How to read one book per week like a CEO

I didn’t think I could, but I did

On average, a CEO reads one book a week, and if you’re not a bookworm, it’s hard to imagine you could ever do that. The thing you need to know about a book is, it’s not just a series of sentences, it’s an author’s years of experience and study distilled into hours or days worth reading.

Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and many other influential people are doing this, so why not me? You know what, I did, but it wasn’t fast. How do you ask? Allow me to explain.

After watching a couple of motivational videos on YouTube, I set myself the target of reading at least one book a month. The next thing I did was to buy a novel. A few days after reading, I found myself procrastinating more than expected. The mind is a true beast to be tamed. So, after a month and a half, I was able to finish the book. But this was a long way from the month’s target that I set and away from the actual goal.

The thing I find out is, when we buy a book, we own it, so the brain is always trying to convince us that we’re going to read it tomorrow, unless it’s interesting, like a novel. Having said that, my next rational step was to try to rent or borrow a book, because there’s a deadline, and we’ve got to get the book back.

Renting or borrowing did marginally increased reading quality, and I was able to complete a book in a month. Furthermore, with this strategy, I could barely finish two books a month, but no matter how much I wanted to bid for more books, I couldn’t do it. I wanted a different solution to that.

The next possible choice for me was to try audiobooks, but they have their own consequences. They’re good at mobility, you can regulate speed, but trying to grasp a non-fiction book can be tricky if you’re not used to it, and soon, I was set to find out the same thing, the problem with audiobooks was that, in the middle of listening, my mind would sometimes wander around replaying the stuff. This was a matter of concern, because the audiobook will keep going, and by the time you’re back on track, you’ve skipped a few things.

Listening to an audiobook in one place was frustrating and worse than actually reading a paperback.

One day in the gym, I decided to listen to an audiobook instead of music, and surprisingly, it worked. My mind wasn’t wandering, and I was able to understand the material. I know, this is too good to function too smoothly, there were few that need to be just right for this to work, it took a few days to find it out, so here’s how it worked for me: first, the brain needs to be on the autopilot, which means that our brain doesn’t do a lot of thought when performing routine activities, then we can make use of this autopilot state to concentrate on something else, in this case, the audiobook.

This worked well for me. I could easily complete an hour of listening to an audiobook, five days a week, based on the schedule of my workout.
This definitely got me closer to my target, and I was able to finish a few smaller audiobooks. But the books I had on my wish list were massive, so I had to find out a way to double my list from one hour to two.
I stay a mile away from my office, so I walked to the office instead of taking my ride. This gave me an extra hour that I wanted, listing the book on the way back and forth, 30 minutes each.

Now, this tactic has offered a solid two hours a day, which is ten hours a week, and most non-fiction books come under this amount of time. With this, I’ve been able to do most of the books in a week.

I’ve been performing this routine since last year, and all went well before we were struck by the pandemic. I stopped going to the gym and the office, it broke my routine. You see, our life is a series of rituals, and the circle is broken when you take out something.

I was back to square one by the time I learned, now that there was no gym and no office, which means I had to build a new routine. I was trying to listen to the audiobook when I woke up, but I was procrastinating. I know I had to start to exercise at home to restore the routine and a couple of days into the home workout program, I was up to an hour a day on average, but I was always losing another hour, so I started jogging or even just walking in the evening to get that extra hour.

A few days later, I was back on track. Throughout this path, I’ve learned a few things that are necessary for this to work.

Here are a few things to keep in mind:

.You need a routine, and if it fails, you need to create a new one.
· Make sure that you are used to the routine so that your brain is set to autopilot.
.At first, it might be a little difficult to adjust to grasping an audiobook, so don’t give up.
.It’s all right, if you get a little bit every day, you’ll eventually get there.

Here you guys go, this is how I was able to get the CEO’s average reading(listening) a book a week.