Brian Johnson reads books archaeologically, digging for big ideas rather than speed-reading. He annotates heavily like Twyla Tharp does, reads about 40 to 50 pages an hour, and treats it like a conversation. Sleep and meditation matter as much as the pages themselves.
Questions this video answers
About 40–50 pages per hour
The Creative Habit
Tony Schwartz — The Power of Full Engagement
Chapters
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic one. A couple ones ago I promised to tell you more about how I read a book. Here's the very short answer. I read like it's my job to find big ideas that can help me activate my soul Force. So I can help you activate your Soul Force for one simple reason. It is my job. Now let's go to one of my favorite books for a passage that best captures how I read in the Creative Habit Twyla Tharp tells us and I quote when I'm reading archaeologically, I'm not reading for pleasure. I read the way I scratch for an idea, digging down deep so I can get something out of it and use it in my work. I read transactionally. How can I use this? It's not enough for me to read a book. I have to own it. I scribble in the margins. I circle sentences I like and connect them with arrows to other useful sentences. I draw stars and exclamation points on every good page to the point where the book is almost unreadable. By writing all over the pages, I transform the author's work into my book and mine alone. Yep, that's pretty much exactly how to do it and how I do it. Carrying On Here are some other things you might find interesting in terms of how I read a book and how I encourage you to consider approaching it as well. First, very importantly, I do not speed read. I read reasonably quickly, 40 to 50 or so pages an hour, depending on the font size and complexity of the subject and all that. But again, I do not speed read, nor do I try to see how fast I can get through the book per se. I treat reading a book like it's my job to mine its steps for the big ideas that can change your life as I strive to give you more wisdom and less time via the Philosopher's notes and these plus ones. Because again, it is my job. I also, even more importantly and less obviously, read a book like I'm lucky enough to sit down and have a great conversation with a brilliant thinker who spent years, if not decades, reflecting on the subject of their book, and then spent another big chunk of time distilling that wisdom into a book they could share with us. Why in the world would I rush through that? Nope. I sit up straight, pen in hand, as I get to work searching for the ideas that could change our lives. I'll also say that many years ago I was interviewing Tony Schwartz about his great book the Power of Full Engagement. He told me that at the time, he found his brain so full with digital inputs that he had a hard time sitting down and reading more than a page of a book. And it was at that moment that he knew he needed to significantly reduce his consumption of digital inputs. Which is a really important point. If you want to be able to focus your mind on a book or anything that is important for longer than 20 seconds, you need to, in my opinion, start by conquering your digital addiction and practicing your digital minimalism. Two 101s. You can check out a good night of sleep and a meditation practice helps as well. And that's a little more on how I read a book. And that's today's plus one. Let's bring Twyla Tharp back so she can send us on our way. She tells us, I quote again, if I stopped reading, I'd stop thinking. It's that simple. Yep. Books, they do a hero good. Here's to soaking our minds in the wisdom of great thinkers. And here's to taking that wisdom and going from theory to practice to mastery together today.
