How To Read A Book In 10 Minutes

Don’t knock it until you take a second to think about it. I was at first highly skeptical about reading a book in 10 minutes. For me, the whole point of reading is to dive in and invest time, focus, energy into each and every word – words are pretty much what makes a book a book. And we all have our ways of getting through our books – reading in 10 minute snippets is a good way squeeze a book into our busy lives. But to read a book in 10 minutes seems like a scam, until I considered one comment made in the video: think of books as reference guides, something to come back to for when you have more time to read. A solid skim of a book gives a general idea of what an author is going to address. I might grab a book because it piques my interest, but I don’t have the time to read it right away. So I’ll skim it, then set it on my bookshelf for a time when I really need it. With a power skim, I’ll have put a bookmark, if you will, on a particular text as something that I can come back to when the time is right.

Don’t get me wrong, reading a book in 10 minutes is not an effective way to truly read the book. But it is a good way to give yourself an introduction, and to fix it in our brains as something worth coming back to later. To summarize the advice in this video, the best way to read a book in 10 minutes is to use these three tricks:

1. Have someone else read it for you (read book summaries).

2. Skim. Power Skim. Deep Skim.

3. Pick and choose what you read (be highly selective).

No matter what, it’s still important to read a book, not a whole book in 10 minutes, but for at least 10 minutes at a time. The concept here isn’t without merit, but for us hardcore book lovers, we crave more than 10 minutes of time spent on our precious books!