📑 How To 2x Your Reading →

No, the answer here is not a speed reading course. Though, they can help.

I use a much simpler method to improve my reading speed (and enjoyment!): have both a “snack” and a “meal” book.

I benefit from having two books at any given time:

🍎 A Snack Book – Entertaining, simple to understand, and easy to read. You can read this on the go, when you’re tired, or when you only have a few minutes available. Books with short chapters are particularly good for snack books.

🍽️ A Meal Book – Information-dense, more complex, and require deep thinking. They require time, energy, and focus.

It is perfectly okay for either to be fiction or non-fiction. We don’t have to read non-fiction all the time, fiction is equally useful.

My current meal book is HBR at 100, a collection of the most influential and important articles from Harvard Business Review over the last 100 years. I am also reading H.P Lovecraft’s Necronomicon in Spanish when travelling.

My current snack book is The Help, ideal as a snack with short chapters with frequent break points. One of my favourite snack books is The Examined Life.

My partner and I also read one book together every night, usually a Nordic Noir or Stephen King book, but currently we are reading The Martian.

This is one of those rare instances where having a split attention can actually help, rather than hinder. The meal book provides something to ‘work out’ with, but it can feel difficult to find time to sit down and read. Having a snack book can really help us to continue reading. Time is a vacuum, you will fill it with whatever is easiest. Rather than a junk activity, you can create the conditions to make reading easier so you read more often. Try it.

P.s. I am always open to suggestions for both snack books and meal books! Reply to this email or leave a comment below to share your favourite books with me.

On my balcony back in December when I lived in Chiang Mai, Thailand

I shared this in my Work Smart Wednesday newsletter. Want the full set of related insights? You can read them here: https://worksmartwednesday.substack.com/p/work-smart-wednesday-february-14

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