What I learned by reading 12 books in 6 months

How Do You Eat An Elephant?: One Bite at a Time. To avoid procrastination, I divided the challenge into reading 2 books a month. So far so good. 6 months have passed and I have read 12 books, 2 each month. Following are my learnings from each book. Unlike a book review, I have only mentioned what I remember or learned from these books.

1. Speed Reading: How to Double (or Triple) Your Reading Speed in Just 1 Hour! — Justin Hammond

I chose this one as the first book because I was skeptical if I can read 24 books in a year. I applied the lessons from this book to read subsequent books much faster than my normal reading speed. In this book, I learned that I can skim through the text very fast and still retain most of the information. It is about making fewer eye fixations per line. Additionally, your reading speed depends on the context and how familiar you are with the topic.

2. Outliers — Malcolm Gladwell

While reading this book I got demotivated because according to the author, your success depends upon where and when you are born. One example that I remember is of Christopher Langan, who despite having very high IQ, could not make it to mainstream research all because he was from a poor family whereas physicist Robert Oppenheimer who also had high IQ was born into a wealthy family and went about developing a nuclear bomb.

3. The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom — Don Miguel Ruiz

This book is more like a spiritual guide to a happy life than a practical self-help book. The four agreements are self-descriptive enough to implement and I always try to implement these in my daily life.

The four agreements are:

4. How to Fix a Broken Heart — Guy Winch

Heartbreak is painful and one often doesn’t get much-needed support from others which cripples one’s daily life. It is important to distract yourself purposefully so you can move on in life.

5. Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus — John Gray

Both genders have their own ways of expressing affection or disapproval. To be aware of these differences is the best way to avoid conflicts and live a happy life.

6. The 4-Hour Workweek — Tim Ferriss

From this book, I learned that I don’t need to work hard in order to achieve my dream life. In this digital era, it is possible to work from anywhere and by optimizing my life I can work less and get more done. Tim has given so many examples that it becomes difficult to implement it all at the same time so I decided that I will read again after some time.

7. Hippie — Paulo Coelho

I liked how Paulo Coelho has written about the journey and experiences Paulo and Karla shared. Through this book, I learned about the Hippie culture and how that generation challenged the established social order.

8. Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It — Christopher Voss and Tahl Raz

Chris Voss, a former FBI hostage negotiator has mentioned in a very impressive way, his experiences throughout his career. We can implement his learnings in our daily life while negotiating. E.g. Get people to say “No” at the start of the conversation by asking questions like. “Do you mind if I talk to you for 5 minutes?” or “Do you mind if I sit with you?”. The answer to these questions is straightforward “No”. This reduces the fear of the unknown and person is more likely to let down the guard and respond positively to your requests.

9. The Way of the Superior Man — David Deida

From this book, I learned some valuable lessons that I will try to implement throughout my life. These lessons are.

10. The Alchemist — Paulo Coelho

It’s about a shepherd boy and his journey to find his personal treasure. From this story, I learned that sometimes you have to let go of things you have in order to accomplish your purpose in life.

11. The 7 Day Startup: You Don’t Learn Until You Launch — Dan Norris

In this book, the author has listed the essential tasks that are needed to launch a startup e.g idea, domain registration or marketing your startup. I am definitely going to implement these precious lessons very soon and test my startup ideas. The motive behind launching a startup in 7 days is to fail fast if you have to so that you don’t end up wasting time and money on the wrong idea.

12. The Art of the Start 2.0 — Guy Kawasaki

This is more of a manual for a Wannapreneur or an entrepreneur at any stage in a startup. I can not practically implement many chapters in this book because I have not reached those stages yet. For instance, I learned that in any pitch, your powerpoint presentation should not exceed 10 slides. I can definitely pick this book later and read Guy Kawasaki’s mind.

I still have 6 months to finish the next 12 books and I can see how immensely reading has influenced my perception of myself and the world around me. I am already rejoicing the fruits of positivity reading has brought into my life and by implementing more from the books I can expedite improvement and become as successful as those I am trying to imitate.

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