[Book Summary] Effortless reading

I’ve just finished reading Effortless Reading - The Simple Way to Read and Guarantee Remarkable Results by my friend Vu Tran, a friend since University. I like reading in my spare time, but I have never considered it as a daily habit until I read this book. Here are some key notes I got from this book, you should buy this book to read in full, here is just my summary of what I found after reading.

Deliberated Reading

• Selective Focus: Vu tried to mention in his book that we should carefully decide what to read because global knowledge is so big these days especially when Internet has developed so fast. Here are some great tips:
  1. Take some personality test to understand more about yourself.
  2. Choose some current goals carefully which matches your life and career.
  3. Collect a book list you believe it can answer your questions.
• Repetition: Re-reading books are important, your second reading will not be as exciting as your first one, but it will be the time for you to do self-reflect what you applied since last time and to find new perspective when you are re-reading books. Therefore, try to get back and to re-read books.
• Be Balanced: as said in the book, there are two basic types of books, classics and non-classics where classics are those taking authors years of experiences into small books which require your deep reflection to modify your subconscious mind. These books are splendid for you to change your mindset. But the remaining types of books can give you quick advice and lessons you can learn and apply right away. We should keep balanced and read both,
• Keeping the right gear:
  • Classics: Reading slowly with awareness and deep self-reflection.
  • Know-hows: Reading fast enough to learn and absorb best advice and tips you can apply right away.
  • Biography and Autobiography: Reading at medium gear and making it just like you are living in that life to feel and experience all emotions and lessons in the stories, where you can get a lot of inspiration.

Inspiration from this book

• It took authors a lot to experience what he did in books, so reading books will save your time, you don’t need to take ten years for such lesson, but just after a book.
• More and more people are getting internet access now, global knowledge is becoming more and more accessible, if you stop learning (through books and the internet), you might be left behind (and of course you don’t want to be like that).
• The knowledge you get from books can help you communicate better when friends, family, colleagues, and even your kid.

Reading Cheat Sheet

• You can spend just 15 minutes per day for reading. Reading a little but every day as a habit is much better than reading a lot in just some days then stop.
• You don’t even need to spend money or time on professional techniques like speed reading.
• You must always be aware of your reading, if you started to feel dull or sleeping, it’s time to stop, or it will waste your time.
• Starting a book by reading Title, covers and outline then you can stop.
• Pick any chapter of the book that can answer your current question or curiosity. Always keeps a goal when reading a chapter, you don’t need to read the whole book.

Thanks a lot my friend Vu Tran for writing this book. I believe it would inspire more people to read better (including me).