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Read to Lead: How to Digest Books Above Your "Level" - RyanHoliday.net

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I shouldn’t be able to read most of the books on my shelf. I never took a single classical history class and I cheated through most of Economics 001. Still, the loci of my library are Greek History and Applied Economics. And though they often are beyond me educationally, I’m able to comprehend them because of some equalizing tricks. Reading to lead or learn requires that you treat your brain like the muscle that it is–lifting the subjects with the most tension and weight. For me, that means pushing ahead into subjects you’re not familiar with and wresting with them until you can–shying away from the “easy read.” This is how I break down a new book: Before the First PageBreak out of the School Mindset Almost everything you learn in the classroom is tainted by the fact that ultimately teachers have to test you on it. Tests often have very little to do with proving that you know or care about the material but more about proving that you spent the time reading it. The easiest way to do this is picking obscure things from the text and quizzing you on them: “Name this passage” “What were the main characters in Chapter 4?” So forget that–you’re reading for you. Even when you’re in school, you should be reading for yourself and not for the teacher. The worst thing that can happen is they knock you down a little bit on a grade that means very little. When you read History of the Peloponnesian War, the countries involved in the conflict between Corinth and Corcyra is not really worth remembering. (Proof: I had to go look up the names on Wikipedia, all I remember was that they both started with a C. )What you should latch onto is that as the two fought for allied support from Athens, one took the haughty “you owe us a favor” route and the other alluded to all the benefits that would come from aiding them. Guess who got the support? From Seneca: “We haven’t time to spare to hear whether it was between Italy and Sicily that he ran into a storm or somewhere outside the world we know–when every day we’re running into our own storms, spiritual storms, and driven by vice into all the troubles that Ulysses ever knew.” He rightly points out that Homer was wise before he recited or sat down to write his own works–so what do you really gain by analyzing the minutia of it? The work is an expression of the message, not the message itself. So forget everything but that message and how to apply it to your life. Dates, names, pronunciations–they only matter in how they provide context for the lesson at hand. They carry little value otherwise. Ruin the Ending I almost always go straight to Wikipedia and ruin the ending. Who cares? Your aim as a reader is to understand WHY something happened, the what is secondary. In the case of HOTPW, without reading the entry you might have passed over the glorious anecdote that Thucydides missed a large part of the war because he caught the Plague and that he was largely delegated to writing about the battles because his military incompetence led to an early defeat. You ought to ruin the ending–or find out the basic assertions of the book–because it frees you up to focus on your two most important tasks: 1) What does it mean? 2) Do you agree with it? The first 50 pages of the book shouldn’t be a discovery process for you; you shouldn’t be wasting your time figuring out what the author is trying to say. Instead, your energy needs to be spent on figuring out if he’s right and how you can benefit from it. Plus if you already know what happens, you can identify all the foreshadowing and the clues the first read through. Read the Reviews (Amazon) Find out from the people who have already read it what they felt was important. From the reviews you can deduce the culture significance of the work–and from what it meant to others, at least grasp a bearing of what it could mean to you. Also by being warned of the major themes you can anticipate them coming and then actually appreciate them as they unfold. Which again frees you up much in the same way that ruining the ending does. And frankly, if you agree with their assessment of the work, go ahead and steal it once you’ve finished. They didn’t copyright it–this isn’t school, this is life. The Book ItselfRead the Intro I know, I know. It infuriates me too that a 200 page book has a 80 page translator’s introduction, but they are helpful. Every time I have skipped through it, I’ve had to go back and start over. Read the intro. It often has a ton of interesting stuff about who the work ended up influencing, and other tidbits that often stick with you longer than the work itself. Look It Up If you’re reading to lead, you’re going to come across concepts or words you’re not familiar with. Don’t pretend like you understand, look it up. I like to use Definr or I use my Blackberry to look stuff up on Wikipedia. If you’re away from a computer and need the definition of a word, type “Define: ______” and text it to 46645 (Googl) and you’ll get one back from Google. With Military History, a sense of the battlefield is often necessary. Wikipedia is a great place to grab maps and to help understand the terrain. That being said, don’t get bogged down with the names of the cities or the spelling of names, you’re looking to grasp the meta-lesson–the conclusion. Post It Highlighters These will change how you read. On the right side of the page, I tag the pages I have highlighted important passages on. On the top of the page, I mark if there is [...]

Read to Lead: How to Digest Books Above Your "Level" - RyanHoliday.net Home About Newsletter Reading List Blog Best Articles Archive Speaking Books and Courses Contact Blog Read to Lead: How to Digest Books Above Your “Level” I shouldn’t be able to read most of the books on my shelf . I never took a single classical history class and I cheated through most of Economics 001. Still, the loci of my library are Greek History and Applied Economics. And though they often are beyond me educationally, I’m able to comprehend them because of some equalizing tricks. Reading to lea

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