Jim Kwik argues that reading one book a week is possible if you treat it like exercise. Most people read only a few books yearly, while leaders compress decades of knowledge into days by reading consistently. Schedule 15-30 minutes daily, use speed-reading techniques to overcome subvocalization, and join the community challenge with #OneBookAWeek.
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Well, welcome to today's Kwik Brain Challenge or Kwik Challenge. I am your Kwik Brain Coach, Jim Kwik. There's a lot of kwiks right there. Let's talk about your Kwik Challenge for the week. You'll notice I have a book and you're like, Jim, you love reading. You're all about reading. I was like, yes, leaders are readers. We've been saying it for decades. Reading is to your mind what exercise is to your body. I think one of the best exercises you could do to be mentally fit is to read more. The challenge is most people don't. Most people read 1, 2, 3 books a year if they're lucky. We know leaders like CEOs, people who are high performers, they love reading books that take decades of experience to be able to write because you could sit down in a few days, you could download decades in a day. I have a number of books from our previous guests. on my shelf because I love to read. And maybe I'm preaching to the choir. I know a good percentage of you enjoy reading as it is, but I'm going to talk about how to actually get more reading done, to at least read one book per week. So here's what I want you to do, Kwik Brains, quick readers. I want you to reference previous episodes that we've done, specifically episodes number 4 Episode 7 and episode number 12. Episode 4 talks about and breaks down how to read one book per week. It's a must-listen to without speed reading. Episode number 7 talks about the essence of speed reading, the essence of how to read faster. And finally, episode 12 shows you how to lower and reduce, how to mitigate this thing called subvocalization. In fact, if you have trouble reading and you feel like you're reading too slow and your mind gets easily distracted, One of the reasons is because you're saying the words to yourself. You ever notice that inner voice you have when you read? Hopefully it's your own voice, it's not somebody else's. They call it subvocalization. That means that your reading speed is limited to your talking speed, not your thinking speed. So listen to those previous 3 episodes, or review them if you haven't, because they're must-listens. They're foundational to the Kwik Brain methodology. And if you want intensive, more deeper training in this, Go to jimkwik.com/reading for a free masterclass where I walk you through the actual process. Again, it's jimkwik.com/reading. Now back to reading. You know what the key is to be able to read one book a week is to be able to schedule it, is to be able to schedule it because you could talk about how you want to be a better reader, but if you don't put it into your calendar, I believe your calendar is like one of the most important performance productivity tools there is. But we don't use it for other things, for appointments, for meetings, for gatherings that we need to be able to do, for important dates, but we don't do it for our own personal development. If you want to be a lifelong learner, if you want to activate your quick brain and really take it to the next level of mental fitness, you need to schedule your reading. I recommend starting with just 15 minutes, 15 minutes a day. You're like, Jim, I don't have 15 minutes. You have 15 minutes. We all have the same amount of time, and that's the truth. How we allocate that, so it's not even about time management, it's more about priority management. And what I'm here to say is that you are important, that one of the ways you show love to yourself, self-love, is through self-care and doing the things that you would want the people you care about to do. And reading should be right up on top because it keeps you mentally alert. If you want to clear brain fog, if you want greater focus, if you want more empathy and emotional intelligence, reading should be top of your list. So what I want you to do is this. I want you to pick a book. A book, you don't even have to go and buy it, 'cause I know you have something sitting on the shelf, and it's becoming shelf help and not self-help, right? I want you to pick a book that you're committed to reading every single day till you finish it. Now, stipulation is if you don't like the book going through it after X amount of chapters, then the fastest way to read something is not to read it at all. But find a book that you've always wanted to read, and what I want you to do this week, schedule your 15 minutes a day. What I want you to do is commit, little commitments, because at a high level, at a meta level, what you're doing is you're becoming, again, a master at creating your own habits. We're creating positive momentum little by little. A little becomes a lot. Consistency, remember, compounds, and that's the purpose of doing this challenge. It's saying to yourself, it's saying to the world that you're accountable, that you follow through, and we're getting you to do little daily habit changes. Little hacks that don't seem like a lot, but over time it's like night and day. So what's your homework assignment? What's the actual challenge? Is to read at least 15 minutes a day. So what you're gonna do is take a picture, a screenshot, a picture of your book, what you're currently reading, and then hashtag— if you are part of this, you're ready to commit— the One Book a Week Club. You know, we've been doing this for years. Hashtag the number 1. 1. Book a Week. And every single week we award Amazon gift cards and some of my favorite books from previous guests on our podcast. We send them to you as a thank you to celebrate the joy of learning, to celebrate the joy of building our brain, and for reading more. So again, the challenge is to schedule out your next 7 days, 15 to 30 minutes of reading. Take a picture of the book you're reading, post it online, hashtag Quick Challenge hashtag. If you want to, if you're committed to one book a week, the number one book a week. Tag myself at Jim Quick at Quick Learning. We'll repost some of our favorite books. Then you're the ahas. Put in the description of your post the things that you're learning. Because remember, when you teach something, you get to learn it twice. Remember exercise when we're talking about physical exercise, and that's going to be within one of that's one of the challenges. Exercise is just like— this is mental exercise. Reading is to your mind again what exercise is for your body. Train your brain through reading and you'll train and build your life. I'll see you in our next episode.
