Tag: Reading

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Reading

Hey ReadARs — It’s time to Self-Read

First things first – This article reaches you few days late. Sincere apologies for that. I’ve been travelling in the state of Himachal Pradesh & haven’t been able to put time to write (Makes me wonder how travel bloggers write amidst the nature’s beauty)

It goes without saying that my biggest project of 2022 for all the ReadARs is to work on our PKM aka Personal Knowledge Management.

And its starts with “Getting Things Done” from 13th June

But before that, I want you to challenge yourself to self-read one of these books.

You can read one of these or anything of your own choice. But please ensure that it’s a light, short read.

Our goal is to Read GTD and these books are warm-ups for it.

Fiction —

A. Animal Farm by George Orwell

Perfect small book that will leave you mesmerised for life. A fun, deep read about all things life & politics.

This will be my preferred choice for you to read on your own.

Buy it here

Non-Fiction —

B. Compound Effect by Darren Hardy

If you still prefer to confine yourself to nonfiction, then this is the short, quick read that will reinforce your understanding about the power of compounding and how it correlates to your life.

Buy it here

Points to Remember while you Self-Read

A. Order your book ASAP 🙂

B. Finish your book before 11th June.

C. Work on your Reading Routine as you read by yourself so that you read your book everyday. This is a warm-up for GTD and thus you need to build in your resilience NOW before we start reading that incredible book.

D. Create your own Daily Portions. Divide it either by 10/15 pages a day format or divide it Chapter Wise (preferred for Nonfiction)

Ensure that you do this division before you start reading the book. Make a daily portion index card or write the same on your Readers Journal. Each day you read that portion, mark a tick against it. This keeps one on-track the most when self-reading.

E. If you finish the 1st, you can read the 2nd too. 🙂
But wrap it up before 11th June.

F. Don’t forget to buy “Getting Things Done” too.
Buy it Here

Go ahead & self-read.
Good Luck. 🙂

Any questions, ASK ME right away on Group or DMs

Categories
Reading World Book Day

I won’t be celebrating World Book Day! But you the ReadARs will.

Read this ASAP. Tomorrow, 23rd April is the World Book Day and I want you to celebrate it with full gusto.

It’s the day to celebrate the hard-work, determination & perseverance you have put-in to create your Reading Habits.

In an era where people are addicted to their smartphones, where their attention dangles like a puppet whose strings are being pulled by the social media giants, you are amongst the very rare category of people on this planet who are fighting against their distractions to build this wonderful, magical habit of Reading.

Many of you are in your First Year as a ReadAR, Some of you are in the Second Year & few of you fast approaching the completion of Third Year as a ReadAR. It’s a feat worth celebrating!

If in case some of you are wondering, this is NOT a Testimonial which I am asking you for. So you don’t have to make it about me.

This is about you. All about celebrating your feat & accomplishments in the World of Books with the World on the World Book Day.

5 Ideas How you can celebrate World Book Day –

You can choose any idea you have. But if you are short of ideas, here are 5 —

A. Write your Journey from Zero Books for X number of Years to One/Two/Three Books in a Month.

B. Share a picture of all the Books you have read ever since you began to work on your daily reading habit.

C. Write how Reading Books has helped you personally, professional or both.

D. Share your style of Reading, your tips & tricks on Reading.

E. Write a book review of the book you just Finished.

You can Write or Speak about it. Here’s how you can choose between the two

Pick one that you have been wanting to do for a long while.

If you have been wanting to Write, Write.
If you have been wanting to Speak, Speak.
If you have been wanting to Write & Speak, then Write & Speak

It’s easiest to write or speak something when you are truly passionate about it, when you have gone through that process.

Because at that moment, you’re not writing or speaking from your mind. Your Mind is the Enemy! It’s the most dubious, fickle, doubt creator, two-faced entity you will ever face.

At that moment, you will be writing or speaking from your Heart. ❤️Your heart is always at the right place, always true to the core & always speaks at the emotional level others can instantly connect on.

Write your Heart out. Speak your Heart out. Period.

3 Steps to Ease your Fears of Writing & Speaking

I wrote this entire essay in 15 mins & Editing took 10 mins.

Heck sharing it personally with each ReadAR will take more time!

Here are the 3 simplest tips you can apply

  1. Set a timer of 15/20 minutes to Write on your Laptop/Mobile. Put your phone on Airplane Mode by default, even if you are writing on your Mobile. And sit where you can see your pile of books you have read.
  2. Now write. When you are writing, do not let your mind interfere. Just write anything and everything that comes out of your mind. Do not correct grammar mistakes, Do not edit any sentence at all, Do not try to beautify right now. Just Write.
    P.S — Welcome to the art called Freewriting.
  3. Now Edit. Quick & Fast
    a. Copy & paste what you have written & put it on Grammarly Free Account (it’s quite effective)

    b. Format it for “Readability in 2022” – Recall James Clear’s Atomic Habits – he had written in big fonts & short paragraphs. Only few paragraphs went beyond 7 continuous lines. Your paragraph should ideally be 3-5 lines long.

If you are going to speak, you should write for 5/10 minutes as above, and then hit record!

Ship your Content!

The world is waiting to hear your story. Share it!

You have done the hard work to writing your story. It’s time to share it with the world. Most people get stuck here.

I have been one of them. I’ve hesitant in sharing my story, in showing my work over the last decade. And I am the one who is still paying for it. Today I have to work 10x harder to share something.

The best thing you can do for yourself is to not be AR.

Share! Not for likes. Not for social media validation. (You will ofcourse get them) Not to become a Social Media Influencer & Definitely Not for AR.

You will be Sharing this for yourself. Present & Future Self.

On the days when your future self feels bad, feels down, all you will have to do is to check these posts and reflect on the incredible progress you have made on this journey.

Some tips & tricks for the platform you choose

If you are sharing on LinkedIn, the best time to post is between 9 AM to 11 AM.

If you are sharing on Instagram, the best time to post is between 9 – 11 AM OR 5:30 – 6:30 PM.

If you are sharing on Twitter, the best time to post is between 8 – 9 AM or 7:30 to 8:30 PM.

Get set go. Write & Ship it!

As aNIKEt says — “Just Do It”

If reading this has inspired you, don’t wait for tomorrow to take the next step. Just start right away.

Once you have shipped it on social media platforms, go ahead and share it with your Group of ReadARs.

And don’t forget to share the link on your Whatsapp Status too. The most powerful discovery tool right now 🙂

If you have any question, ask in the comments OR preferably on the Group (Batch 22/21 or The ReadARs Club)

P.S — If you feel like, you can tag me 🙂 — No compulsion

Instagram – @thereadinghabits;
Twitter – @AniketReads &
LinkedIn – Aniket Rai

Categories
Reading

3rd Book for Cohort-21

Hey ReadARs

It’s time to choose your next book.

One of my favourite all-time Reads — The Alchemist

Please follow these steps when you place your order —

A. Buy it from the Prime Seller by clicking this link below

B. Lot of pirated copies of Alchemist exist in the market which is why there are a number of pirated book sellers on Amazon trying to rip-off the innocent book buyers.

Here’s how you can sidestep even if Amazon gives random seller.

C. Sellers I trust to buy this book —

a. Cloudtail India
b. uRead-Store

You can select the seller by clicking the 21 New from 235 option I have underlined in the desktop screenshot above

Here’s how you can select the seller when buying on Mobile. 👇

Categories
Reading

29-30 Jan’22 Weekend Reads

Curated by AR for the ReadARs

One of the most common ask of the ReadARs in the end of the year 2021 feedback form was to be able to read articles on the weekends.

The weekend cover-up days usually resulted in backfiring on one major fronts — The diligent ReadARs, who had no reading portion to cover-up, were having their reading momentum broken.

Thus starts from this weekend, for all the upcoming weekends of 2022, the Weekend Reads Column.

Here’s the format I would like you to follow –

Read any one article (from the choice of 3)

After reading, post in the comments as follows –

  • Which article you read (for my reference)
  • Drop a 2-line summary (for your retention)

Here we go then —

Article A – Feel free to stop striving: learn to relish being an amateur

https://psyche.co/ideas/feel-free-to-stop-striving-learn-to-relish-being-an-amateur?

Article B – How the Ballpoint Pen killed the Cursive

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/08/ballpoint-pens-object-lesson-history-handwriting/402205/

Article C – 10 Things That Helped Maria Popova Build A Multi-Million Blog Audience

https://writingcooperative.com/10-things-that-helped-maria-popova-build-a-multi-million-blog-audience-66157fc56487

Bonus Read – The Two Best Ways to Win at Wordle

https://slate.com/technology/2022/01/wordle-how-to-win-strategy-crossword-experts.html

That’s all folks.

Next weekend reads will land first thing in your inbox on Saturday morning 🙂

Categories
Reading

Book Summary Apps – The Bright Side and the Dark Side

If you are a voracious reader or you are someone who’s actively working on forming reading habits, I am certain that you would have come across an ad of some book summary service like Instaread, Mentorbox, Blinkist etc. If you are in India, you might also know the app by Amrut Deshmukh called Booklet which again has summarised version of the books that he has read. 

Now the idea behind these book summary apps is that instead of reading an entire book, one can simply digest its main ideas, in 10-15 minutes. These apps primarily cater to the nonfiction books, especially the self-help books category. And by the same premise, they sell further by painting a vivid picture of one person being able to digest hundreds of books.

I am sure that they would be having a lot of paid subscribers who have found it as an interesting concept and thus signed up for it. I understand their premise – why spend hours into reading a book entirely when you can digest some key ideas from a book summary app in 15 mins & then read 10 more books in half the total time spent.

For those who don’t really wish to invest in their reading habits, then these book summary apps are good substitute. Some amount of reading is thousand times better than no amount of reading at all.

But if you are someone who’s actively working to form long lasting reading habits, then you will be better off by giving these apps a skip.

Reading self-help books is like shopping at a supermarket. When you are in a supermarket you don’t pick every item that’s there. You pick what you need the most, what suits you the most.

Your point of view of reading that book will definitely be different to the person who had made a summary on the book summary app.

What if their interpretation overlooks a portion of the book that could have been important, or even life altering for you?

When you read and invest your time into these self-help books, you’re not just reading for the sake of it. You’re reading to apply. And thus the approach to read the book in small portions and applying it, each day. You will thus pick the best elements out of that self-help book, ones that you found were most applicable.

Instead of trying to read too many books and applying too little from them, pick ones that are most applicable to your current life and future self.

The mindset should be that the book must be deserving enough to be read by you. This will serve as a handy filter into bringing down the shortlisted books to 5-6.

Read them, a little bit each day. Apply them, a little bit each day. And summarize them for yourself each weekend. Repeat the process with the next book and the book after & before you know it, you would have already become what the book promised you to.

If you still wish to use a book summary app, then choose Blinkist. It has a “free daily pick” which has one book summary available to all its users – both paid and unpaid. If a book appeals to you, put it in your wishlist and if sometime later it makes the cut, then the book summary app would have served its purpose.