A Guide to Reading More Productively

An average reader will get through 12 books, with an average of 400 pages, per year. That’s 1,440,000 words per year, just for the average person.

The trouble with most books is that the blurb rarely gives you what you need. Page after page is turned, before you know it, you’re at the last chapter and you feel hollow. You had such high hopes for this book, but you’re left with a sense of regret as it hasn’t turned out as you’d hoped.

There are many annoying aspects of life, but spending precious time, invested in a book, only for it to turn out to be a disappointment, is up there with the worst.

Regardless of whether you’re a reader of Health and Well being, or are looking for inspiration for a Business or writing journey, we all start by reading the work of successful people before us. So, why bother guessing which books will be of value?

What if there was a way of quickly knowing which books will bring you value and are essential reads? Step forward, Shortform.

What is Shortform?

An app that delivers a condensed view of books that interest you, based upon your favorite niches, Shortform can tell you, in 5 minutes, whether a book will be worth your time to read.

Not only are you able to manually search for books that you’re intending to read, but Shortform will, much like Medium, deliver a customized feed of reading material that it believes will be of interest to you, based on recent searches.

Often the best articles you read are recommended to you and would otherwise fly under the radar, so having these pushed towards you is incredibly worthwhile.

Productivity is key

Every motivational speech or inspirational article will tell you “just get started”. But how do you do that if you’re stuck on research? You’ll never start that business if you’re spending half the year reading books for inspiration.

The biggest shift you can make is to allow useful material flow to you, rather than going out to chase that material yourself.

Freeing up your time to write, whilst also consuming great content from other authors is the most powerful way to make a success from your freelancing career. If you’re able to continue to learn while giving value to an audience, you’ve cultivated a successful and rewarding cycle.

A Clear Layout

Even to the most seasoned reader, slogging through hundreds of pages, just to find the odd uncut gem of inspiration, can be tough. Some books do genuinely offer some excellent advice, but don’t cut to the chase quickly enough, so lose engagement with a reader before the message is delivered.

The most successful books will promise a message, deliver it quickly and build upon that message. Not only will this give the reader what they were looking for, but will give them extra information that they hadn’t expected; that’s the hook to get repeat readers.

What I've been most impressed with, on Shortform, is the layout of the articles. As you’re given a concise summary of the book, what it intends to deliver and what you’ll earn from reading, it’s far easier to pinpoint whether it’s worth reading.

Rather than spending hours, trying to find that one snippet, you have everything you need, one one page.

Below is an example of just how easily Shortform lays the info out for you

Pricing Plans

One thing to mention immediately is that Shortform is free, but only for a certain period. Having passed the initial 5 day period, it will set you back $16.42 per month to continue using the app, something that puts a lot of people off.

However, when you consider that you have access to thousands of books, which are condensed to provide you with the most useful parts of each, the app pays for itself.

For example, if you’re interested in buying Jordan Petersons 12 Rules of Life, you’ll be set back $12 for the privilege on Amazon; as well as the time it would take for you to consume the information it contains.

By using Shortform, you’ll earn back the fee within just a couple of book reads and it will give you the opportunity to read more than you would do with just physical copies.

Conclusion

Freelance work is time consuming. Not only do we spend our hours trying to nurture relationships with potential clients, we have late nights and early mornings trying to refine content that goes above and beyond the expectations of readers.

As we never stop learning, we also need to find time in the day to continue reading and learning from successful people who have blazed the trail before us.

To allow us to focus on our own work, there are apps out there to bring useful information to us, rather than us going out to find it.

By using Shortform, I’ve freed up more time in my day, to allow me to grow my freelance business. I feel that, as I continue to grow on Medium and on other writing platforms, it’ll be a vital weapon in my armory as a content creator.

I have no affiliation with Shortform and will not make a commission for any purchases as a result of links in this article. Having enjoyed the app myself, I hope that it will also bring value to my readers