Deliberate Reading
Exploring the power of deliberate reading.
We studied the reading routines of over a hundred of history's great men and women. These are people who figured out how to teach themselves to be great by studying the greats who came before them.
The key insight that these great minds discovered is that you can learn greatness like you learn a language. You can internalize the speeches, letters, notebooks, biographies, and finished works of your heroes. This learn-by-immersion technique is a way to master both the inner and outer game of your heroes.
Our words comprise our thoughts, our thoughts create our reality, and our reality shapes our character and destiny. To internalize greatness, we need to synchronize our own inner genius with the genius of our heroes. We don't just look at the menu, we chew and digest.
That's what Scrivium is built to do. It allows you to study the language of your heroes through deliberate practice. That practice is mean to be fun: to feel like an apprenticeship but play like a game. And it's meant to rouse us to a braver pitch in our work and life.
1. Most people read 100 things at 10% effort. The greats read 10 things at 100% effort. Find the best material and be all in.
Let's get a taste of a Scrivium lesson by reviewing six tips for studying your heroes. Think about which of these six tips would unlock your own inner genius most.
Mortimer Adler
M
In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.— Mortimer J. Adler
Friedrich Nietzsche
F
We are friends of the lento, I and my book... At present it is not only my habit, but even my taste—a perverted taste, maybe—to write nothing but what will drive to despair every one who is "in a hurry."
[Careful reading] is that venerable art which exacts from its followers one thing above all—to step to one side, to leave themselves spare moments, to grow silent, to become slow—the leisurely art of the goldsmith applied to language: an art which must carry out slow, fine work, and attains nothing if not lento.
It teaches how to read well: i.e. slowly, profoundly, attentively, prudently, with inner thoughts, with the mental doors ajar, with delicate fingers and eyes.
Most people consume information quickly because they delight in hearing what they already know. But great minds delight in reading at the edge of their understanding or reading something they know but with fresh perspective. Orient yourself to the material so your intellect is fully engaged. Consider if "efficient" reading is the same as "effective" reading.
Rory Sutherland
R
There are things in life where the value is precisely in the inefficiency, in the time spent, in the pain endured, in the effort you have to invest.— Rory Sutherland
3. Great minds imitate greatness. You can study their inward thought process and their outward dialogue like you study a language. This is a big life hack and it's been used for 2000 years. Let's try it...
Jack London rewrote Kipling to become a storyteller. Ben Franklin rewrote essays to master persuasion. Judd Apatow rewrote skits to become funnier. Cicero used copywork to master public speaking. Hunter S. Thompson rewrote the Great Gatsby word-by-word so he could feel what it's like to write the Great American Novel.
Ursula K Le Guin
U
As you read a book word by word and page by page, you participate in its creation, just as a cellist playing a Bach suite participates, note by note, in the creation, the coming-to-be, the existence, of the music.
And, as you read and re-read, the book of course participates in the creation of you, your thoughts and feelings, the size and temper of your soul.— Ursula K. Le Guin
You just practiced "copywork." This technique has helped countless great minds find their inner and outer voice.
4. Great minds know a lot. They become interesting people by gathering a massive collection of "mental lego blocks" from every discipline.
You can rapidly acquire knowledge by answering "pre-questions" that relate to what you're reading. Let's try. Make your best guess if you don't know the answer (like Jeopardy).
5. Great minds take great pleasure from reading and reflection. They live what Aristotle called the happiest life of all: the contemplative life.
Joseph Campbell
J
Read the right books by the right people. Your mind is brought onto that level, and you have a nice, mild, slow-burning rapture all the time.— Joseph Campbell
William Somerset Maugham
W
There's nothing [like reading on Scrivium] that leaves the restless spirit at liberty—which you can more easily take up at any moment, for any period, and more easily put aside when other calls press upon you. To acquire the habit is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.— William Somerset Maugham (edited by Scrivium team 😏)
6. Great minds write. Writing is thinking on paper.
Joan Didion
J
I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.— Joan Didion
At the end of the lesson, after your genius is fed, you'll write. You can write for yourself or for an audience. You can write five words or five thousand. The point is to inhale (read) and exhale (write) each day. These are the habits of history's greatest minds. Let's practice now...
Seneca
S
After you have run over many thoughts, select one to be thoroughly digested that day. This is my own custom; from the many things which I have read, I claim one part for myself.— Seneca