch this challenge and I'm sure you will not regret it if there is one thing I'm used to hearing is you read so many books. How do you pick what book to read next? While? And that's a difficult question because I've got a variety of methods or use that helped me to pick the books I read. It's not that I have a magical source that tells me which book to read next, I go through a variety of methods that compliment each other and he helped me choose the best books to read. Just so you have an idea. I have a wants to read lists with more than 500 books. And those are not random books. Those are books that I've been adding four, more than five years because they made sense at the time. Perhaps I don't want to read the book I added there for years now, but at least was made because at that time it made sense to EV that book next. But you don't need a list of 500 books. What you need are ten books, and that's exactly the challenge of today. In order to help you accomplish the goal, that is to come up with ten books to read. Next, I will share the three strategies I use to find incredible books to read. So I've got three main approaches for finding books to read. The first one is good reads. The second art, inspirations, recommendations and you will see what I mean later. And the third are recommendations done by books themselves, which sounds weird, but you will understand it in a minute. You know, someone really likes books when he or she has a good reads accounts. Good Reads is basically a social network for readers. I keep a record of all the books I read, the ones I want to read next. Those are the 500 books of one To Read list. And also the books I'm currently reading. But as important, good reads is an incredible place to find new books to read. When you sign up for a good reads, you will be able to discover a huge variety of books in very different genres. Self-development, romance, nonfiction, books that have been adapted to movies and so on. You can also find what books are there people I reading? So if you can't find someone we did good taste for books with similar interests, you might find some inspiration in the books that person reads. If you're interested, you can find me on Good Reads by searching for a fairly book analogy. Anyway, in GoodReads you will find lists of books. If you can even search in Google Good Reads lists. And you will find so many great books that are ranked by reviews. And you can choose the best ones and add them to your Wanted To Read list. The second method to find in books is to attending to some of the people I consider as being inspiring and finding their recommendations. I've used this method multiple times in its simply works in pretty much all the time. Love the books I read. Basically you do a quick Google search of the person you admire, followed by book recommendations. So this could look like bill Gates book recommendations, Steve Jobs book recommendations, and so on. Of course, it helps if you pick someone that is well-known, so you will actually find some content about that person. But it probably works if you're choosing someone that he's a CEO or an inspiring leader, you will find something. It's very simple, but you will probably come up with a very cool list of books to read. And finally, the third way is attending to recommendations that you can find inside the books you read. If you go to the end of some books, you will find a list of books or papers that were a reference for that book to be made. That of course, works especially well in non-fiction books. But you can always find some recommendations along the books or the inspiration for some ideas. So if you are really keen on a specific idea that an author referred and that idea is not from him or her. You can always find a reference and you can read that particular book. And when I find a book that I really want to read, I simply head on into good reads and I search for that book and add it into my wants to read the list through a combination of these methods, you can easily find ten books to read next. And this is your challenge to open a Word document or create your good Red's account and generates ten books that you will read next. You don't need more than 15 minutes to create through these list of books that you were interested in reading. But please don't skip the challenge because it's really crucial to have the next step always laid out for you. So you don't actually skip the habit of reading a book. And so having this ten book list will quickly overcome that excuse. You don't need to define a particular order for the books if you don't want to, if you want to feel free to do it. And of course, if in the process some new book emerges and you really want to read that one, go ahead and do it. The great thing about reading is that it can be super spontaneous to sometimes I'm finishing a book and I become so interested in that topic that I want to read three or five books on that same, similar topic. Anyway, by having this ten book list, you will overcome some potential excuses that sometimes makes some people stop the habit of reading and that's it for today's challenge. Make sure you come up with the ten books you want to read next and use the discussion to share your recommendations. Maybe you can also get some inspiration from what other people are reading. Thank you so much and I seal in day two of these Reading Challenge. 4. Day 2 — Make Reading a Habit: Hello and welcome to day two of these Reading Challenge. In today's challenge, you will learn how to make reading a habit. And just like meditation, working out or waking up early, reading can also become a habit. And when he do so, it will be so much easier for you to stick to it. In yesterday's challenge, you came up with a ten book lists to read next. Now the following thing is to read those books. I'm keen on creating positive habits that will enhance my life. And I know exactly what's my BY preventing you from making reading an activity for life. And that is because you're struggling with making reading a habit. So the outcome for today's challenge is not exactly creating a habit because that takes more than one day. But you will learn what three steps you need to follow in order to make reading a habit. And to do so, I'm going to teach you scientific methods that will make reading a habit. First of all, why is it important to make reading a habit? If you're think about the word habit, basically means you're doing something without being conscious about it. You just do it without giving it much thought, without relying on motivation or willpower. When you brush your teeth, you probably told, think or ponder before doing it, you just go ahead and brush your teeth. The same goes for any negative habits. If you are a smoker, you usually don't need to think much before reaching for a cigarette and smoking. And ideally, you want reading to have the same characteristics as these habits. You want to consistently read without relying on willpower or needing to have a high dose of motivation. But of course, to reach a state where reading comes natural to you, it might take a bit of time, but it's not just about the time. It's more about what you're doing every day to make sure that reading will become a habit in the future. And you have surely developed other habits in your life before perhaps going to the gym or eating healthy, or going to church every Sunday. All of those require you to make a habit of them and you will do the same thing with reading. Of course, when you are just starting to make a habit. In this case, reading, you will need a boost of motivation in the beginning, in this challenge will exactly provide you the motivation you need to start the journey of turning reading into a habit. After the initial motivation and excitement is gone, you need to rely on willpower. But the problem with willpower is that it's finite. So indeed, it will end in, you cannot rely on it forever. But that's fine because once you use willpower for a couple of weeks, you will already be in the journey of baking, reading a habit. And it will be so much easier every day to go pick a book and read. So for me, the cycle plays out in this order. First relying on motivation, then relying on willpower when motivation is gone. And third, you have the habit for it. And regarding willpower, I highly recommend you to read in the morning because that's usually when our willpower is replenished. And so we feel. More encouraged to read any does not take so much time to get into this activity. Anyway, reading can be performed at anytime of the day. So don't stick to this rule. If it doesn't not make any sense to you. In the book, The Power of Habit, The author Charles Duhigg, refers to three steps in order to create a new habit. The first one is the trigger, the second one, the routine, and finally, the reward. The trigger is a certain cue in the environment or in your mind that leads to the routine itself, which is the habit. And finally, after you perform the habit, that is the routine, you'll receive a reward. It can be physical or physical rewarded. Ebm, mental reward, it does not matter, but you feel something that makes the habit or routine. So in order to better explain you this three-step process, let's grab the habit of smoking. So when you feel stressed, that is the trigger. Stress is the trigger. You go through the routine which is smoking, and you will feel less stressed, which is the reward. So because you can actually deal with this emotion which is stress by smoking, the habit will tend to continue developing throughout your life. And the reason why it's important to understand the three main blocks of creating a habit. Because you can use it to your own advantage. That is, you can use these to hack the system and create positive habits like reading. So in order to develop the habit of reading, you should pay attention to these three steps. The trigger, the routine, and the reward. From my personal experience, the most important one is the trigger. And so you should work very hard on that one. And I'm going to give you a lot of examples to help you out. So now I'm going to suggest you five different triggers that you can use in order to lead to the routine, which is the habit itself that is reading. So I hope these five suggestions are useful for you, but of course you can always come up with your own. The first trigger is reading before going to sleep. So if you decide to read before going to sleep, then going to sleep becomes the trigger. So when you're thinking of going to sleep 30 minutes before you go to bed, you grab a book and read. Going to sleep is hopefully something you do every day so you don't need to change anything in your routine. What you need to do is go a little bit earlier too bad and grab a book and use that time to read a bit. If you have the habit of scrolling through social media before going to bad, Make sure you replace it with reading because it's much more healthy and productive. The second trigger that can lead you to read more using a morning routine with this purpose. So if you already have a morning routine, in this case, I do, and I completely love it. You can include the activity of reading for 15 or 20 minutes before start to work. And not only will you be making progress towards your intentions of reading more, you will be doing it first thing in the morning. So if you actually read inspiring content, you can go about your day much more inspired and feeling motivated in happy towards your work. The third trigger is having a specific time of the day when you will always read. This can be seven PM. So at 07:00 PM every day, you will grab a book and beat. And this is a great trigger because there are no excuses when it 07:00 PM, you grab a book and they read the first Traeger is having a habit tracker. Basically a habit tracker consists on having like a calendar or even a specific app like momentum. And every time you read, you cross the abbot over or you kinda ticket over. And this helps because you have a streak. So when you're reading for five days straight, you have a five-day streak. And it's very frustrating to not read in the sixth day because your calendar or do your string fail. So when you have a habit tracker, you have another motivation to continue reading. And the fifth trigger is all about scheduling a meeting. And what do I mean by this? I don't know about you, but when I have a meeting, I don't want to skip it. So what I do is I open up my calendar and I schedule a reading meeting with myself. It can be at PM five PM, 04:00 PM. It does not matter. It all only depends on you because the meeting is with yourself, but you can't skip the meeting. You will be there and you will read. And these were some suggestions of triggers that can lead to the habit of reading. You can implement some of them or all of them. Or you can even brainstorm different ways that fulfill your goals even better in your life. And remember, the more you create the conditions for reading, the more you will be doing it. And the next step after the trigger is going through the routine, that is the habit itself, and there is not much to say regarding it. The only thing I want you to have into consideration is setting a goal when you're doing the routine and also eliminating distractions. So first, you should decide how much pages you will be reading or at least define a certain limit, then you can ofcourse if you want to read more than debt. But it's important that you have a specific goal in mind so your brain can relax a bit more. And so by setting a clear in initial intention, you feel more prone to completing the habit. So if you choose to allocate a specific time for reading, it helps to set a timer. Or if you're trying to read x number of pages every day, like ten pages every day. It helps to keep track of it. And the other thing to take into account is eliminating distractions. When you are reading, please do not be on your phone, do not be on your computer because reading is very similar to working or to studying. You should be focused. You should be giving the activity your attention. She usually get distracted by your phone, make sure you place it in another division, put it on silent mode, or simply turn it off, and then dedicate 20 minutes to reading and feel the fulfillment of doing this activity with all of your energy and focus. Okay, we've covered two of the three steps of starting a habit. We have covered the trigger in the routine. Now what is left is the reward? While this totally depends on you, at least for me, the accomplishment of reading is enough of a reward. But if you need some external or internal reward, make sure you do it for yourself so you can better stick to a specific habit. Perhaps it's watching a YouTube video or going to dinner out on Saturday when you have read for six days straight, you choose. So make sure you adapt to the reward, to the things you value the most in your life. And that's it. These were the three steps for forming new habits. Setting up a trigger, developing the routine, and having a reward. If you need to complete today's challenge, you just need to go through three steps that will help you to create the habit. The first step is setting up at least when trigger that we'll leave to the habit itself. So perhaps it will be a time of the day. So at 07:00 PM, you will read. Then when you are reading, that is when you are performing the habit, make sure you eliminate distractions and you have a goal in mind. And finally, set up your reward. If you need to write down the discussion, what are the triggers your art implementing? Because I'm really, really curious to know if you know someone who also wants to start to reading habit, share this class with them, and have an accountability partner because developing habits while in the presence of someone else is much easier. So share this with somebody else and go through the process with another person. I hope you are enjoying the challenge so far. I'm really excited because we are only on day two. Tomorrow will go through the three. And I'm really excited to see how you've been doing. So thank you so much and I see you in day three of the Reading Challenge. Thank you very much. 5. Day 3 — How to Take Notes: Hi and welcome to day three of these Reading Challenge. I hope you are still excited and eager to continue on this journey. In the first day of the challenge, you curated a list of ten books to read the next. And the, the second day, you decided to take charge of reading and make it a habit. So you are doing greatly in today's challenge. I've got something really exciting to share. It is all about sticking notes on the books you read, especially the nonfiction one's reading is a fulfilling activity by itself. But when you are able to combine it with the activity of taking notes, you will be able to make a book that you read three years ago in a practical lesson that you can apply today. So not only are you increasing the retention levels of the content, because when you take notes, you increase your levels of memory of that same content. But you are also setting up yourself for success because you're applying lessons that you learned in all books. Believe me, the only thing I regret was not taking notes in some of the books I read because now those notes could be a part of my life. I could have more access to them and apply the lessons in my life. Because of course, if you want to use a book as a lesson, it's not really productive to reread the book ten times in a month, right? What you want is to pack all the lessons you learned in transformed them into your own notes that you can later revisit in just a couple of minutes to challenge you to take notes on the books you read. I'm going to share with you three main frameworks that are incredibly powerful to take notes on the books you read. The first two will work pretty well, but the third one is my favorite one. It's actually my approach to reading and I keep using it every single time. Still, if you use the first two frameworks, you will still be ahead of pretty much everyone because most people do not take the time to take notes, but you will be different and you will reap the benefits of taking notes. So the three frameworks are setting questions and they're lining and jotting down. And finally, my framework. So the first way to take notes is based on a question approach, that is before starting a chapter. And in the end of the chapter, you will generate different questions that you will later insert, and those will be your notes. So let's say you are reading a book on how to develop new habits. And in a particular chapter, The author is teaching you the three-step approach to creating new habits, which we actually learned in the previous day. So in the beginning of the chapter, you can write this question, How can I create new habits for myself? And this is a totally valid question because you are reading a book about habits formation. So after finishing the chapter, now that you have learned about the three-step formula. You can simply answered the question with all of those steps. You can you can have more or less detail depending on your intentions. But what matters is you have the question and you have the answer. So you have a framework to create new habits in your life just by reading a specific chapter. In fact, you don't need to do this in the beginning of a chapter or in yet. You can do it in the middle of the chapter. It does not really matter. What matters is constructing these framework of questions and answers that you can later go back to and understand how to apply the information you read. I enjoy this method, particularly when I'm studying something like reading for learning, especially in textbooks where the information is very dense. What I do is I create simple questions and then I tried to summarize the information of the book into a very short answer that will help me to retain the content. The second method, it's all about underlining important ideas and then jotting down those same ideas. So when you're reading, every time you find a compelling idea, a compelling principle or a lesson, you simply underline it in the end of the chapter or the end of the book, you open it up and see exactly which things you underlined, toaster debt. What you can do is either transcribe the sentences verbatim, which I don't exactly recommend. Or what you should actually do is stick specific notes on each sentence so you can either paraphrased sentence and tried to come up with your own idea of the sentence, or tried to add a bit more information or summarize it. So in the end of the book, not only will you have all of your book and they're aligned with the most important ideas. But you will also have the document with those ideas, with other Notes and references that you thought were interesting. And if you hate to underline books, which I know a lot of people hate to do. You can simply use those post-it notes and use it to mark down to pages which you found an interesting idea. The third system does not have a name, but we can call it my system. And once you start applying it, it will be your system too. So the previous two methods are really effective. And if you like them, go ahead and use them because they will serve the purpose of taking notes. But after experimenting with the different methods, I decided to reach another framework that I found to be more useful. This framework basically covers two main purposes. The first purpose is getting ideas into implementation. So when I'm reading a book and especially when I'm reading for learning or inspiration, mostly non-fiction books, I'm seeking to learn lessons that I can apply in my life. So in the end of each book, I've got a document with my notes and a specific section called key takeaways. And in this section, I've got actionable steps that I will implement in my life. And those ideas, of course, came from reading the book. So for example, because I'm a content creator and I blog off tonight, create content often. If I manage to get or to have an idea about a certain blog posts, I will write that on the key takeaways so later I can know exactly what I have to do in order to follow those key takeaways. And the second purpose of having this framework is having the notes by themselves. That is all the interesting information I found in books. And to go through this step, that is the step of taking notes. I used the two previous approaches. I use the questions and I also use the underlining and then transcribing and jotting down those ideas. And that's it. Basically my system includes two main parts to it. The first one are the key takeaways. That is the things I'm going to implementing my life from the book. And the second one are the notes itself. And those are used to create those. I use the question framework and also the underlining and jotting down ideas. In the end, it's not really about the method you use, but more to pelt taking notes. Because when you're taking notes, you're having an active approach towards learning. You're having an active approach towards reading because you're doing so, you will be learning, you will be informing yourself much more. So I highly recommend you to take notes independently of the process you decide to use. So the outcome for today's challenge is just to pick one simple method and start implementing it in the book you are reading. So simply open the book, read it in the end of each chapter, tried to come up with some notes, or you can wait until the end of the book of course, but it helps to build some type of discipline. So if you can try to take notes in the end of each chapter. Thank you very much for sticking to this challenge. And I see tomorrow in day four of the Reading Challenge. 6. Day 4 — Speed-Reading: Hi and welcome to day four of the Reading Challenge. I hope you have been making progress in your reading journey and making a lot of progress in your reading goals. Hopefully since day one, you have come up with a ten book lists to read. Next, you'll have decided what triggers to set up in order to form a new habit. And yesterday, in yesterday's challenge, hopefully you have picked 21 method to take notes in, are already trying to do so. In today's challenge, I'm going to cover speed reading. In speed reading is somehow controversial because some people think It's just a waste of time and that you will understand nothing of what you read. But I'm here to show you that that has not to be the case. I certainly thought that it was a waste to, until I actually decided to put some of the most important practices into practice. And they found my reading speed increase significantly without losing any comprehension of the material. I know it sounds too good to be true, but I'm going to share two simple techniques. And I mean, really simple that by themselves will help you to increase your reading speed. But the question is, why would you want to increase your reading speed? Well, it's super simple because now that you are committed to making reading a habit, if you can make it in less time. That's amazing. And that's basically what we are seeking in this video. But the cool thing is when you learn how to read faster, you can not only read books faster, but you can read newspaper and boring reports in anything that has letters on it. You can read faster before teaching you the techniques, what I highly recommend you is to test your current reading speed. This is useful because then you can compare your results with how you read before and actually feel a sense of progress and fulfillment. Every time I get into this reading test, I get a bit nervous. I don't know why. So usually I do the test two or three times and average time in each of those trials. In order to test your reading speed, you just need a book. You, you need a timer, and then you just need to read. So what you do is you set a timer for one minute, induce start reading the book like normally, right? And then you count how many words you read during one minute, and this will be pretty much your words per minute. That is the number of words you read in one minute. As I said, you can do the test two or three times and then do the average because sometimes the first or second attempt, we are a little bit nervous, but that's fine if you only do it one time. Now use this result, those words per minute to compare. After implementing the two techniques I'm going to teach you and see if your words per minute increased or not. I'm pretty confident they will, but I'm curious to see and to hear how you did so use the discussion then to comment your progress. So I've got two main techniques to share. The first one is tracing and the other one is focusing on the center of the page. But you will see what I mean in a second. So the first technique and this is the most straightforward, is using a pacer or a tracer when you read. And this can either be a pencil or your finger. So basically when you are reading your book, you simply use again a pencil or do your finger to trace widely read. So you would do this like use the list himself, letting his supporters know that she would fall in on tart times, blah, blah, blah. So as you can see, I'm doing this movement with my finger to guide my eyes to the contents. So basically just move your finger or the pencil very quickly without stopping in any particular works. And this works to increase your reading speed because your eyes when reading, they don't follow a straight line. Instead, their work in saccades, that is, you look at one place and then your eyes move to another, usually the center of the page and then to the end of the page. And so when you aren't using a tracer to go through the lines, you make yourself not do this movement, which I know sounds weird, but this makes you waste time when reading and when you're using a pencil, you're not losing any sense of space and you are improving your reading speed for short. So grab a book again and do the test. Now using a pencil to guide your reading. And the key is, do not move your finger or your pencil really slow, go very steady and fast. And while you do this movement to weed your pencil, move your eyes and read, of course. So again, set a timer for one minute and test the number of words you wrap during that minute. Hopefully you will increase the number of words you read. But if you didn't see a great difference, don't worry because this will tend to increase as you get more familiar with the technique. And like I said, don't move the pencil really slow because of course you will not see any results. Now the second technique is what I call focussing on the center of the text. So instead of reading from the first word of the sentence to the last one, you will focus in what is in the middle and in almost seems like you're going to ignore the first and the last words of the sentence just to focus on the main, on the center of the page. And so when you're using your finger to guide your reading, skip the first and the last words. So instead of going from the first sentence to the last one, skip those and just focus on the center. Basically, when you're doing this, you're taking advantage of your peripheral vision. Because if you just close one eye, you can still see some of the things that are going on, right? When you close the other, you can also see other things. So when I'm looking to the center of the camera, I can still see some things on these two sides of me. And this is the same thing as reading when you're only focusing on the center of the page and ignoring the last words. You are still going to see that you are still going to understand them. So basically what this does is it reduces the length of each line. So you will be reading much faster by taking advantage of your peripheral vision. You're not doing any trick here. You're just taking advantage of something that you already have. This technique is a little bit more difficult sometimes to implement. But what I highly recommend you is to trace two lines. So we actually use a pencil and trace two lines that we'll ignore the first and the last sentence of each line in that book. In practice for a single page or two pages, practice a little bit and see that you will later be able to ignore those words without actually creating those physical lights. And hopefully with this two techniques in mind, you will be able to increase your reading speed. Please don't forget to test yourself after implementing one technique and after the other and compare your results to the prior ones. I honestly believe that increasing our reading speed is an investment because it's not only about books, it's about all the other information you read on the web, on newspapers, on boring reports your company sends you. So you really want to do this for you because it's an investment of time, okay? And that's it for today. And the challenge is the following. First, start by measuring how many words you can read per minute before implementing any technique. Then use the pencil or your finger to trace the lines or I, Lou Reed and test yourself. Then use the peripheral vision to ignore the first and the last words of each sentence and test yourself again. And finally, if you want the two methods in combination to see how your reading speed is doing, I'm really curious to see how much you have improved. So use the discussion below to comment your results and please don't feel discouraged if you didn't see your reading speed increased that much. It's totally normal because like any other skill, the more you practice it, the better you will become at it. And again, it's an investment. So please practice the two techniques and you will see your reading speed increase significantly. Thank you so much for watching day four of the reading challenge, and I see you tomorrow. 7. Day 5 — How to Read more Books: Hi and welcome to day five of this reading challenge. I hope you are still making progress and continue to be excited to be on this journey in today's challenge, in because we are almost finishing this challenge, I thought it would be really interesting to share my three favorite tips for reading more books than you ever did before. These are the things I do in order to read 50 books every year. In order to read those 250 books in five years. These three tips are what separates people who read five or ten books a year and the ones who can even read 70 books a year. I'm really excited to share them with you because I'm sure they will make a big difference in your reading journey. Okay, so let's just start. The first one is all about replacing your phone for a book. It's very easy to understand but difficult to apply. Basically, what I mean is defining a time of the day when you will be reading. And at that time, you will replace your phone with a book. So instead of sitting down and yourself with your phone scrolling through social media, you put your phone in another division of your house. Simply grab a book and start reading it. So it's kinda like a chain and exchange, right? You exchange your phone for your book and you will be better off. What I highly recommend you is deciding a specific time of the day when this exchange will happen. Perhaps it will be after lunch, which for me is a very unproductive time. So when I finish having lunch, I usually just go to my phone. So if I manage to switch one from the other, I will be filling which much better and much more happy, more inspired, more productive. So it's a simple exchange, but it helps when you have set a time. I can easily say that this simple trick of replacing my phone with a book resulted in ten additional pages of reading every day. And this does not sound too much, but this is basically the difference between reading Xero books every month and reading one book every month. And if you do the math, it results in 12 additional books every year. So if I previously was able to read 30 books a year, I was then later able to read 42 books a year just because of this simple trick. And this is just by eliminating phone usage in replacing it for a book for 15 or 20 minutes. Now the second tip to read more books this year. Read the books you will enjoy reading. Did people I know who claimed not enjoyed reading usually are referring to some mandatory high-school readings seriously, that are so many interesting books out there that I don't believe it's possible to not enjoy reading whatever you enjoy. You can find books on that topic and don't feel ashamed if you like those cheesy romances, it's totally fine. If you love to read them. Read them, it really matters because it will help us to establish your goal of reading. And later if you want to read other types of books, you can't. But totally do what you love to do. And if that's, that means reading a very weird gender, go do it. So please don't start your reading journey by picking a classic that everyone says it's profound, it's complex. It will change the way you think about historical romanticists. So please pick watch you like in not just the random classic that everyone claims to be profound. The third tip for reading more books in this was the one that changed the game for me is listening to audio books, all the commutes I take by car or by bus over whatever. I followed by a click on the play button on my phone. And that usually means I'm listening to an audio book. Listening to audio books is a great way to turn unproductive times into very productive ones. But commuting is not the only spare time you can use to listen to audio books. You can do it while you do exercise. You can do it while you cook. You can do it during her morning routine. Seriously, you can include audio books in many spare time of your life. I remember that when I found audio books, I would purposely ironed clothes because I just found that activity much more interesting because I was not listening to an audio book and a pro tip is increasing the audio book speed to 1.5 or two. So basically, you are consuming an audio book in a much faster pace. Because usually the numerators read the book very slowly. So you will not lose any comprehension at all when you increase the speed of the Audio Book. So this means in theory, and I do this pretty much every single time that you can read and Nate, our audio book in just four hours. So please experiment with this in your reading list increased significantly this year. I can't precisely tell you how many more books you will be reading with these three techniques. But I can reassure you that if you put them into practice, you will foreshore, increased the number of the books you read. It's quite impressive to see people who only read two or three books a year. Now being able to read 20 or 30 books just by putting this techniques into practice. And as you can see, they do not consume a non-proportional amount of your time. Instead of scrolling through social media, you replace your phone with a book for 20 minutes. And instead of cooking or commuting without listening to anything, you are listening to a book in increasing your reading time. And the great thing is you are not just reading more books because you are taking notes. You are increasing the retention of the material you are learning lessons to implementing your life. You are improving certain areas of your life and there's no better feeling than that. And in order to complete today's challenge, simply put one of these practices into practice. That is replace your phone with your book or for example, just to read what you love. And the third was to experiment with audio books. Tell me what you think about these techniques because I'm sure they will help you alot. Thank you very much. In ICU in tomorrow's challenge. 8. Day 6 — Engage with Reading: Hi and welcome to day six of the seven day reading challenge. In yesterday's challenge, you'll learn how to increase the number of books you read each year. But what if you're reading and you're not feeling excited? What can you do today to increase your excitement towards reading in order to reignite your passion for reading and engaging with books, I'm going to share three simple practices that you can start that will help you to feel more committed in joyful towards the whole process. So the first one is starting a book club. And I know this sounds a bit too nerdy, but stick with me for a minute. So creating a book club does not mean going to a library every week, sit cross-legged on the floor in reflecting with a couple of other people on a book. A book club is also not a religion, so don't worry, it's an experience that you get to share with one person or a couple more. Basically you in one or more people read the same book at the same time. And when I say at the same time, I don't necessarily mean reading together. What I mean is you give yourselves one or two weeks to read a book, and then later you discuss the ideas together. It is an interesting experience because you get to share key insight that you took from a book with another person that also read the same book. So D might actually have another points that you didn't notice. They have completely different opinions. And sometimes that's a very interesting process to go through. And it also increases your commitment to reading. So if you know anyone who also likes to read and would be up for a challenge, just send him or her or a group of people a message. Start your private Book Club today. The second way of increasing your engagement in joy for reading is to share what you read. I do this all the time. So after reading your book or even in the middle of the book or a podcast, I just learned into an interesting ideas. So I send a message to a friend, or to my boyfriend or to my family to share what I learned and to get them excited about that too. Especially if I think that this particular idea can help someone else. It's super useful and interesting and it can also Spike conversation. So I highly recommend you to try it now, finally, the third way of engaging with books is by writing reviews on the books you read. You don't need to have a wagon, right? Your reviews publicly, you can just write them for you, but this might help you to reengage with the content because you have to review the information you read. You have to remember and recall the things you learned. And this is for sure a great experience to reignite a passion for reading into passion for a specific book. And these were the three suggestions to reignite your passion for reading. Again, starting a private Book Club, sharing a particular idea with someone else, or writing your own review of the book. In order to complete today's challenge, I challenge you to share one specific idea that you read in a book with someone else. You can do it in less than two minutes, but please do this because you will see the effects it can have. It can spike a very interesting conversation. It can open up doors to another person who has been struggling in the idea you brought to him or her can really help. Or you will feel yourself the joy of sharing something. And this is it for today. I really hope you are enjoying this reading challenge, and I'm really excited to see you tomorrow. Thank you very much. 9. Day 7 — Set a Reading Goal: Hi and welcome to the last day of the reading challenge. I'm really happy that you have sticked through this challenge in they're eager to continue making progress on your reading journey. Hopefully you have been completing the challenges and you are already seeing results in your reading journey in the last day of the challenge, I want to create impact that goes beyond this challenge, of course. So what I'm going to share is how to set a reading goal that actually fits your lifestyle and will help you to read more books than you ever did before. Now that you are aware of all the methods and techniques that will help you to read more books and take advantage of the books you read. I really want to make you set a challenge or to set a goal that will inspire you and to help you make progress towards the rest of the year. As I've said a couple of times, I've been reading 50 books every year for the past five years still, every time I think that I need to read four books every month in order to accomplish the goal, I still get a bit scared for books a month is not an easy challenge. I know it's an ambitious goal, but I also know I can accomplish it because I've been doing it for the past five years. So the key when setting or reading goal is to balance both reality and ambition. You might set the goal of Reading 100 books this year. But in previous years, you were not able to read more than ten. Why should you set a so ambitious goal? And if you know me and you know my content, I truly believe that we should be ambitious. We should dream high. And if you read, if you really want to read 100 books this year, I'm not the person saying that you can't. What I'm trying to say is sometimes it's important to also bring some perspective in reality to our lives. Because if you want to read 100 books this year, you perhaps need to neglect other priorities of your life, right? Perhaps I could read 70 books every year instead of just 50. But that would mean I need to sacrifice other things. Perhaps I have to sacrifice creating some online content or I would not have time to work out in the end of the day, we're not meditating in, I'm not willing to do those sacrifices. So in the reality, it's a matter of managing both ambition but also an, a real realistic approach to your life. So the challenge for today is for you to set a monthly reading goal for every month of the rest of the year and then work backwards and see how many pages you have to read every day. So if you set the goal of reading two books every month, which is an incredible goal. Let me say that you have to do the math and see how many pages you have to read each day. So let's say that the average book has 350 pages multiplied by two books. You need to read 700 pages every month. So if you read 30 pages every day, you will be able to accomplish this goal. But if you only read it 20 pages daily, you will not be able to read two books per month. So you need to think OK, so if I can only read 20 pages per, per day, but I really want to read two books a month. What can I do more? Perhaps you can incorporate audio books in your spare time. And does you will be able to increase the number of books you read and accomplish your goal. So let's do an example using an Excel spreadsheet in the first column and the number of books you want to read each month, then the number of pages multiply your reading monthly goal by 350 pages. And so this represents the number of pages you must have read monthly to accomplish your goal. Then, in the third column, divide the second column by 30 days. And so this will give you the number of pages you need to read or listened to daily. And that's it. I'm going to give you this Excel spreadsheet so you can just enter your, the number of books you want to read a monthly in. It will already make the calculations for you with the assumption that each book has an average of 350 pages after setting your monthly goal of reading, let's say two books per month, you try it for one or two months in if you see that it's too much according to your to your lifestyle, consider decreasing the goal. Or if, on the other hand, you see you can do it pretty quickly. You can also increase your reading goals. So this is not a onetime fits all approach. Of course, always pivot and change according to how your life is progressing and how you are making progress towards the goal you set. So for the last day of the challenge, simply decide how many books you want to read each month. And then you use the Excel spreadsheet to understand how many books you need to read every day to accomplish it. And that's it for today's challenge. I see you in the next video. Thank you very much. 10. Conclusion: And that set, we have reached the end of the Seven Day Reading Challenge. I am so happy to see that you have been on this journey with me and are committed to reading and you love to read. After this challenge, I have no doubt that you are capable of making reading a habit and enjoying the process every single day. Honestly, I'm really happy to share the passion I have for reading with all of you. And hopefully you will be a companion of mind of reading because I love to try to bring people to this whole reading experience because I know the value it can have in your life. You have not yet completed or challenges and have waited until the end to do so, I will share them with you again. So you never forget in day one, the challenge was coming up with ten books to read next, in D2, you plan the steps to make reading a habit by setting up triggers, then understanding the routine, and finally setting up a reward. In day three, you decided which method you are going to use to take book notes in there for the challenge was testing your reading speed and comparing it after the implementation of the two techniques I shared, they're five, you were challenged to implement at least one of the techniques I shared to increase the number of books you read every year in this sex, your challenge to share a specific idea or principle from a book with a friend of yours. And finally, in the last day of the challenge, you were challenged to set a monthly reading goal and understand how many pages you have to read the Daily in order to accomplish it has for the class project, you can share any of the daily challenges with the community. But I'm particularly interested in knowing which ten books you just, you decided to pick to read next. And also to know your results after testing your reading speed before and after the implementation of those techniques. Again, thank you so much for watching this class. I would highly appreciate you're leaving your review because it really helps me to improve in. Don't forget to visit my website where you can find more information about myself in a lot of other techniques that I'm teaching, not only about reading, but also about productivity in learning new skills. Thank you very much.