[bwh2]

I read +50 non-fiction books per year. Here's my advice for reading more and faster:

* Always have 2-3 books going that span multiple topics, matching books to mood. This will increase your consistency.

* Separate data collection from data processing. When reading with book in hand, you're doing data collection - preferably with a highlighter and/or pen for margin notes.

* Read more. On the surface this sounds circular but as you read more you find ideas are repeated across several books which makes them faster to process than new ideas.

* A small speed trick: decide when a book is worth skimming (vs. reading) and learn how to skim accurately by reading the first sentence of the paragraph and last few words of the paragraph. These positions often contain language indicating whether the paragraph will have meaningful content worth actually reading. I use this trick when a book is too long by half or more.

[lcall]

Yes, that is what I came to say, especially about skimming. I don't normally advocate "speed reading", but the "Skimming" section of this page seems helpful to me (I wrote part of the little section): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_reading#Skimming_and_sca...

Others have written about how to apply it more specifically to different kinds of writing, which can be structured differently, like in academic papers, vs. news articles, vs. essays, etc.

Though there are times when one reads to relax, or to learn deeply, and then I don't care much about how long it takes. Longer can even be better, sometimes. :)

Edit: I think Mitt Romney said he likes to be reading 2 books at any given time: a serious one and a fun one. Maybe the fun helps us think about the serious things we read & consolidate memories?--but either way that makes sense to me.