Surgical Reading How to Read 12 Books at Once

When I’m not interested in a book I can drop it and move on to something else, knowing that if I return it will be for a reason. Reading shouldn’t be about checking titles off of a todo list, it should be an exploration of what fascinates you.

It’s a process I’ve developed called surgical reading and it means that when I’m reading a non-fiction book, I focus on locating and removing the most valuable pieces of information from it quickly as possible. This allows me to read many different books across a single topic at once, so I can look at it from multiple perspectives

Forcing myself to trudge through a boring book can put my reading habit at risk, as I imagine it does for a lot of people.

I suggest following a topic over multiple chapters, so if the author starts talking about something on page 2, picks it up again on pages 25-29, and then again at 101-105, read those pages in sequence. Other interesting topics might be mentioned along the way. If so, add those to your map and find their places in the index. Let curiosity and interest take the lead.

Writing in the margins and taking notes is also a huge part of this process for me; underlining words and marking up pages in whatever way sparks a bit of that Marie Kondo Joy that’s going around. I like to draft points to myself—notes, ideas, thoughts. If it’s a hard copy of a book I’ll use a pencil. If it’s digital, I’ll use the built-in notes app.

The biggest return on time I’ve found is to review key points from the previous chapters before starting a new chapter. I’ve found that Anki is well suited for this, but you can use notes to yourself as well.