National Security and Double Government

Stop reading passively. My source of advice is that I read textbooks for learning about new things. Currently reading National Security and Double Government. My #1 top tip is to identify what you're reading for. This works more for textbooks than novels. Basically, nonfiction books tend to tell you what they're going to tell you, tell you, then tell you what they told you. Truly academic textbooks have like a "Key Takeaways" section at the beginning and then a series of questions at the end. So, when you're reading something, you should never be like, "Why am I reading this?" or "Why is this relevant?" Instead, actively answer the questions as you read and understand how they all connect to each other. One of the main benefits of reading like this is that you can actually end up reading less. Since you can skip filler examples if you understand the concept, that means you don't have to read those sections. Another benefit is that your attention is truly engaged. Passive reading is boring af and your mind wanders because you're not really focusing on anything. Active reading keeps your mind on the content you're reading. It may still be boring, but at least it's not endlessly boring. You can stop once the questions are answered and the key takeaways are identified. There's an end in sight before you even begin. My #2 top tip is to give yourself time to think about the content. This definitely works for novels. Insight develops over time. Your first thoughts about something aren't always correct or even good. But you'll never get to the truly good stuff—the thoughts that change your life after reading a sentence or paragraph, for example—if you don't make mental space to just ponder what you're reading. This is where you can "ask the book questions", if you've ever heard that phrase, or "have a conversation with the book". Since I primarily read nonfiction books, this is where I ask, "What is this book missing?" or "Wait...if some concept is true, then is it always true?" Self-help books are terrible in this regard, over-promising and never really explaining the limitations of their approaches. Conversely, scientific books are excellent as they tend to explicitly point out the weaknesses in their arguments. My point is that even though you have a book in front of you that has a certain explicit message arrayed in a certain way, you need to give your time to really explore that message and especially your own responses to that message. And some other tips I have are Use a pomodoro timer. Set it as low as 5 minutes, read for that period, then take a 2 minute break. Do that 5 times in a row and you'll have read 20 minutes out of about 30. That doesn't sound too bad, right? 5 minutes of reading is probably sustainable. I got through many a very boring textbooks in college with 30/10. Read at the speed the content demands for the purposes you're reading it. I absolutely burned through Will Wight's Cradle Series. It's 12 non-tiny books of pure fun. But I'm moving significantly slower through National Security and Double Government because I'm not reading merely for fun, but also to understand something about the world and to retain that information into the future. So, the speed you should read something is something for you to determine. That comes with time, too. If you're trying to speed read a textbook...that might not go well. Take an interest in what you're reading. This one was developed while reading very boring textbooks. Just find something interesting in the content. Anything, and fixate on it! Understand how it relates to other concepts, break it to see how the concept fails, try to connect it to other concepts you've learned. In a novel, you might have a favorite character. Try to see the world through their eyes, and how the actions of other characters impact your favorite character. And then compare how they reacted to how you think you would react in that situation knowing what they know. That's all I got. Sorry that most of my advice is for reading textbooks, but...in my defense, I love learning new things and textbooks are one of the best ways to do that, imho. I hope that helps!