Don’t finish every book you start! - the genesis of this thought is the Podcast that Naval Ravikant did with Shane Parrish as part of the Knowledge Project. Throughout my childhood and college days, I had this notion that if I pick up a book I need to finish it to the completion to thoroughly understand what the author wants to communicate. I believe this was an outcome of ‘complete the syllabus’ mindset that is part of the Indian education system. An extension of this thought process is,
Read a book page to page in a sequential order
Read-only one book at a time (monogamy with books?)
Don’t read junk
These irrational rules were enforced at a subconscious level on me ever since I remember I started reading. Leaving a book unfinished and talking about the ideas from the book felt like cheating. Only with time have I realised the futility of these principles and the long term harm they inflict on my reading habits. In my observation not having an ability to drop the book at the appropriate time becomes the biggest hindrance in developing a consistent reading habit.
People with whom I have interacted, who want to develop a consistent reading habit, usually are stuck on an uninteresting non-fiction book which they are yet to finish. This, I have observed to be the most common reason which stops people from developing a long term consistent reading habit. They are not able to let go of the book in hand (rather the book on the study table/bedside table), even though they are not able to progress through even one page a day. Being stuck on a book also means, you are not picking up another one and eventually results in losing interest in the activity of reading.
The best way to deal with this problem is to have very strict criteria around when to stop reading a book and move on. Treat yourself like you are on a quest for the great books of all time, and like any time wasted on a boring book is time taken away from the possibly a better and more interesting book.
In the above-mentioned podcast, Naval quotes a tweet by @illacertus ‘I don’t want to read everything. I just want to read the 100 great books over and over again.’ Obviously, the problem is how to get to these 100 great books? Only by trying out as many as possible at as fast a rate as possible. Note the word trying, not finishing.
The quest for the ideal 100
There have been around 130 million published books in the history of humankind. Even if you spend 8 hours a day reading throughout your adult life, you would be able to only finish 0.01% of total published knowledge. So the quest is not to read the maximum number of books but to read the books which add the most value to you as an individual.
In response to this abundance, people tend to have very strong filters to select which books to read. That means going through recommendations from trusted people, book reviews, known authors, etc. But statistically, no matter how strong your filters are, the probability of a dull, uninteresting book landing in your hand is much higher than the one which gives you the most value and should be part of your ideal 100. In this scenario, the most appropriate filter to drop a book, irrespective of a strong recommendation, great review(book of the year, must-read, bestseller, etc.) - should be your own.
Ideally and statistically, your list of abandoned books should be much larger than the books that you have finished or re-read. And there should not be any guilt associated with the list of abandoned books. Rather you should cherish it.
A book being dull or uninteresting or repetitive does not mean it is not valuable. Books are about ideas, perspectives, strokes of imagination; the moment you get those from a book, irrespective of at what page you are on, you have derived your value from it.
The 300-page book rule
Another good reason to drop a book: the content feels repetitive after 40-50 pages, which is the case with a lot of non-fiction books. Typically to publish a book in the non-fiction genre, publishers expect the manuscript to be around 300 pages. This ideal number is an outcome of what makes the publishing process scalable (easy to price, ship, meet reader’s expectations around what should be a called a book). But an unfortunate outcome of this rule is that excellent ideas, which could have been easily communicated via a blog or an article, have to be expressed in 300 pages books in order to be published.
This is also the reason why while reading non-fiction, after 40-50 pages, you tend to lose interest in the book as the crux of what the author wanted to communicate has already been discussed and what follows for next 250 pages are anecdotes, applications, interpretations of the same concept. So again, if you identify such a point in a book, it has to straightaway go to the abandoned books list. You have got your value from the book, assimilated the core ideas, time to move on.
Hacks to abandon a book
If you are convinced, but you believe it will be difficult to overcome the guilt associated with leaving a book without a good closure, here are few hacks you can use to get that closure.
The moment you feel the content is repetitive, quickly skim through the book to confirm your intuition. Go through the contents page, pick up some random section and see if you find anything valuable there, if no, drop the book.
If you are finding it difficult to push through the pages but have a nagging feeling that the author is building up the content for something better, go through online summaries or animated videos of the book to get closure. It is easy to find good video content for non-fiction bestsellers. Here is an animated video on the one of the bestsellers ‘The 48 Laws of Power’ by Robert Greene.
I also find it more valuable to read the initial sections multiple times(the meaty part) rather than finishing the entire book.
Read 2-3 books in parallel, let them compete for your attention and if one of them lags behind, you know where it goes.
Summary
Your goal when it comes to reading is to find the most valuable 100 books and read them again and again. The way to identify those 100 is by going through as many books as possible in as short a time possible. That means if the book you are reading does not qualify to be part of your exclusive club, take the value it offers and move on.