How To Read Books Effectively (7 Stoic Tips)

you say you don't have time to read but you're watching this video you do have time you're just choosing not to make time [Music] all of the stoics were readers that there is no philosopher who was not obsessed with books marcus aurelius is introduced to the works of epictetus through his tutor rusticus epictetus falls in love with reading and books and and claws his way out of slavery seneca falls in love with reading and reading is what sustains him in exile when he's convalescing in egypt far from home all of the stoics loved books it

went to the core of who they were i'm ryan holiday i've been writing and reading about stoicism myself now for more than 15 years i was introduced to the works of marcus aurelius when i was 19 years old and my life was changed in the way that only a book can change your life this pickup marks release and it feels like a pile of bricks tumbling down on me it shakes me to my very core but the stokes said that it wasn't just that you read it was how you read so in today's episode i

want to give you a bunch of secrets and strategies and habits to make reading not just a part of your life but to get the most out of the reading that you're already doing epictetus says who cares that you read what matters is what you read seneca talks about how it's not about how many books you read in your life it's whether you're digesting the works of the master thinkers so it's good that you want to be a reader and you should read and you should spend a lot of time reading but it's not about

quantity it's about quality read great writers my rule is i want to read books that have changed people's lives one and two those tend to be older books right books that have stood the test of time and i know this is crazy as someone who puts out new books but i have a bias towards old books books that have stood the test of time that were relevant 100 years ago a thousand years ago books that have stood the test of time are likely going to hold up in the future and you won't have wasted your

time reading them so that you want to read is great but it matters what you read and how you read you say you don't have time to read but you're watching this video you do have time you're just choosing not to make time there are people way busier than you marcus aurelius made time to read epictetus was a slave he managed to read you have time to read you just have to make time to read i read a lot i promise i am almost certainly busier than you i make time for it if you want

to read you have to make time for it it's not that we have a little bit of time seneca says it's that we waste a lot of it and you're wasting it right now put the phone down and go read if you want to read then do it make the time i've always seen reading as my job and if something's going to be my job i want to figure out how to get good at it i'm going to figure out how to improve it and the stoics obviously talk about this reading was a practice it

was something they tried to be very good at if you want to learn everything the stoics can teach you about how to be a better reader i recommend the read to lead challenge that we built here at daily stoic it's a guide to a stoic reading practice how to read like marcus aurelius seneca epitidis yes a little bit like me you can sign up right now by going to daleystoke.com reading it's all the best stoic practices for reading it's live q and a's with me and a bunch of other awesome stuff i'd love for you

to sign up it's the most popular challenge we've done here at daily stoic for 10 000 people have signed up since we launched it a couple years ago i'd love to have you join us join me we'll become better readers together you can sign up to dailystoke.com reading or click the link below [Music] in meditations marcus really says that just as reading and writing require a master so does life now that's obviously true but let's go the first part he's saying that to be a great reader you have to have a master someone who tutors

you who advises you for eisenhower as a young a military officer a fox connor his mentor begins to pick out and direct a course of reading shapes his life that makes him one of the great generals and presidents of all time marcus realist himself is introduced to the works of epictetus through rusticus his life is changed by this reading master this person who's instructing him in reading and actually some of the only letters we have for mark shreely's come from his rhetoric teacher fronto who also directs a course of reading so the question is who

is leading you who is teaching you who is introducing you to new books who is your master in reading and writing if you don't have one you should get one general james mattis says that if you haven't read hundreds of books you're functionally illiterate which i think is a great way to think about it it's not just that you've read some stuff it's not just that you can read but have you read very very deeply about what it is that you do for a living about who it is that you're trying to be it's not

one book it's not two books it's not ten books it's hundreds of books if you haven't read hundreds of books you may well be literate but you are functionally illiterate and that's what really matters [Music] you shouldn't just read you should always be re-reading the stoics say we never step in the same river twice because we change and the river is always changing but this is this is true for books too yes the words on the page are the same but the circumstances in which you are reading them who you are when you're reading them

that's changed so don't just read reread and reread again seneca says that we linger on the works of the master thinkers we read them over and over and over again and and we get something new out of it every time especially when you reread meditations seneca epictetus don't just read the stoics but reread the stoics and grow each time you do [Music] maybe you're reading too much i know that sounds crazy obviously one of the virtues of stoicism is a virtue of wisdom but multiple times in meditations marcus tells himself to throw away his books

get active in life's purpose while he can and i think that's advice that's advice i try to give myself i love reading i love retreating to the world of ideas but marcus aurelius's mentor franto he says against your will you must put on the purple cloak of the emperor meaning you can't stay here with your books you can't retreat to the ivory tower you have to go out in the world and live these ideas apply these ideas struggle with difficult people struggle with difficult challenges apply this stuff in the imperfect world marcus says don't go

around expecting plato's republic because you live here in the real world and that's where we apply the philosophy we stop arguing about what good people are and we try to be one we try to apply the philosopher in real life where it belongs [Music] one of the things this actually ties into what i wanted to ask you next is that truman was a huge reader you know he was obsessed with marcus aurelia he writes in in one of his letters you know those sort of virtues of wisdom and courage and justice and temperance you know

he learned that from the sort of the education that he gave himself he's one of the last presidents to not go to college and so i wondered what you thought of that famous quote from truman you know he said not all readers are leaders but all leaders are readers and that strikes me as something very true about your life as well the value quotient of reading for me was probably different than truman's but in the moment so quiet during the day when i think back about my life and reading and and so forth i find

the early origin of about reading came from my grandma when i was a little boy my grandma used to make me sit and watch her cook in the kitchen my grandma never got past eighth grade but she had common sense and so she would make me sit there and watch her cook and so it turned out as i realized in my adult life it was a classroom she was teaching me how to cook by observation and then she would have conversations with me while i was sitting there and so one time she said to me

she said george she said you know back in the days of slavery the plantation owners used to hide their money in books and i said grandma why'd they do that she said because they knew the slaves couldn't read so they would never take the books down to me the moral of that story was as long as someone can control your mind they can control your body and so i think that was the early uh revelation to me books had to be more relevant in my life and and then i started to realize you've got a

moral obligation to read that people die to get you the right to read if you remember your history george there was a time in america when it was illegal for a person to teach a black person how to read there was a time in america when a black person could not get a library card the libraries were segregated people died to give me the right to read am i going to dishonor their deaths by not reading i see it in a broader context than just reading to learn or reading for entertainment i feel personally i

have an obligation to honor those people's death they died so that i i could have the opportunity to read and people ask me when you were growing up did you read a lot hell no the only books i saw in my young life were school books that were the only books i knew when i was growing up as a young kid in washington dc 7 8 9 10 years old every day was about survival when you got up in the morning you were happy that you survived for another day and so you get up in

the morning and you look out the window in a tip-toe stance and you say i made it i made it another day but it's all about survival and so along the way i continued to progress to where i finally get a basketball scholarship to go nova it really wasn't until i got to going over that i started to realize the wonder of reading it and how it could separate you from other people i hope you like this video i hope you subscribe but what i really want you to subscribe to is our daily stoic email

one bit of stoic wisdom totally for free to the largest community of stoics ever in existence you can sign up at dailystoke.com email there's no spam you can unsubscribe at any time i love sending it i've sent it every day for the last six years and hope to see you there at dailystoke.com email [Music] you