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"In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn’t read all the time – none, zero." - Charlie Munger

One of the benefits of reading is that it allows you to master the best of what other people have already figured out. Of course, this is only true if you can remember and apply the lessons and insights from what you read.

Reading is a way to discover new ideas. The question is, how do we do that well? 

This essay outlines how to get the most out of your reading. Whether it’s a book, article, or academic paper — it doesn’t matter. The goal is to use our time efficiently. 

Quit Books

My philosophy with reading is simple: Skim a lot of books. Read a few. Immediately re-read the best ones twice.

Good writing is effortless reading. Bad writing, on the other hand, feels like a chore. Good writing is felt instantly. Not only is it packed with ideas and insight, it has a certain momentum that compels you to keep reading. 

Quitting a book is not as easy as it seems. We’ve been taught our whole lives to finish what we start and that anchor prevents us from moving forward. A book we are no longer interested in often sits on our nightstand, serving as a visual reminder of what we need to finish before starting something new. 

When it comes to reading, you don’t need to finish what you start. You can quit. Once you realize that you can quit without guilt, everything changes. 

Reading a great book twice is better than reading ten average ones. All the time you spend reading something bad comes at the expense of reading something good. 

Levels of Reading

Reading the words is the easy part. We learned how to do this in elementary school. But reading the words is not enough if you want to retain and apply what you learn. 

The first lesson of reading comprehension is that not everything needs to be read the same way. Tailoring how you read to what you read saves you time and increases retention.

Some books deserve a skim, while others deserve your undivided attention. 

How much effort you put in relates to what you’re reading, why you’re reading it, and how interested you are.

How to Read a Book explores four approaches to reading (from easiest to hardest). 

  1. Reading to Entertain — The level of reading taught in our elementary schools.
  2. Reading to Inform — A superficial read. You skim, dive in and out, get a feel for the book, and get the gist of things.
  3. Reading to Understand— The real workhorse of reading. This is a thorough reading where you chew on things and digest them.
  4. Reading to Master — If you just read one book on a topic, odds are you have a lot of blind spots in your knowledge. Synoptical reading is reading various books and articles on the same topic, finding and evaluating the contradictions, and forming an opinion.

Reading takes effort. Choosing where and how to apply that effort makes the difference. 

Choose Books Worth Reading

The most important thing when it comes to reading is selecting great inputs. 

Just as it’s harder to make healthy choices if your house is full of junk food, it’s difficult to get great insights from bad writing. 

If you’re like most people, you’ll naturally be drawn to newer writing. New books, for example, are full of marketing and … empty promises. While a few new books might prove valuable, most will be forgotten quickly after you finish them. 

One way to filter books is through time. 

Time filters out what works from what doesn’t. And there is no need to waste time on books that don’t last. Time sorts the books worth reading deeply from the ones that should be skimmed or ignored. Most of what you need from new books (skill development, recipes, etc.) can be found quickly and easily online. 

Reading time is limited and should be directed at the knowledge that accumulates and compounds rather than something that quickly perishes. One surprising benefit to reading books that stand the test of time is that I’ve stopped reading the news

Read old books. Read the best ones twice.

Think about it this way: if you read an old book and hit on insights that still resonate as true, you know they’ve been true for a long time, and they will continue to be true in the future. 

Reading Speed

Reading speed is a vanity metric. 

In the real world, no one cares how fast you read or how many books you read last year or last week. All that matters is what you absorb and apply. 

Reading one great book slowly is better than quickly skimming one hundred average books. 

A good book, deserves to be savored. Find something worth reading, then chew on the ideas slowly and deeply.

The Simple Note-Taking System to 10x Retention

The single biggest change you can make to get more out of the books you decide to read deeply is the blank sheet method of note-taking. It took me years to develop this system, and it will be 10 times your comprehension. I don’t say that lightly. I’ve tested it on thousands of people. 

The blank sheet method primes your brain for what you’re about to read and shows you what you’re learning.

Here’s how it works:

  1. Before you start reading a new book, take out a blank sheet of paper. Write down what you know about the book/subject you’re about to read — a mind map. 
  2. After you finish a reading session, spend a few minutes adding to the map with a different color pen. 
  3. Before you start your next reading session, review the page.
  4. When you’re done reading, put these ‘blank sheets’ into a binder that you periodically review.

Why does this work so well?

The blank sheet method primes your brain for what you’re about to read, offers structure, and reinforces that you’re learning. 

When you first start with a blank sheet, you’re forced to search your memory and put on paper what you know (or what you think you know) about a subject. As you read, you see that understanding grow as you add new knowledge to the foundation. 

Not only will you add new knowledge, but equally valuable, you’ll remove things you thought you knew that turned out not to be so.

Reviewing what you know about a subject, as well as what you have already learned before a reading session, not only improves memory and recall but helps layer and connect ideas.

Most of the early connections come from putting the authors’ raw material onto your foundation. If you don’t know anything about the subject before you start, don’t worry. You’ll be able to borrow the scaffolding in the book to get you started.

As your fluency in a subject grows, you’ll start connecting ideas across disciplines, disagreeing with authors about specific points, and even developing your own ideas.

When you’re done with the book, put the page into a binder. Review the binder every few months. This last step is essential for establishing deep fluency and connecting ideas across disciplines.

Conventional Note-Taking

Forget the teacher who yelled at you for writing in your book when you were a kid. You bought this thing. It’s your property. Write in the margins. Make it yours. 

Here is a very simple process to take notes while reading:

  • At the end of each chapter, write a few bullet points that summarize the main idea or specific points. Use your own words and not the authors’. Try and connect it to something in your life — a memory or another idea. Also, make note of any unanswered questions you had while reading.
  • When you’re done with the book, put it down for a week.
  • Pick up the book again and go through all your notes. In a lot of cases, reading your notes will be as good as reading the book again.
  • On the inside cover, write out the main idea of the book using your own words. If you find yourself stuck, review your notes. (This is called the Feynman Technique). Writing is the process by which we often discover we don’t know what we are talking about.
  • You can even make a custom index on the back cover with themes or topics.
  • (Optional) Copy out the excerpts by hand and put them on the back of your blank sheet from above, or type them out and put them into Evernote. Tag accordingly.

The point of both conventional notes and the blank sheet is to connect new knowledge to old knowledge and point out gaps in your understanding. 

Writing about what you read is the key to turning the experience of reading into knowledge you can use. Writing is reflection. Reflection is the key to learning

Reading More

You can’t get where you want to go if you’re not learning all the time. One of the best ways to learn is to read.

Reading habits don’t need to be complicated; you can start a simple 25 page-a-day habit right now. While it seems small, the gains add up quickly.

Above all else, remember that just because you’ve read something doesn’t mean you’ve done the work required to have an opinion.

“Feedback is an effective tool for promoting efficient behavior: it enhances individuals’ awareness of choice consequences in complex settings.” —“Feedback and Efficient Behavior,” Sandro Casal, Nives DellaValle, Luigi Mittone, and Ivan Soraperra

We all want to improve at something. Skills we’d like to develop, habits we like to change, relationships we’d like to improve—there are lots of areas where we’d love to see positive, meaningful change.

Sometimes though, we don’t know how to keep moving forward.

We do research. We think of strategies. We try to implement a few tactics. And then we get stuck because we aren’t sure if what we’re doing is moving us in the right direction. So we keep on spinning our wheels, running without getting anywhere.

When you’re stuck, you need feedback. Feedback is a valuable source of information that you can use to effect the changes you want. You need information that tells you what you’re doing well and where you’re going wrong. Then you can use that information to plan tactics for bridging the gap between where you are now and where you want to be.

The more feedback you can get, the better. But how do you get good feedback?

Sometimes feedback is obvious, like when someone laughs at one of our jokes. They found it funny, and their reaction emboldens us to later try the joke on someone else. Sometimes feedback is codified into our professional lives, such as during a formal performance review.

Often though, if we want feedback we have to actively seek it out.


How feedback works in behavior change

“A robust finding in economics, psychology, and behavioral sciences is the systematic failure to act according to rational well-informed preferences. This failure to rationally process and integrate information due to limited cognitive resources may lead to inefficient behavior in many domains of everyday life and may produce costs that, in some cases, can be avoided simply by highlighting the consequences of such behavior.” —“Feedback and Efficient Behavior,” Sandro Casal, Nives DellaValle, Luigi Mittone, and Ivan Soraperra

A really simple example of the effect of feedback on behavioral change is energy consumption. Most people don’t have a deep understanding of their energy usage. In your home, do you use more or less energy than your neighbors? What’s your consumption like compared to the national average? The global average? What activities and habits use the most energy? Studies show that feedback on usage can be used quickly by consumers to make lasting change.

If you decide you want to reduce your energy consumption, research on how to do it is a great place to start. But feedback on the impacts of your subsequent choices is equally important.

Energy companies have started providing consumers with detailed information on their consumption, such as amount used in comparable months, what in the home is using the most energy, and usage according to time of day. Some companies go further by relating energy consumption to local and global effects, like brownouts and light pollution. People can then further adjust their behavior by switching appliances or better insulating their home, and they can stay motivated to stick to the new behavior because of the consistent feedback.

Having direct feedback on the results of your specific actions can reinforce positive changes, help you develop habits, and inspire you to take further action. Feedback also helps you set goals for what you can reasonably accomplish.

Trying to make ongoing systemic changes in life without feedback on those changes is hard. Feedback gives you the information you need to improve. Without it, you may be completely missing the mark of what you want to achieve.

Don’t be afraid to ask for feedback

Asking how you could be a better partner, team member, friend, or leader from the people best placed to give you accurate feedback is a requirement for improving. If your actions are eventually going to get you fired, divorced, or ghosted by your close friends, you probably want feedback communicating the steps you’re taking toward disaster. Getting useful information in an ongoing, iterative loop gives you the opportunity to discuss solutions and make changes.

Feedback is baked into some professions. Writers have editors. Athletes have coaches. Actors have directors. When you trust the source, it’s easier to accept and incorporate feedback.

If you aren’t getting enough feedback or you want to augment what feedback you routinely get, hire a coach—an expert who knows how to give useful feedback in the area you want to improve in. No one is so good at something that they have no room for improvement. We can all get better. And if you want to get better, you have to be open to the feedback you receive. You don’t have to agree with it, but you do need to hear it. Getting defensive, critical, or shutting down will lead you to miss information and prevent others from attempting to give you feedback in the future.

If you want honest feedback, you have to prepare yourself to listen to things you might not want to hear. When you ask for feedback, explain that you’re looking to identify your blind spots and that you’re genuinely seeking information that will help you improve. Be as specific as you can. Be gracious with the results, even if they’re unpleasant. Remember that listening to a perspective doesn’t mean you endorse it.


The power of feedback

When you’re aware of how powerful strong feedback can be, you may find you’d like to start giving more of it. When giving others feedback, ask yourself what information they might need to make meaningful change. Giving great feedback isn’t about convincing others to do things your way. It’s about giving them insight into how to improve on their own methods.

Giving good feedback requires an awareness of both what you’re saying, and how you say it. To the first point, make it personal, provide specific examples, and notice how things have changed over time. Reassure the person that you are trying to help them be a better version of themselves, that you are in their corner. Consequently, be aware of your tone. You’re a team member, not an accuser. And choose your timing wisely. At the end of a busy work day is probably not the time to give constructive feedback. People need the space to hear and process what you have to say.

We all want to get better at something. Don’t underestimate the importance of feedback in helping you reach your goals.

BY KIRA M. NEWMAN AND JANET HO 


There’s no shortage of mindfulness and meditation apps these days, promising to help you combat anxiety, sleep better, hone your focus, and more. We took the overwhelm out of finding the most valuable and easy-to-use meditation apps that are available free and narrowed it down to these five apps.


5 Free Meditation Apps We’re Happy We Downloaded

1) Mindfulness.com


Available for iOS, Android, and web

Entry price: Free

With over 2,000 guided meditations from world-leading teachers, this app caters to both beginners and seasoned practitioners.

The interface includes five tabs: Mini, where you can find quick and easy mindfulness exercises you can do anytime throughout the day; Meditate, where you’ll find all of the app’s 2,000+ guided meditations; Sleep, which houses restful and relaxing meditations for deep sleep; Radio, where you can find mindfulness music and sound scapes for focus and calm; and finally the For You tab, which is really what makes this app stand out.

Throughout your use of this app, you’ll be prompted to provide information about your preferences, goals, and the type of support you’re looking for. The app will then offer personalized daily coaching videos paired with guided meditations on the For You tab. You can choose what length you’d like your daily meditations to be—from five to 30 minutes—depending on your schedule and level of practice. Opportunities to dive deeper include meditation courses, expert Q&As, breath work, journaling prompts, and more. 

Whether you’re looking to reduce stress and anxiety or seeking support for overall mental health, the Mindfulness.com app is a solid resource. The multitude of functionalities offered by this app puts your mindfulness journey in your hands and enables you to grow in the direction of your choosing at your own pace. 


2) Insight Timer


Available for iOS, Android, and web

Entry price: Free

Insight Timer has a huge library of content: over 80,000 free guided meditations from over 10,000 teachers on topics like stress, relationships, healing, sleep, creativity, and more.

Right from the beginning, the app feels like a global community—the world map on the home screen shows a collective of 18 million meditators, and announces, “741k today, 7k now.” After you finish a meditation, you’ll learn exactly how many people were meditating “with you” during that time—and by setting your location, you can even see meditators nearby and what tracks they’re listening to.

Once you find a teacher you enjoy—like Jack KornfieldTara BrachSharon Salzberg, or Rhonda Magee—you can follow them to make sure you don’t miss any new content. You can also tune in to free talks for life advice and inspiration. For those craving real-time interactions, Insight Timer offers live events every hour of the day to join on a whim or plan into your schedule. 

You can even sign up to Circle for Teams, one of their newer offerings, which allows you to create circles (read: groups) to meditate in real-time with friends or colleagues.

If you prefer a quieter meditation, however, you can simply set a timer and meditate to intermittent bells, calming ambient noise, or soothing music.

Depending on your preferences, Insight Timer’s extensive collection can be either a blessing or a curse—an endless list of choices that leave you overwhelmed or a buffet of tempting options to sink your teeth into.


3) Smiling Mind


Available for iOS, Android, and web

Entry price: Free

Smiling Mind hits the sweet spot for a free mindfulness app in so many ways. 

The not-for-profit app features hundreds of meditations, enough to keep you engaged without overwhelming you with choice. They are organized into structured programs like Mindful Foundations (35 sessions), Sleep (6 sessions), Digital Detox (8 sessions), and Stress Management (10 sessions), but you have the flexibility to choose where to start and to easily jump between programs. Most meditations are in the five- to fifteen-minute range, with a few practices up to 45 minutes for advanced meditators. Smiling Mind also offers bite-sized meditations between 2 to 5 minutes for moments when you’re in need of a quick, mindful pause in the day.

Downloaded by over 5.5 million people, the app also has a variety of specialized programs for families, children and teens of various ages, healthcare workers, and educators (including curricula they can use in the classroom); all developed with the help of psychologists and health professionals.

While you could use a meditation app as a temporary break from your hectic life, Smiling Mind wants you to take your mindfulness practice off the cushion and into the rest of your day. Interspersed with some of the meditation programs are instructions for “activities” like Journaling Exercise, Go Offline, Where Did My Food Come From, and Count Your Senses. In the Count Your Senses activity, for example, the audio prompts you to bring your attention to your senses by counting things that can be seen, felt, heard, smelled and tasted. 

Smiling Mind was originally created for kids, so they offer a robust selection of kid- and youth-appropriate mindfulness sessions. 

Created by a nonprofit by the same name, Smiling Mind is entirely free—so you don’t have the distraction of paid content that’s inaccessible to you as a free user. The app wants to put a “smile on your mind”—and it might just succeed. 


4) UCLA Mindful


Available for iOS and Android

Entry price: Free

If all the research on mindfulness has persuaded you that you need to meditate, the UCLA Mindful app could be a good place to start. 

Developed by the Mindful Awareness Research Center at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), the app features about a dozen meditations of different types in English and Spanish. You can learn to focus on your breath, your body, or sounds; work with difficult emotions; and cultivate loving-kindness in sessions ranging from 3 to 19 minutes long.

If you’re new to mindfulness, you might choose to take advantage of their Getting Started section, which offers information on what mindfulness is, how to choose a meditation, which posture is best for your practice, and what research-backed benefits you might expect from it.

As a bonus, the app also offers longer meditations that it calls “podcasts.” These are half-hour audio recordings of meditations that include talks, typically by UCLA Director of Mindfulness Education Diana Winston, before and after the meditation, as well as plenty of silent practice time. 

If you’re looking for an app that is heavily grounded in the science of mindfulness, you can put your trust in UCLA Mindful.


5) Healthy Minds Program

Available for iOS and Android

Entry price: Free


The Healthy Minds Program app wants to help you develop the skills for a healthy mind—by strengthening mental focus, decreasing stress, and growing resilience, compassion, and better immune health.

Founded by neuroscientist Dr. Richard Davidson (who also founded the research institute Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison), the app integrates neuroscience and research-based techniques with meditation training to increase overall well-being.

The framework of the app’s mindfulness and well-being training is organized into four pillars: Awareness, Connection, Insight, and Purpose. Each pillar consists of three to five parts, and each part contains three series and multiple sessions within. For the Connection pillar, for example, the Innate Self-Worth series includes five sessions packaged to foster self-worth (think sessions like Practice Seeing the Good In Ourselves, and Learn Negativity Bias). You have a choice of either a Sitting or Active type of practice—“active” practices include guidance for being mindful while you exercise, or during your commute—and you can customize the length of time (five minutes to 30 minutes).

The app offers a collection of 27 meditations outside their four-pillar wellness framework, including one-minute Micro Practices for when you’re in need of a brief respite. 

At times the podcast-style app may encourage more thinking compared to typical guided meditations, but for the listener who is seeking guided meditations with the greater goal to increase awareness, cognition, and well-being, Healthy Minds Program app may be just the ticket.


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INGREDIENTS


  • 1 cup (120 g) all-purpose flour*
  • 1 cup (80 g) old fashioned rolled oats
  • 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda
  • 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 1 large egg
  • 1 cup (225 g) plain Greek yogurt
  • 1/4 cup (80 g) honey
  • 2 Tbsp (24 g) coconut palm sugar
  • 1/4 cup (60 ml) unsweetened almond milk
  • 2 tsp vanilla extract
  • 1 cup (140 g) blueberries, frozen or fresh



DIRECTIONS

  1. Preheat your oven to 350F (176C) and prepare a muffin pan by spraying the cavities with cooking spray or greasing them with oil. Set aside.
  2. In a large mixing bowl, combine the flour, oats, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt. Set aside.
  3. In a separate bowl, lightly beat the egg just to break it up. Whisk in the yogurt, honey, sugar, almond milk, and vanilla, mixing until well combined.
  4. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients, mixing gently until just combined. Toss the blueberries in 1 Tbsp (7.5 g) of flour to prevent them from bleeding or sinking to the bottom of the muffins, and fold them into the batter.
  5. Divide the batter evenly among the 12 muffin cups, filling almost to the top. Add a sprinkle of coconut sugar, if desired.
  6. Bake for 20-22 minutes, or until the tops of the muffins are firm to the touch and toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean. Allow the muffins to cool in the pan for ~5 minutes before transferring them to a wire rack to cool completely. Store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 5 days, or freeze for up to 3 months.


A teacher's vitality or capacity to be vital, present, positive, and deeply engaged and connected to her/his children and students is not a fixed, indelible condition, but a state that ebbs and flows and grows within the context of the teaching life. Stepping Stone School is committed to a program of professional development devoted explicitly to nourishing the inner and external life or core dimensions that are increasingly important for our educators on their journey.
-Rhonda Paver
The Educator Vitality Journey is a program designed to help our teachers to make a daily, conscious effort to be positive, self-aware, passionate, and fully engaged in their roles, while deepening their understanding of their true potential.