Reading Hacks: How To Read More Books, Faster with Noel Warnell

We've got this weird kind of guilt. I, I don't know where it comes from. I experience it myself all the time. If I don't finish a book, I feel guilty. I'm like, ah, I should have finished it like, bullshit. Who, who says you should have if it's not, if you've got the telly on and the program's crap, you just turn it off. You don't feel guilty about it. So it should be the same with a book. If you, if you're not enjoying it, if it's not being helpful and you're finding it frustrating, then ditch it. Welcome back. Everybody. This is one of our extra special episodes because we're talking to people all about learning and something which is key to learning in my opinion is reading. And so I was quite intrigued when a gentleman that I met many years ago in a big German bank was putting stuff on the internet about reading. I'm reading lots of stuff that's really vague. It's vague because I want Noel to talk about it. So. No, Warner. Welcome very much to the podcast. How are you doing? Thank you very much, Ben. I'm doing just fine. Thank you. So this is the awkward bit. Is it where I kind of introduce myself a little bit? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like to say, whatever you want to say can be as long as short as you like. But OK. All right. So I am an agile practitioner is probably how I would describe myself. So I work with a company called Reason at the moment. It's a digital um product design and build company. Um But I do a lot of my own stuff as well and I'm just super interested in productivity and learning and my thirst for knowledge um has taken me on a bit of a journey over the last couple of years specifically around reading, which I think is the, the stuff that you want to talk about today, isn't it Ben? It is. It is. And I also want to talk about something else. Oh, well, is knowledge more liquid than a solid because you said you had a thirst for knowledge. Not a hunger. Yeah, I just try that one out there. That is a great and bit weird question. Um I don't know. I'm gonna have to think about that. I'm gonna have to let that percolate. I think it's like a personality test question, isn't it? Are you thirsty for knowledge or hungry for knowledge? Oh, I'm, I'm, I'm hungry for knowledge. That's me. Well, you're this type of person. Yeah. Maybe, maybe, I don't know. I'll have to, I'll have to do. Uh, maybe I'm thinking it's gonna be more of a fluid thing because I said I need to let it percolate, which is a fluid thing. So we'll see, we'll see what comes out. Yeah, I've never tried to percolate like a bagel, for example, I'm guessing wouldn't get very far. Exactly. Yeah. Anyway, now we've dealt with that topic. Um, I would have said first. Oh, no, I would say I'm hungry but I like the word first and I like thinking of it as a fluid thing. Yeah, it reminds me of that, that sponge. You know, you, you soak it up, you're just there and people can pour it on you and, you know, whether you receive it or not or whether you choose to just rinse it out is up to you and if you're too full it will just overflow anyway. And it won't stick. Um, and you can always eat sponges and they're part of the reef. They're part of the coral reef system. Which so, yeah, save the World one sponge at a time. Right. Let's talk about, uh, reading them because I, yeah, I've had a love hate relationship with reading. I, I, I've loved it when I was younger and I hated it for a very long time. I think, whilst I was trying to figure out how to live with dyslexia was what caused me to, just to dislike it and not being able to hold a narrative in my mind or attention long enough and struggling with the constructions of sentences and things like that. And it wasn't until I hit uh my older years that I've really kind of found a love for reading again. So, as you can tell from my rather blurred background, I do love a book, but they do, I do labor over them. You know, I do spend probably too much time and I've kind of, that's where again, it's going to be turned into a little bit of hate because I just kind of feel like I need to absorb everything. But as I understand it, you've got a method for being able to consume books at pace. I, I have multiple techniques that I've stolen from various different people. So none of this is proprietary. But when you bring it all together, actually, there is, there is some hacks and some skills which you can learn, which can change your experience with reading. I don't want to say I'm deliberately not saying improve because for some people, it's not about improving reading, it's just about doing things differently. Um For some people, it is about being able to read more. Um for other people, it's about being able to retain more and, and for others, it's about just choosing the right content at the right time. Um Because you, you, if you're anything like me, someone puts just a vague quote or a photo of a page with some highlights on it on one of the social media platforms. And I'm like, ok, that looks interesting that, that one line of a 200 page book looks interesting. I'll buy it. So that, that's how I used to be. And you sometimes end up getting really frustrated because the content just isn't strong enough for a 203 100 page book. You know, it, it could have been a decent blog post, but, you know, there's maybe five or six key points within it that you could have got to really quickly. So I tried to figure out how, how can I do this for myself? Um And once I found various different things that work for me, I was like, OK, well, if maybe this is useful for other people, so share a little bit about it and see, see if people are interested to soak it up like a sponge. I see. My instant thought was about getting through the volume. I hadn't considered retention. Yeah, if you, if you're gonna read five books a week, but you can't remember anything about them. Maybe that's OK, probably defeats the point a little bit. Um So, yeah, it's, it's, it's a very personal thing as well. Reading, this is, this is something that I want to impress upon your wonderful listeners is that reading is a very personal experience. So you have to know how to personalize it and the options that you've got to personalize it and to figure out what works best for you. And I think it resonates quite well generally with agile practitioners because it's a bit of this experimental mindset of, let's try a bunch of different things out, not everything's gonna land with me at the moment and that's OK. But if I find out what does great, then I've got information that I can take forward to uh improve or um slow down or whatever it is that you want to do. So, I suppose the key to all of this is having a, what we would uh was known as a growth mindset that this isn't, these types of hacks aren't for people that kind of think that they're, that they're stuck at one point of their reading. They're never gonna get any better. I'm just a, I'm just a slow reader. I'm just a bad reader. I'm just a reader who doesn't retain anything. Like you need to have some open mindedness to the belief that you can improve your pace or retention. You, you have to have a seed of, of hope or a seed of doubt in there, but that's all you need. It doesn't, you don't have to have, you know, been on this journey of self discovery or, and it's, you really don't. I've had skeptics come to meet ups that I've run and actually I quite like it. I like the provocation and the, the challenge that that brings. So, yeah, it's I would, I would recommend anyone can very quickly and easily try some of this stuff out for themselves without, um, you know, having to waste time if that's, if that's what they're worried about. So, how much of this would you be willing to share with us now? Like, we've got, got a little while left. What are the headlines? What are the things that would entice us to maybe come and come and see you in action? Learn more about this. Yeah. Ok. So, um, as I say, it's not proprietary. So I'm happy to share quite a bit. Actually, what we'll be able to get through in a conversation is, is obviously different than what you'll be able to get through on a, you know, a, a five week, 90 minute a week course that, you know, if I was to offer something like that, which is also available and details will be there at the end of the show. Sorry. No, no, no, no, no. Like no self promotional head details will be in the episode description. Absolutely. I was. So, is it five times five blocks and 90 minutes and over five weeks? Yeah, it is. Yeah. Yeah. So it'd be like, I only run it twice a year, five mornings normally in the spring and then five evenings in the autumn. But in terms of, of sharing some stuff now, I think there's, there's a couple of key things that are important for people to understand. Um, and that is that it's not that you are bad at reading or you're not a good reader. That's my stance. There is actually most people learned to read when they were between the age of three and five. And, you know, we were taught to read left to right and every word on the page and look at the picture and try and understand and tie it all together and you start on page one and you go towards the back and then you close and finish the book. Now, that was great when we were 3 to 5, maybe even up to 10 kind of secondary school age. But the content and the structure of books as you become older at school and as an adult changes massively, you know, the the complexity of a book and just the, the structure of the narrative is completely different, but we're not taught how to kind of level up our reading skills, we're still stuck with that kind of novice level kind of elementary level of reading. So for some people like yourself, there's this gap where you, you're picking up more books or you're picking up different kind of books and then you end up with this frustration that this is just not enjoyable for me at the moment. I'm just not getting it. Maybe that's partly because of the dyslexia. Well, I'm sure it is given that we're talking about reading, but a part of that is also the, yeah, that new skill of more grown up reading and actually figuring out if I'm reading a nonfiction kind of business book, then actually, how do I read that in a way that works for me. Yeah, this is very much about figuring out what works best for you and, and understanding that it's a skill that you can train and hone and it's like a muscle that the more you train it, the better it gets. The first thing you need to do is to move away from that level one of reading. And there is a level two, there are in fact four levels of reading according to one of the books on my shelf behind me called how to read a book. Um But yeah, level two is really the key I think. And this is, this talks about inspectional reading. So this is where you've got a limited amount of time, but you still want to get a decent amount of information out from the content. And actually using this technique within 20 to 30 minutes, you can establish whether a book is going to help you right now and whether it's worth continuing with or whether actually you can consider it. No done. I'm, I'm happy I'm gonna put that to one side and it's off the backlog. That's quite a claim. Uh Is it I always say so, I mean, it might bring up some of the space in my bookshelf. Um Yeah, maybe. But so if you, if you break it down into just five minute chunks, so you can say that for the first five minutes, you're not going to do what you were taught to do as a kid and kind of open at the start and work your way through every page. You're gonna just look at the table of contents, you're gonna go to the back, look at the abstract or the index. If there is some and you're gonna, if there's an intro, like a, normally there's like a 3 to 5 page intro, you're gonna read that. That's it. Most people can do that within five minutes and you'll get a sense of oh OK. Is this, is this drawing me in or is it a bit, you know me or actually is it, is it a bit annoying? Um, because you don't always gel with an author. Um And, and that's OK. It's like in life you don't, you don't get on with everyone, but in that first five minutes, you can say, right? I've got a sense now of the type of stuff that's in this book. So do I want to continue? Yes or no? If the answer is yes. OK. Let me figure out how the information is presented in the book. So you take another five minutes and you, you flick through a, a reasonably constant pace, but you're, you're kind of not stopping to get sucked into any particular content. And you're looking for how the chapters are laid out. A lot of modern nonfiction, business type books now are written in a much, much more focused for the reader. So they're structured in a way that helps the reader. So at the start of a chapter, they might have a quote and a paragraph that summarizes, this is what this chapter is about, this is what it's going to include and then they'll have the content and at the end of the chapter, they'll have a summary of bullet points. These are the things we've covered. So that's not something that was in business books. Historically, this is a new phenomenon, I would say, yeah, in the last kind of 5 to 10 years, like if you see it beyond that, it was like really innovative, but it is becoming a lot more common practice. Yeah. Um So yeah, if you're buying a book that's fairly recent, you would expect it to help you as a reader by structuring it in that way. But regardless, you know, how many chapter, uh sorry, how many pages are there in a chapter? You know, is it just 20 pages of pure text or are there images, photos, tables? Do they break it into really clear sections? So this is that second five minutes, you're kind of flicking through the book, you're sussing out how does each chapter, how is it structured? How graphical or visual is the book or, or not at all. And yeah, you start then to get a sense of, ok, I've, now I know what's in the book and I know how that information is going to be presented to me. Pause. Do I want to continue? Yes or no? Um So it's almost like a decision tree. If you like, may, maybe I should map this out. I've not thought of it like that before, but it's just come to me. My pleasure. Yeah, send me the invoice. Um The other thing as well is um that then if you, if you decide you want to continue and you have found a book that's got this kind of structure of an opening and a close for each chapter and just read that, that, that is the nuggets. Everything else in the middle is kind of storytelling and narrative which if you've got the time and you've got the interest, great. But if actually you, you don't, then don't worry about it. Yeah, that's, that's curious because I have found those little little nuggets at the end. I can think. I'm thinking back for a few books. I've been been reusing me recently and they've got those little nuggets at the end and I have found myself flipping to those nuggets to then see if it piques my interest. And I find that they similar, but better than say, listening to Blinks because Blinis really annoys me because I listened to it for books. I've read and I was cutting my head. I was, I blink, I mean, I, yeah, I won't have to read the book. I'll get a similar feeling, but I listen to a couple. I'm like, you've missed so much of the good stuff like that. Really? It irked me a little bit, like, ah, so I kind of stopped listening and maybe I, I went into blink with the wrong idea, I think. And maybe I'll take a fresher approach to it next to like when I go back to it. But yeah, I find that you looking at those little nuggets at the end, does shortcut things a little bit, doesn't it? Yeah, definitely. It gives you an opportunity to pause and reflect and say, do I want to continue with this? Yeah, definitely. And, and a lot of books, even older books will have a concluding chapter. So even if the chapters themselves don't have kind of these bullet points of the key things, just go to that final chapter and read that where it kind of wraps up nicely. Everything that's been presented in the book. But both of those things will give you a really strong sense of. Ok. Yeah, I wanna, I wanna stick with this or not. Um, I think one of the other key things actually is about the decision you make about which book to kind of pick off your shelf to start with. Because again, if you have a recommendation from someone or you're gifted a book and you just read it because it's, it's there. Um, it might not be the right timing. So, actually, especially with the, the nonfiction books, um, I always say, ask myself a couple of questions, which is right. What, what is gonna be useful for me right now? And what would be most help or, or is there a problem that I need to solve? So, is there something that's gonna be helpful or is there a specific problem that I need help to solve? So, using those two questions, you can filter out if you've got a stack of 10 books, there's probably one that will very quickly jump out at you that OK, that's probably the one that I'm gonna pick up next. So you do that, you then spend that first five minutes and then the second five minutes and chances are actually, yeah, by that point you've got a good sense. Um And if there is a specific problem or there is certain help that you need, you're probably gonna know where to find it in the book by that point. So if there is a certain chapter that hones in on that particular thing, you can just go to that chapter and you can read through that content. But then again, don't feel like you have to read the whole thing. We've got this weird kind of guilt. I, I don't know where it comes from. I experience it myself all the time. If I don't finish a book, I feel guilty. I'm like, ah, I should have finished it, that is bullshit. Who, who says you should have, if it's not, if you've got the telly on and the program's crap, you just turn it off, you don't feel guilty about it. So it should be the same with a book if you, if you're not enjoying it, if it's not being helpful and you're finding it frustrating, then ditch it. There was certainly a book. I was reading. It was a fiction book I think. And I got into the last couple of chapters and I was just like, you know what I've done, this is just like, and then there was one book that I, I, I stopped on and I didn't feel bad for stopping it because I just wasn't enjoying it. I think I was in a proper grump. It was the culture code. Ok? I was just reading it. Just remember he made me angry. Um Yeah, because it wasn't based on anyone applying it. It is based on looking at people that are done stuff like it. And then using that as a reason to promote the thing that was being sold. So I did put that one down. But then I know that there's a certain person in my life who doesn't listen to this podcast and she keeps saying that she will do, but she hasn't yet. So maybe we should listen to this one. Who, you know, if we, if if I've invested in a book or invested in the film, I I'm done with this. So we just finish it. You know, you've invested all this time. It's almost like a value for money thing. You know, like I feel compelled to get my value from this. But I think you're right that being able to quit a book enables you to spend time doing something more valuable. And surely that's more value because you feel like you should. Yeah, the value for money. I understand I would reframe this as value for time yeah because the more time and energy that you spend with a book, um then the investment is greater, that personal investment is is greater. So you want to be wise with your investments, especially if you have time. It's one of our most precious uh things in, in the busy world that we live in at the moment. So actually, if you can save yourself some time or be more deliberate about spend, choosing to spend your time in something that's helpful or helps you solve a problem or is it just really enjoyable then? Great? But if it doesn't, then that's ok. It reminds me of my conversation with a guy called Cliff Hazel. Ok. I don't know who's ex ex Spotify, but people just like hearing that I said what he does now, he is the co founder of Flight Levels. Oh, Right. Ok. Yeah, he's a brilliant person. Yeah. Yeah. With class with class and Cliff. Cliff is awesome. And he did three episodes together. He spoke about a book around quitting and we had a big conversation on quitting and saying actually quitting is can be a really good thing. And we need to get over this idea that winners never quit because if we can quit and then reflect and consolidate our learning and not see it as quitting like a failure. But actually let me look back and see what I've learned. Have I got what I wanted from this book. Yes. OK. Let me take that and to say thank you. And let's move on to the next thing. So this quitting can be however we wanna, it can be a really positive thing if we take the time to then consolidate are learning to that point and direct our time. And yeah, it's just like I know you talk a lot about a scrum and, and large scale scrum. It, it's the same principles. Your books are your backlog and they're there for prioritization. And you can run experiments to figure out which one is gonna be the next one or the most important one. You can have these spikes, these 10 minute spikes to figure out. OK. Is this book the right one for me right now? And actually, you might choose to pivot. You know, even when you've got work done, you know, throw away work if you like because you're not gonna complete the story, but it's, it's all the same principles. It's about prioritizing value. But from a sense of the books that you've got on your backlog, yeah, I love that. It makes me really think about product management as well. And this is one of the things that I have found really intriguing of late is something called the Confidence Wheel. OK, which is a prioritization aid. And if it r Gillard, the gentleman who came up with it uses it as part of something bigger. But the confidence will is one of the best things I found in years because it talks about the degree of confidence you can have in a decision, you're gonna make prioritization wise from a product perspective. If the lowest form of confidence is gut feel, you know, you just got a gut feel. There's no other data. I think it's right for them to do and then it goes up to what everyone else is doing it. So surely there's, we should be doing this and then it goes on to. Well, I think I've got, I think we've got a time and a budget to do it. And then it kind of tips over the saying. Well, actually, no, like what about user research, what about market research? What about some A B testing and some prototyping and meeting your users and customers going up to the, when you're actually getting real data from the live environment. And so I kind of see that I was applying that to reading a book because you pick up a book, maybe have a gut feel it. It's what you want or you're picking up a book because everyone else is reading it and you feel like you should do and you kind of think maybe you've got the time but then to carry on regardless, plowing through it. If you're not satisfied with it, you're not getting what you want. It's just against all those kind of product and agile principles as you were saying, it's about being able to stop and pivot. So, you know, this isn't the most valuable thing because you're a user in that respect and you have the power to control how you spend your money and your time. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Something else that you've reminded me of there because we, we're talking about kind of money and, and spending money. But, and, and that can be limiting for some people in, you know, that not everyone is as fortunate as us in the UK to be able to kind of buy books pretty much when, whenever we, we want. Um So there, there are lots of ways if you do have kind of socioeconomic challenges to still be able to read lots of content. Um You know, libraries obviously, if you've got access to a library, a great source of books, just don't mark them up, um, charity shops. I mean, charity shops are an absolute gold mine for books. I can go to a charity shop in my local high street if I haven't been in there for probably a month because otherwise I'll have already raided it. But I can come out with a stack of five or six, like, best selling business books for, like, less than a tenner. It's crazy isn't it Um, it's brilliant and half of them have never been opened. Um Sothat says something doesn't it? Yeah, absolutely. Um But, you know, with the E readers as well, like most people have got a smartphone, there's the Kindle app, you can use that on any smartphone and you can share books. So if you know someone who's got an account, they can share a book with you for two weeks, there's lots of ways to get access to the content as well as opposed to just feeling like you, you have to buy the book. Yeah, I mean, if anyone's listening to this, you know, and they are struggling financially or in an environment or place where their books are really expensive, then there's some contact details and you have to description, let me know your name and which book you want and we'll see what we can do because I uh I think it's, I think books are just such a gift, you know, and I've got no problems with buying your book for people. If I'm now inundated, then I'll, I'll get a loan or something. But I think it's, I feel like we have a responsibility as people who can afford. Yeah. And you're lucky, you know, to go to a charity shop and I go down to my charity shop is full of Jackie Collins and Joe and a bit of Martina Cole. You, you say that, I bet next time you go you will spend a little bit longer and you'll find, you'll find something you weren't expecting. Yeah, definitely some kind of self help or psychology or related book there. There's so much out there, I'll take, I'll take a look now but I'll happily eat my words. Um There's some brilliant book sellers out there. I mean, Amazon, I try and avoid buying books from Amazon nowadays, but there's, is it a books and awesome books? I think they do a good line in second hand books. Go to Amazon. You buying from them anyway. Yeah. So I try, I try and go to them direct now rather than give Amazon their, their slice because, yeah. Yeah. No, I agree. Um World of books is another one they used and, and second hand books and yeah, you can sometimes get things for a couple of quid cheaper, sometimes closer to half price. So. Amazing. Amazing. I think um one of the other things as well. That's, that's bubbling up for me. Um As we're talking, Ben is around the, the type, like the graphical nature of the book. So there are uh um increasing at a rapid rate number of visual nonfiction kind of business e books, you know, even reimagine work that has now been visualized. There's an illustrated version of that. There's a graphic novel of the goal by Gorat the five dysfunctions of a team, you know, that can also be bought in graphic novel form. So, you know, don't be put off if you just don't like lots of words. Actually, there's a huge market that's growing out there for visualized content. And and actually even just Googling, say, say beyond budgeting was a book that I was reading at the weekend, you can just Google Beyond budgeting on and go into the images tab and loads of people have already kind of pulled out the key content and either put it in a slide or a bullet point list or some kind of picture. So there's there's lots of ways to very quickly try and find kind of what the key information is. And the nuggets beyond actually having the physical book and it says all of this is to help people get over the I must read the book from cover to cover that there's a narrative flow which if I don't follow, I'll be um I will punish myself for it. And this is, you know what you're saying about the looking at the chapter, looking at the index, um the introduction to then scanning the beginning of each chapter and looking at the initial paragraph and then reviewing some of the nuggets at the end, trying to find some reasons is always to try and change our relationship with how we learn. Absolutely. That learned behavior of this is how we read is broken. That's fundamental to this whole thing. So, yeah. Absolutely. The, the sooner you can break it in a way that works for you, the better. Absolutely. And I, I don't think there's many people out there who would argue that if you're moving into a new role or you're looking to kind of evolve your career, I know that lots of people are in the agile world and are looking towards the product world and saying, oh, well, this is quite interesting, but actually there's a whole heap of brilliant stuff out there to read these little tips. Maybe we will help people engage with a broader range of materials. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, even, even if you've got a book in front of you, um, or you listen to a book, lots of people listen to books now on, on audible and you mentioned blink, I kind of agree it for me, it doesn't quite hit the mark. There's some value there but not really enough for me. But, yeah, something like audible. And, you know, people listen to books while they're commuting or walking the dog. But I'm amazed when I say to people, oh, um, what speed do you listen to? It at and they go, well, what, what do you mean just normal, like one time speed, like, well, ok. Have you ever tried, like, 1.5 or two times speed? Because literally within a couple of minutes your brain adjusts to that pace of reading. You're still taking it in, in the same way, regardless of your surroundings. But, you know, blind people who use screen reader software, sometimes it's 30 times the speed of normal speech. It's just like it sounds like absolute gibberish to someone who's not blind. Yeah, you just need to tune your brain into it. The same with youtube videos. If you watch a youtube video about an author giving a talk about a book, put it on two times speed and for the first minute, it feels a bit weird and then you just forget. So I, I edit the podcast in about 1.6, which is great to kind of get to that point where I can kind of tune in, but I have to learn someone's voice. So for example, if I'm doing multiple episodes, by the half of the first episode, I'm tuned in and I can up the speed. I'm doing one episode, then I get less of a benefit. One thing that did happen to me recently is that I um listen to the new song by Ringo Starr on youtube. And I was like, oh, this is like pretty pacey. I thought this is this is a bit of a departure because I quite enjoyed this. I said, but production quality sounds a bit, it was a bit shit like what, what's going on? I was listening to it all at half speed and I bet that 11 speed. I'm like 1.5. So try to listen to a new song by Star. Put a link in the description, try to listen to it 1.5 speed. I think it's better than it is at one speed. Yeah. Brilliant. That's good. How, how to rejuvenate all that old music? Listen to it twice. Yeah. Or listen to it backwards, doesn't it then like give you some satanic messaging apparently. Yeah. It was that like Black Sabbath and, but the Beatles actually uh on Sergeant Pepper, Sergeant Pepper was at Abbey Road, actually put in a message recorded backwards on the, like the very inner part of the, the album, the LP would you know what he did? And we should have paid a record this way. Thank God. I think it's on Abbey Road. It's on Abbey Road after her um Her Majesty. I think it's when they do it. So, yeah. Right. I think. Nice. I might Google it. I mean, I should know this. I'm a huge Beatles fan. It's good knowledge. Good knowledge. Yeah. Yeah. But I'm kinda sad that I can't remember. Well, this is, this is the other thing around like retaining the knowledge and you know, people get frustrated Oh, I can't remember everything that I've read. Of course, you can't remember everything you've read and a 250 page book. So again, if your goal is that you want to retain key information, then just try and find that 20% that is the key information and, and get rid of the 80% of noise that's around it and speed reading. You know, we talk about listening to things at a faster speed. There is a skill of speed reading, which can massively increase the, the rate at which you can uh get the content into your brain. But that I think if retention is the goal is, you know, that they sometimes can be a bit at odds with each other because speed reading is based on you looking at the whole content and going through it quickly. Um So actually, for me, this is what I mean about finding what works for you. So it's figuring out what all these different skills are. And then, you know, maybe speed reading is something that changes your life. Maybe it's not, maybe it's something that just winds you up. Um It can be, I had someone on one of the courses and he we because I break each session down into specific uh skill and on the speed reading session at the end of it, his, his reading, speed and comprehension both went down because we, we measure it at the beginning and at the end. And normally you can see a nice chart that, you know, uptick in it and, you know, it just like, ok, that was really interesting for me. It was really frustrating for him. But, you know, when it came to forming a habit of reading, he, he was like, from day one, it was like five minutes a day and he was just able to do it every day. Whereas not everyone else in the group was. So there's lots of different things that can, can help you. They feel inspired to, to give some of this a go really useful practical stuff. And, you know, just to really hammer it home that this whole series on learning is, is so that people can get through more books or get through more videos on youtube and learn new stuff and find new ways to apply it. And I think that the Julie Dirkson, whose episode would have already come out by the time this one goes out, you know, she talks about the difference between the different types of gaps we have that we trying to learn and explain how there's knowledge gaps which it can be filled. And we fill a knowledge gap and we can just apply that successfully repetitively to a high level. But then there's skills gaps and motivation gaps and environmental gaps and communication gaps and then behavioral gaps, you know, and I think that the first stage in all of that is just to find ways that work for us when it comes to filling those knowledge gaps and then figure out. OK, well, if I can't apply it in my environment, what needs to change. And I think this, yeah, this the tips you've given are just so incredibly useful. So, thank you very much. You're very welcome. I love this stuff. I could talk about it for, for many, many hours, many days, which I have a personal thing to ask. I'm curious, is it a thing? So I'm glad I say, is it a thing? It's a thing for me. But there's certain parts of books that I remember, right. But I can never remember the page, but I remember the shape of the text. No, I think, I think you're just weird. Ok, cool. Come on, please. It's funny. Like I don't remember where it is, but I can scan through the book and then the shape of the page, the words on the page. That's what I recognize. I know that is, I mean, you're not, you are weird but not in a, like a, in a bad way. A good weird. You're, you're a good weird Ben. I just, yeah, that's what I want you to take away from this podcast today is that you are a good weird in my book. Um But that is, that is interesting. I've not heard anyone describe the, like being able to remember the shape. That's, that's really interesting. I think that one thing that jumps out when you say that is, that's definitely a certain type of book with a certain type of structure. Because if it's just a book that's plain text, like walls of text, then I doubt you'd get that same reaction. But if it's broken out into sections with some visuals and quotes and things like that, then it's gonna be easier to separate that from. But as long as there's paragraphs, I'm all right. You know, it's funny but I think some of it is just, um, you know, when I, when I was diagnosed with dyslexia, they found it very, and dyspraxia, they found it very hard to pinpoint because I had spent years developing methods to deal with it. And I think it's just part of the way that I've trained my brain to help remember stuff. I, I think, honestly think that's what it is just I'm better with shapes and patterns than I am with like sentences or page and page numbers but a pattern I can kinda hold in my mind. Yeah. I would definitely encourage you to, to buy a graphic novel, um, version of, of a nonfiction book and just see, it sounds like if you're naturally drawn to shapes and imagery that, that might make a, make a, make a difference, I'll give it a go, I'll give it a go. Um, and I wait for the day when I'm gonna show my age now when there is a magic Eye version of a novel. You know, you can just kind of sit there and magic eyes like the hologram like 3d weird thing. You hold it in front of your eyes, you show you pull it out, you get a bit cross eyed and then like a cat appears or something in this year. Wow, maybe that's, that's something we can partner on. We'll create a uh a magic eye version of uh book content. And we also we, we'll bring back Global Hyper Cover t-shirts at the same time. Uh Links to both of those things will be in the description. So everyone knows what on earth we're talking about. Uh No, I think we should wrap it up otherwise I get distracted by all manner of things. Uh Thank you so much for these incredibly useful and I would say game changing tips is a other than me putting the links to the course and stuff about you. Is there anything that you wanna share over and above that to kind of like entice people into your little world of reading? I don't think so because it's, it's really, it's a pull rather than a push. I think so. Yeah, when, when people find themselves interested in this kind of stuff, then they'll find people, other people who are interested in this kind of stuff. But if you find yourself at that point in time, then obviously connect with me on linkedin or um the have a look at the website which is shared here. But yeah, it's, I think it's much more about there. There is, there has to be a need. It's like the work we do with organizations and, and change kind of work. There has to be enough of a need or enough of a sense of urgency to trigger the change. So, yeah, don't force it if, if that's not there, but when you're ready, happy to help. Thank you very much now and thank everyone for listening. We'll be back again at some point in the foreseeable future until then we'll see you soon.