You know how to read a book. You probably learned how in elementary school.

But do you read optimally?

Do you get the most out of every hour you invest in a book?

If you’re like most people, the answer is “not even close.”

And, there is a huge opportunity to become more skillful at reading, retention and understanding.

If you’re a knowledge worker there is no better investment.

You are paid to use your brain — it pays to make your brain as powerful and high performing as possible.

Imagine making better decisions just a few times a week… What would that mean for your career? Your life?

There is a proven path to getting smarter: Read, a lot.

Most people go through life without getting any smarter. But the consistently successful — they get smarter, day in and day out.

You can too.

Billionaires Charlie Munger & Warren Buffett estimate that they spend 80% of their day reading.

To paraphrase Buffett, reading for understanding is like compound interest. It builds upon itself to become exponentially more powerful over time.

But to read effectively we need to do more than the simple cover-to-cover style reading we learned in school.

We need to do the mental work required to hold an opinion.

This can be challenging and it’s not something most of us were taught. But the reward to hard work is true insight and practical wisdom.

While there is nothing wrong with easy reading, it’s not the kind of reading that will help you go to bed smarter.

Reading for insight & understanding gives you an edge.

We all want an edge. At work. At home. Inside our own minds.

Going to bed smarter, every day, is the ultimate edge. It’s exponential and it continues to sharpen with time.

The fastest route to your edge is to master the best of what people have already figured out. That is what Farnam Street is all about.

There are many ways and reasons to read. In this course we focus on reading to gain an edge: the wisdom and insight needed to advance in the face of today’s challenges.

How to Read a Book Is Comprehensive:

• Struggling to hit your reading goals? Learn the simple truths that increase your productivity
• Apply Farnam Street’s six core principles to instantly improve your ability to draw insight from what you read
• Debunk common reading myths that hold you back
• Understand the different levels of reading and explore how to use them for wisdom and insight
• Get the inside track on the Farnam Street team & how our partnership came to be

• Learn how to think about your library and why you should own more unread books than read ones
• Use Farnam Street’s funneling process to make your books compete for attention before you even think of reading them
• Weigh reading a book versus an article quickly and effectively
• You’ll never forget to ask yourself the most important question about a book after you see how we frame it
• Banish book overwhelm by implementing the four filters Farnam Street uses when deciding to read a book

• Most books don’t demand to be read in their entirety… we’ll show you how to decide which do
• Why you should start by creating a map of the book — and how to do it in about 15 minutes
• How to evaluate a book in 5-10 minutes online or in a bookstore
• Engage with a fascinating conversation about reading habits and why Shane reads several books at once
• What the Marshmallow Test can teach us about reading effectively
• How to spot the single biggest opportunity for most readers. It’s simple, yet powerful

• Find out why note taking matters and the surprising ‘non-system’ system that works for us
• Understand the three key steps of analytical reading, including the one almost everyone skips
• Evaluate how well you stand up to Shane’s definition of the job of a reader, it’s probably not what you think
• Learn to identify when you need to read with extra caution — hint: it’s not when the reading is challenging
• Quickly probe at your depth of understanding with our favorite deep reading question: Do I agree with the author?
• Channel your learning effectively once you’ve finished the book

• Our favorite module! This is where exponential wins start stacking up
• Generate deep understanding through our process of refereeing the conversation
• Hone your ability to spot when a good narrative is covering up faulty logic or misleading facts
• Become skilled at the tricky task of comparing and contrasting ideas across context and perspective
• Use combinatory play while reading to aid your quest for insight
• Learn to spot and gain deep understanding of building blocks and cornerstone ideas
• Effectively parse out your own ideas, opinions and insights from your reading
• Develop novel insights naturally, as the result of the process