I started my sabbatical on Dec 21, 2024 and the first thing that I wanted to do was give myself superpowers: Read with heightened comprehension, write with precision, retain information faster, and reframe outdated perspectives.

Reading books is the only way I know of how to do this. I was practically raised by books. Sorry mom.

I limited my selection to five: How To Read A Book, On Writing Well, Unlimited Memory, Useful Not True, and Internal Time. It took me around 3 days to finish reading a ~300 page book inspectionally1. I was so energized by the inspectional reading because of the potential that the book had. But the analytical reading bored me2; The novelty was gone and now I was faced with the hard work of deepening my understanding of the author’s message. This part took around 2 weeks to finish.

I approached this task like work—I put in an average of 6 hours per day on reading and taking notes—and published my notes as I finished each book. I shared my notes with friends for feedback and accountability. I read and understood each book, but that wasn’t the end of it. It turned out it was just the beginning.

The real work began right after I finished the book and published my notes. I had to apply its techniques—altering my habits and discombobulating my comfort zone—in its particular area. Like this article for example, I rewrote it after reading my On Writing Well notes. Obviously I need to reread them many more times.

  1. Inspectional and analytical reading are referring to the second and third stages of reading from How To Read a Book. ↩

  2. A more engaging and producitve way of doing this would have been to start with the activity first (maybe an inspectional read before is OK since it only takes a couple of days) in commit mode until I have started to plateau. At that point, take a pause from the activity, read the best book on the subject analytically, then resume. For example, attempt to memorize a difficult text that I’m interested. When I start to falter, pause and read Unlimited Memory analytically then apply its techniques to the text. ↩