Transcripts
1. Class Introduction: My name is Santiago. I'm a published author
and an avid reader, and today I want to
teach you how you can read more books than
you ever expected. We all have probably
around a half dozen books that we purchased at one point with the intention of reading, but we never quite got around
to actually opening them. Many people think
that reading is a habit that you have
to be born with, but I think quite the opposite. It can definitely be taught. And once you get going, it
is very difficult to stop. So give me the next couple
of minutes of your time, and I will teach
you how you can go from reading no books a year to consistently developing
a reading habit that you will reap the rewards
of for years to come.
2. Class Project: Your class project is to read
one book in the next month, then write a three to four
sentence summary or report or just overall review of
that book and leave it in the class project
section below this course. I can't wait to see
what kind of books you enjoy reading and seeing
what you think of them. Developing a good sense of critique of what you
like and what you don't like in a book is
extremely helpful when you're choosing what to
read further down the line.
3. 1) Read What You Love: Lesson number one, the
material you enjoy. When researchers at the
University of California Davies ask people a series of
pub trivia questions, they found that not only did the people remember
the details better, if it was a question that
they were interested in, but if it was a question that they had perceived interest for, they received a hit of
the hormone dopamine. One of the couple
hormones psychologists associate with general
positive feelings. The first and most
important advice I would give you if you struggle to begin reading is
read books that you enjoy. This may sound very
straightforward, but most people when
they begin reading, think that they need
to read challenging books like classics or philosophy or books that are seen in the
academic setting. Classics are great, but most people will find it
easier to get through a cheesy romance book than
through a Leo Tolstoy novel. There are plenty of genre
quizzes that you can find online that will teach you what the best kind
of book for you is, and that way, you'll
find a plethora of avenues that you can explore
in the world of literature. Believe me that there is more to books than just what
is read in classrooms. A lot of people
associate reading with academics because they've
been taught all their life, that reading is only
done in the classroom. When you begin exploring other
avenues of where to read, you'll find yourself
immersed by a world of literature that you wouldn't
have touched otherwise. If you read the material
that you enjoy, you will read it consistently, which will make
it easier to pick up a book when you're
struggling to. Start by reading something
that doesn't feel like work. Once the habit of consistently
reading is cemented, then you can look and explore other more complicated
avenues of literature that you wouldn't
have otherwise explored. Once you have known that you can continuously read for
long periods of time, you can begin exploring
other avenues like Tolstoy or like classics of Shakespeare or other books that
are challenging. But once you are deeply rooted in the
practice of reading, you will find it
easier to traverse these novels because you will have that background experience. Now let's move into
lesson number two.
4. 2) Read What Will Continue The Snowball: Whether we want to
admit it or not, there is a daunting feeling
that comes over us when we see a 400 or 500 page book. They are incredibly
intimidating and with reason because you see these pages and you
picture in your mind, you start doing mental
calculations of how long it's going to take
you to finish these books. Which is why one of the
biggest advice I give to early readers is to
read thinner books. Thinner books are amazing. They preserve the same qualities of all the other grade novels, but in a more condensed format. Books such as poetry collections or collections of short stories, they tend to be shorter. However, you don't lose any of the value that comes through
traditional literature. By reading smaller books in
between your longer wreath, you will be able to push
that snowball down the hill, and it will never stop rolling. If you only read
traditionally longer books, it may get stuck along the way, and you might have to give
it a couple extra pushes for it to eventually go down. The smaller books act as a constant force that
will push you to keep reading and keep reading
and keep reading because you will have
constant dope mean. You will have that satisfaction
of finishing a book and tangibly having the feeling that you accomplished something.
5. 3) Read Like It's A Game: Lesson number three,
making it into a game. It is no surprise that
humans love competition. We love winning, we love feeling achieved
and accomplished, which is why turning
everything into our life into a game is a productive
way of viewing life. However, if we apply it
traditionally to just reading, we can also reap
tremendous benefits. The most common way of gamifying your reading experience is
through reading tracker apps. The most common of
which is good reads. Good reads allows you to set
a yearly goal of reading, and then you can track your progress as you
progress through the year. It will tell you how
many books you are behind or if you're
ahead of schedule. This will allow you
to keep your eyes on the prize and will keep
you focused as you progress through what
may be difficult books or what may be just a
challenging lack of motivation. Another way of camifying the reading experience
is by grabbing a dense book and dividing
it into daily chunks. The way you do this
is as follows, grab a stack of posted notes and look at the back of the book and see how many pages
your book has. Then divide that number by the quantity of days that you want to
spend reading a book. For example, if I have a 300 page book and I want
to finish it over two weeks, I would divide it over 14 days because there's 14
days in two weeks. That number that you get will
be your daily page count. The amount of pages that
you need to read per day to finish your book in
your desired time allotment. What you need to do now is
grab your posted notes and place them in between that
interval of the book. So say that number is 20, you will put a posted note
every 20 pages of the book, and you'll know that once you reach your next posted note, you are completely
done for the day. All of this is to set goals. If you set easy to
accomplish goals, your mind will keep
moving forward and will continue to be motivated by the prospect of achieving that one thing and being able to look at it as
an accomplishment. If you set the goal of finishing the posted note of the day, you'll be able to
see that as progress and continue moving
forward with that book, which will eventually hopefully lead to you finishing
it altogether. So right now, grab
a piece of paper and set yourself a
yearly book goal. It doesn't have to be grand, it doesn't have to be big. It just has to be a goal that you know that
you can achieve, but it also should be a goal that you know
challenges you. Pick a number that
fits into a routine, but that also pushes you a little outside
your comfort zone. You that might be 20
books a year or for someone else that
may be ten books a year depending on what
their schedule looks like. If you're a really
high achiever, you can do something like 30. I wouldn't recommend going
for the larger numbers like 40 or 50 or 60 when
you're starting out, just because those numbers are incredibly difficult to achieve, and they require a
preexisting reading habit to be able to get to
those high numbers. However, if you find
in place a wise goal, which I'm encouraging
you to do right now, grab a piece of paper
and do this now, set yourself a reading goal. It can be ten, it can be 20. This will be your something
to look forward to. Every time that
you finish a book, you will see yourself as
progressing closer to that goal. You can do that
through online apps or you can just do
a pen and paper, old school, whatever works. The only part of
this that matters is giving yourself the
motivation to push forward and achieve those
quick and easy goals that will keep your mind
focused on the long term.
6. 4) Read Through Osmosis: Lesson number four,
learning through osmosis. If you start dating someone
who runs every single day, chances are that you are going to start running with them. If you date someone who eats healthy food every single day, chances are that you're
going to think twice before having your third
kind of cook for the day. All of these are examples
of learning through osmosis or learning
through example. Psychologist Albert Bandura
would call this phenomenon vicarious mastery learning
through the example of others. If you surround yourself
with an environment that will push you forward
to a particular goal, you are much more likely
to reach the finish line. You have a constant stimulus pushing you towards what
you set out to desire. Now, this methodology can also be applied to the art
of reading books. So human mind is a product
of what it consumes, and I found that when
this applies to reading, we can see it through media. If you're an avid TikTok user, I recommend that you
go to your search bar right after finishing this
course and you look up book talk and you scroll for a good 20 or 30 minutes and
just like a bunch of video. This will show the
TikTok algorithm that you are
interested in reading, and it is more likely
to recommend you reading content on your
regular for U page. Now, though this may not
seem very useful right now, the benefits that you
will gain by doing this is a slow
priming of the brain. You will slowly be pushed to read more books based on
the media that you consume. Is a self fulfilling cycle. You can do this
completely offline, too. Although you can do it in
platforms like YouTube, you can also just join
a local book club, and that book that they read monthly or bi
monthly will be your motivation to
stick to your goal and keep pushing forward
and accomplishing it. Surround yourself with a
community of readers and make sure that the content you
consume ties to reading too. These little points of
motivation will be what will get you through a day where you just don't
feel like reading. You'll pick up your phone,
find reading content, and you'll want to read again. In his book Atomic Habits, James Clear emphasizes
the importance and building a habit,
prioritizing identity. He says that we need
to force ourselves to imagine ourselves as
the kind of person that will do our desired
outcome or the kind of person that is what
we set out to achieve. By consuming media,
you will slowly be proving to yourself
to be a reader. You will build the identity
of someone who reads books, which in this long term
process is highly beneficial. You want to be confident in
your ability to finish books, which is why we talked on reading smaller books back then. But you also need to continue solidifying and constantly
priming yourself. To associate with what
it means to be a reader, and that means developing a strong reading community and also consuming media
pertaining to books. All of this ties back together. You will find media relating
to the books that you enjoy, which will force you to buy more of the books
that you enjoy, which will in turn continue
to motivate you to read. All the steps in this
course work together, ultimately for the
good of you so that you can keep building
that cycle of reading. To go out there, find
a local book club. Lots of libraries have them. You can make one
with your friends. All you need is a minimum of two people and you can
start your own book club. If you're too scared to do that, then just go on YouTube and find videos and consume
videos about reading. I promise you that though it
may seem futile right now, watching videos
about books that you enjoy will constantly act as a motivator to keep
pushing forward and keep reading those
books because in the end, people often function best when their motivation is
other than themselves. We sometimes need external
motivators to push us forward, and reading is one of those
where community really helps.
7. 5) More Reading Advice: I'm about to share
some tips that weren't big enough to include
their own section, but that are also
still essential to forming the habit of
becoming an avid reader. First advice is to have a comfortable
reading environment. Think about how much
you would dread work. If every time that you
sat down at your desk, it was messy, it was crummy. There was rats, and there was just the most horrible environment that you
can think about. You would absolutely dread
sit down and working. So, like in everything, reading is very much
a habit that is aided by the help of
a good environment. So get a couple candles,
get a cozy blanket, get some good pillows or a used couch off a
Facebook marketplace. Whatever it is, form an
environment where you can sit down comfortably for hours and forget the passage of time. Tip number two is
to keep a timer. Humans rarely function well without having a
desired end time. On those days where I really
don't feel like reading, it helps me to maintain a
short 20 to 30 minute timer. What this does is
essentially it tricks my brain into turning on
a switch where I'm like, Okay, I only have to do this for 20 minutes,
and then I'm done. Once I hear the sound, I
close the book and I'm done. I did manage to
read a little bit, and I still made progress
towards my goal, but I also did it
in a way that would satisfy my current
lack of motivation. My next tip would
be to read with a pencil or pen in hand. This comes in handy,
especially if you're reading
nonfiction literature. I like to circle my books and
annotate and highlight and write down little notes on every single one of
my nonfiction books. I think there's something beautiful about
when you're older, having stack or a collection of books and knowing
that in each of them, you have scrawlings
and notes and thoughts of all the
different ages of your life, and you'll be able
to track and see how those thoughts evolved over time if you read a
book more than once. Keeping notes within your
books is so important. You need to remember that books aren't meant to be pristine. A sign of a well loved
book has its pages folded and its pages
spilled with ink. So take advantage of the fact
that you own these books, put your thoughts
on them, pick up a pen and write in your books. I promise it isn't going
to damage the book. Ink is fine. Graphite
works fine, too. Just make sure that you get
your thoughts on the page. This will motivate
you to keep reading and continue developing
your wisdom of these books and
ultimately work for your best interests when
you try and read more. Another tip would be to
buy second hand books. Guys, let's be honest. If we are to buy new hardbacks every single time that
we wanted to buy books, we would never buy books. They are ridiculously
expensive at times. A new hardcover book
can cost anywhere $30-25, which is absurd. Which is why I would
encourage you to visit local second hand book dealers. Now, these places
such as bookstores, or there's even some
online variants will allow your purchasing power to exponentially increase
in buying books, meaning that for the
same amount of money, you will be able to get,
say, three used books for the price of one new book. This will allow you to consume
more books that you enjoy, meaning that you will
continue to keep reading, and you will also be able
to do it for less money. So visit sites like Thrift
books or half price books. Those are some physical
and online alternatives to those as well that
will keep you focused and that will allow
you to read without breaking the bank because
coming from someone who reads a lot of
books and whose camera is currently propped
up on a lot of books, reading can be expensive. So purchase second hand books. They will not only save
you a lot of money, but they will also allow you to experience the same book
that another person did. Those magical moments
sometimes leave you finding little notes or
little annotations that people left in their books. Those moments are almost
sacred because you can experience what a stranger was feeling when they read that
book for the first time. Or if you're lucky,
you'll get to see someone who has loved
a book for years, leave consistent and different
writings on their book. And now you get to be a
part of their history, and they know nothing about it. By second hand books, they will save you
A lot of money. Now, this was a little bit weird and you might think
it a little odd, but you need to get
yourself a reading light, especially one of these. They're only a few dollars, and they will mean that
you can read at night, which means that
you will increase your time frame that you
will be able to read, because in certain places, once the light goes
out, you're done, you won't be able to
finish your book. However, if you have a reading, there will be literally no excuse to not reading
because even when it gets dark, you will still be able to read regardless regardless of
what that may entail. My last tip would be
to read with a friend. Reading is one of the
things in life that is best benefited from if you
do it with a companion. Now, this doesn't need to be your girlfriend or your
friend or your partner. It can even be a
stranger online. Just find someone or find different people depending
on how many books you read, but find people who connect with the same kind
of books that you do. This will allow you to
share your opinions and build more of an acquired taste
when it comes to reading, because one of the best
parts of getting into books is developing and
fine tuning your taste. That way, once you do
know what you like, you can share that
with others and you can continue contributing to the wonderful book
community that is so desperately full of people eager to
find books that fit.
8. Course Summary: So before you
finish this course, I want to remind you of what
the main teachings are. First of all, I want
to encourage you to find books that you enjoy. Reading what we enjoy not
only releases dopamine, which will allow us
to continue to focus, but it will also keep us
motivated to keep reading. I also asked you to introduce smaller
books to your arsenal. Small books like
poetry collections or collections of short
stories will allow you to fill in the caps when
you aren't feeling motivated and will
give you a book that will give you a quick sense of accomplishment when you're
struggling to find it. I also encourage you to gamify
the reading experience. Set a reading goal
and allow yourself to track that reading
goal and also divide your books into sizable
chunks that you can complete daily and let yourself do this by
putting posted notes. That way each day you can look forward to finishing
the posted notes. Finally, my last piece of advice was to read through osmosis. Surround yourself with media and people who love reading books. That way, it'll
become easier for you to relate and want to read books as it will
bring you closer to the media and the
people that you.
9. Thank You: There you go. I've given you
all the advice I have on how to consistently
build a reading habit. Even though this
course was short, I hope it gave you
just a little bit of motivation that you needed
to pick up the book that you've been having on
your nightstand for the past three weeks and
actually begin reading it. It's easy to watch
something once, get the motivation, but
then never act upon it. So act upon it. Watch
this course again. Take notes and then apply
those notes into your life. Thank you so much for
giving me your time. If you need a short
book to get you through a rut or if you're wanting to get into reading and you
don't know where to start, I would recommend my book, The New and the Old from
the Eyes of the new. It is a very thin and
very short collection of poems that I'm sure will motivate you to keep going because once you
finish a book like this, the 400 page books seem
a little less scary. Thank you. And I look
forward to seeing what kind of books you
read and how you use my material to fuel that burning passion
for knowledge. Goodbye.
Santiago Burgos, We Are Lifelong Learners
