Why, how and what to read.

Summary: General advice on why, how and what to read.

Why you should read.

Making reading a dail habit is essential for your own self-improvement, taking time out of your day to read a chapter or two will create a progressive learning experience in understanding of a subject.

To get the most out of what one reads on the TRP sub, especially from EC and Vanguard posters you not only have to understand the terminology that is in use, but also the history and deeper meaning of certain concepts, which can be found in various books.

Reading is not a substitute for action, but it fuels futher action because it will cut down on the amount of trial and error you have to do to understand something. Reading will make you understand it, action will make you internalize it. Reading without action and action without reading leads to unnessesary frustrations.

Reading should be a daily habit in the same way as going to the gym, approaching women and keeping a clean diet. Its like excerise for your brain. Those days where you don't feel like reading, meditate for 5 minutes then read anyway. Keeping the habit in check will make you finish books faster, and the more you read, the more knowledge you get that you can apply to life and that will feed of itself and serve you well in the long run.

How to understand what you are reading.

Have you ever read a book, article or post that made you tune into the same way of thinking as the author is presenting? Its the same as when a comedian tunes into the crowd and the audience starts thinking in the same way as the comedian, making the jokes funnier and the deeper meaning behind them feel almost like he is exposing a truth. The goal is to achieve this as much as possible when reading.

Try meditating before you read, clearing your head of thoughts will make place for new.

Now every book or chapter is not going to do this for you, sometimes you read about a subject that you alredy have knowledge about or something that genuinly doesn't interest you, and sometimes you just lack the concentration to achieve this state. To battle this you should be going back to books you've read in the past and skim through a couple of chapters to see if something new clicks with you.

Reading serveral books at the same time will make you plow through more information quickly, getting stuck in a 750 pages book will put you off reading because it gets boring, or the authors writing style gets to repetitive. If you find yourself stuck in a book, pick up another one and increase your reading. Shifting between two different authors and subjects will keep you being interested and with the increase of reading you will still progress.

Books like The art of Seduction or Mastery can be read over a long time because they grasp a very big subject and your comprehension of it will take long time to internalize. Smaller books like Models, The power of Now and No more mr nice guy touches wide subjects, but in a shorter way. Those books are excellent to read in a couple of days along side of longer books, taking to much time to read them will result in you losing the perspective that they give. Its better to read them serveral times instead of slow-reading them over the course of 2-3 months.

Improving your reading speed will make you plow through books faster, Tim Ferriss has a great video about that on youtube.

What to read.

Find out what works best for you, a physical copy of a book, a PDF on your computer or a kindle. Personally I prefer physical copies because reading from a screen distracts me, most books can be bought on Amazon where you also will find reviews about them. Make a point to enter some kind of discussion about a book after you finish it, reading a book review, commenting on threads, joining the IRC or having a book club is great ways to get other peoples perspective, this is great for not only you sharing your thoughts to help others, but also for you to find things that you missed out on.

Robert Greenes book The 48 Laws of Power should be one of the first books you read when swallowing the pill, my advice is to read one law a day for 48 days. Every day when you finish a chapter you go into the 48 Laws of Power Superthread in the sidebar and read the discussion about that chapter to get some examples and a deeper understanding of every law.