A Super Reader Who Gets Through Hundreds of Books a Year Explains How to Read Way More

At least in the case of nonfiction, if you already know the material, feel free to skip ahead. When you go to read actual books you're like, 'I know that, I know that, I know that,' and you keep on going, and you read much more quickly.

And that's really the way to read a lot. This also creates a virtuous cycle in which the more you read, the more you'll know, and the more you can skip.

The best reading is focused reading, when you're trying to solve some kind of problem. You could aim to answer a specific question, investigate a given author, or scratch an itch of curiosity.

You want to start with a problem or question when you're reading.

If you arrange your reading around questions or areas of exploration, you'll end up reading multiple books about the same topic.

That allows you to do a kind of cross-sectional mental econometrics and see which pieces start fitting together.

Gathering a stack of non-fiction titles to explore a topic is great, but don't neglect fiction.

Reading fiction is important to understand the cross-sectional variation in humanity, to understand how difficult generalizations can be, to just get a sense of how different social pieces fit together, and to get a sense of different historical eras -- and plus, reading fiction is often just plain flat-out fun.

Every area you don't give a damn about you probably should read at least one book in. Because the very best book in that area is superb, and you're not going to know what it is.

So if tennis is something you don't know anything about, well, read Andre Agassi's memoir. That's a wonderful book. You don't have to know about or care about tennis.

Take reading seriously, develop a passion for it, and view it as part of your practice as a knowledge worker to get ahead, but along the way, have fun doing so!