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When you have a stack of books in front of you that you want to finish within a certain time frame (by the end of summer, for example), it’s tempting to try and read through each book as efficiently as possible. If you are planning to read anything related to personal development or achieving your goals, this is the wrong approach. It’s the same effect as cramming for a final in college and then quickly forgetting everything you were taught during the semester because you’re done with the course. I call this reading for the sake of finishing. You’re reading something with the end goal of being finished with it. Rather, you should aim to be reading to learn, which usually involved re-reading chapters twice, taking notes, and reading certain passages slowly to let it all seep in. Last year, I detailed best practices to optimize learning and retain what you read in this blog post.

Want to know if you’re retaining what you read? Try this exercise:

Step 1: Get a piece of paper or open up a Word document

Step 2: Write down the title of one book you’ve read recently

Step 3: Next to it, write a paragraph or bullet points on what you personally took out of it. Try and avoid excess summarizing. Keep these takeaways relevant to you and your life.

Step 4: Repeat steps 2 and 3 for each book you want to test yourself for.

Step 5: See how you did. Review everything you wrote down once over.

Step 6: If your results weren’t satisfactory, consider the following options:

1) If you enjoyed the book, but you couldn’t list how this book has impacted you personally, consider re-reading it and re-doing this exercise.

2) If you could list valuable takeaways, but haven’t found success in implementing them into your life, try Step 7.

Step 7 (optional): Figure out where the disconnect is between the takeaways from the book you read and your daily life, and then create an action plan to remove any obstacles that are creating that disconnect. For example, I read a book on blogging that I really enjoyed. One of my takeaways was how important it is to consistently write new content. However, I found it very hard to blog as much as I knew I should because I never had free time and was tired all the time. My two obstacles were low energy and limited free time. To fix this, I ate better, got more sleep, and studied productivity so I could finally implement suggestions that I had read about for effective blogging. I fixed the disconnect.

Another great benefit of this exercise is that your retention and understanding of the book you read increases when you explain it’s concepts in your own words.

So if you feel that you might be “reading to finish” rather than “reading to learn”, do the exercise above and see how you do. And for those of you who want an example of this exercise completed, I’ve copied and pasted my exercise results from the Word document I wrote it out on.

If you enjoyed this exercise, share your results in the comments!

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My “Reading to Learn” Exercise:

Psycho-cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz: The importance of beliefs and self image. By making sure that every goal-achieving plan I create has an element of optimizing my beliefs, I’ll be that much more likely to succeed. I’m realizing that it’s near impossible to achieve greatness without having your beliefs, self-image, and subconscious working towards your goals along with you. Someone who believes that it’s impossible to achieve greatness is creating a self fulfilling prophecy for themselves. Those who believe something is impossible won’t fight tooth and nail to achieve it. Therefore, they won’t put in the effort needed to overcome all the obstacles, which gives them the failure they predicted.

The Dip by Seth Godin: To be the best, you have to make sacrifices in other areas of your life. This book served as a powerful reminder that to be a successful blogger, I will need to cut out a lot of the distractions in my life (or at the very least, moderate them). I’ve made a commitment to remove all TV shows from my life, except for one (Modern Family, for those who are curious as to what I watch these days). I’ve cleaned up my diet even more than usual because I need to keep my energy levels up all day to find time to blog after a full day’s work.

The Long Tail by Chris Anderson: The world has changed. The Internet has leveled the playing field for those who wish to create content. No longer are media platforms restricted to large companies. Anyone can start a blog, a Youtube channel, a podcast, or a website. This book was a great introduction to the world of blogging and Web 2.0. Learning how the game changed is important if you want to play. This benefited me as a great prerequisite resource before diving into the world of blogging.

Crush It! By Gary Vaynerchuk: The Long Tail was the introduction. Crush It! is the how-to. A lot of my blog’s current layout and strategy is based on his writings. Although he never mentions The Dip (discussed above) in his book, he emphasizes a lot of The Dip’s theories: If you want to hit it big with your blog, be prepared to work hard. Very hard. But there is nothing more satisfying then taking your passion and creating something great with it.

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell: This book offers a nice dose of reality. We all start at different points in life. Many people are unfairly shut off from opportunities because of where they were born or how they were raised. But those who succeed become that way because they took their opportunity and leveraged it to practice for thousands of hours until they were masters. Because the Internet offers anyone with access to it a level playing field to create and execute ideas, the takeaway was again: Once you have the opportunity, it’s time to work, work more, and then work even more on top of that. This led to the coining of the popular “10,000 hour rule.” I apply this rule to my blog, my marketing skills, and my writing style.

Permission Marketing by Seth Godin: A must read for anyone who markets anything online. This book was a game changer when it was written. This book has shaped the strategy of my blog as well.

Delaying the Real World by Colleen Kinder: With all of the other books I’m reading telling me to work, work, work, this was a refreshing read. It is a book dedicated to opportunities young people have to travel, work abroad, and explore the world. The best part about blogging is that you can be working anywhere in the world as long as you have Internet access. So rather than gloomily blogging in my dark basement for years and years, why not spend a few weeks blogging and backpacking Europe? The last thing I want to do is lose out on my 20s because I let the world pass me by as I hyper-focused on one goal. This book is opening my mind to many of the opportunities available, and I’ve already begun researching different cities and travel programs.