How To Read Like A Pro — Lessons I’ve Learnt From Ryan Holiday

Ryan Holiday is an American best selling author of numerous different books including The Obstacle Is The Way, Stillness Is The Key and Ego Is The Enemy. He’s also one of my favourite authors. Not only have I learnt how to become a better writer and person from Ryan’s books, but he’s also made me a much better reader.

Here is a breakdown of how Ryan Holiday reads and how it can make you a better reader too …

How to Read

Read physical books

Ryan prefers to read physical books. He says that reading is a practice which ideally should take us away from screens since we spend too much time looking at them as it is. I agree Ryan!

Read with a pen in hand

Always be reading with a pen in hand. Take notes, write in the margins, fold the pages which you like, highlight and underline things which you find interesting like quotes, passages, and words you want to look up. Ryan says “beat the crap out of a book… authors take it as praise”. I used to feel a bit guilty about “beating the crap” out of my brand new, perfect books, but Ryan has made me think otherwise. Reading with a pen in hand and beating the crap out of the book is a must, especially as a writer.

Take your time

Even though Ryan manages to read a whopping 100–200 books a year “because it’s his job”, he still says he reads slow. He claims “speed reading is bullshit”. You’re not reading to get through the book as fast as you can, you’re reading to absorb information and get better at what you do.

Organising what you read

Let the book sit

After you have finished reading a book, put it on the shelf and move onto the next one. Let the books you have read sit for a couple of weeks or a month. Allow for the material you’ve read to marinade for a short while.

Transfer onto notecards

Sit down with the book you previously read, break it apart and transfer all the things you highlighted and underlined etc and write them down on notecards. Each notecard you write should have a theme too i.e. life, time, investing etc, it obviously depends on what you have previously highlighted.

How To Use What You Read

Storing the notecards

Take the notecards you’ve wrote and store them away in an appropriate place. Ryan stores them away in a plastic box with dividers, I store mine in a converted shoe box! Every notecard should be stored in its own category depending on the theme of the card. The more cards you write, certain topics will start to become more and more common.

I know, the whole process sounds a bit monotonous and very long winded, but the process of reading a book once, going back through it, writing things down by hand and then organising it allows you to engage with the material over and over again until it’s locked into your brain. It almost creates a back up hard drive of what you have already read and learnt. Obviously you’re not going to remember everything you’ve read, but by writing it down, the information is there for potential use in the future.

You’ll read and come across a lot of information which doesn’t seem relevant right now, but think of it like you’re investing your time now for something which will come in useful in the future.

Ryan Holiday swears by this process and gives it an enormous amount credit for the massive success he’s had as a writer. It’s not a system that Ryan started himself though, he learnt it from Robert Greene when he worked for him as his apprentice, and Robert Greene learnt it from people before him. It’s a system which has been going on for hundreds of years.

I know it’s helped me out a lot with my writing, and even if you have no intention of writing yourself, it could still be very beneficial.

Give it a try, see what you think!