The reading technique that reshaped my mind
I read slowly, but each page is x10 worth
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🏷️ Categories: Literature, Learning, Mental models.
The information generated each day now exceeds what was produced in an entire century before.
90% of the world’s digital data was created since 2023. We generate ~500 PB per day. That doesn’t mean we have better information. What we do have is an enormous amount of noise competing for the same limited mental space we’ve always had.
All the information you’re swimming in is anchored to the present. You have news 24/7, algorithms that surface the trends of the moment and bury deep whatever happened a few days ago. Every platform is designed to give you an immediate reaction and to capture your attention through novelty. Society as a whole is swimming in a puddle and believes that puddle is all the water there is.
We live trapped in the present without realizing we’re trapped.
Nothing is more dangerous than being trapped without knowing it.
A fish believes the ocean is all that exists, because it has never left the water. It has no frame of reference for what lies outside. Humans do the same thing with our historical moment. We believe our way of organizing the economy, work, relationships, and the meaning of life is simply “how things are,” rather than one possibility among thousands that humanity has already tried — and will try again after you and I are gone. We’re a small thing.
You need something to pull you out of the prison of the present. Something that grants you, even if only for a few hours, an escape from that puddle.
That something is reading.
Deep reading completely reshapes your identity. Whoever converses with the dead ends up thinking with a freedom that their contemporaries — busy scrolling — can’t even imagine.
You transcend the barriers of space and time.
I. To Read Is to Transcend
Machiavelli, the author of The Prince, already spoke about this 500 years ago.
In a letter from December 1513 addressed to Francesco Vettori, a friend of Machiavelli’s and then the Florentine ambassador in Rome, Machiavelli shared his enthusiasm for reading.
He described how, in the evening, he would return home and enter his study. At the door he would remove his day clothes, covered in mud and dirt, and put on his royal and courtly robes. Dressed appropriately, he would enter the ancient courts of the men of old, where, received with love, he fed on the only nourishment that truly belonged to him and for which he was born. There he wasn’t ashamed to speak with them and ask them the reasons behind their actions, and they, with humanity, answered him. For four hours he felt no boredom, forgot every sorrow, did not fear poverty, and death did not frighten him. He gave himself over to them entirely.
Machiavelli was preparing, for a few hours, to become the conversation partner of Livy, of Tacitus, of the great men of antiquity. He read in order to inhabit, even temporarily, a mind different from his own, in another place and time.
That is what happens psychologically when you read seriously.
Modern neuroscience confirms what Machiavelli intuited without needing a brain scanner: when you read deep narrative or argument, your brain activates the same neural networks you would use if you were living that experience firsthand (Speer et al., 2009). Yes, it really is that remarkable.
You are simulating a life that isn’t your own.
Every wise person knows that knowledge is only truly transmitted when real dialogue exists between two people driven by the same question — even if one of them has been dead for two thousand years. An author’s immortality happens each time someone reads them again. That’s why Plato, Seneca, Aristotle, Confucius, and thousands of others are immortal, with incalculable value.
And yet many people ask themselves: what can someone who’s been dead for centuries teach me about life today? That’s why they prefer Google or AI.
Only the fish that doesn’t know the vastness of the world would ask that question…
II. The Dead Know More Than Influencers
History works like an algorithm, and it is, by far, the most intelligent algorithm that exists — far more intelligent than any feed designed to maximize your screen time, believe me.
The internet rewards whatever generates a reaction in the next thirty seconds.
History rewards whatever remains useful after the people who wrote it, the people who first read it, and several generations after them, have all died.
The ideas that survive are the ones that keep solving problems centuries later.
Why do we still read Aristotle twenty-three hundred years later? The algorithm that has kept him relevant is the passage of time itself. Because his observations on virtue, character, and habit still accurately describe how the human mind works, two thousand years later. Life changes, but the basic architecture of the human psyche doesn’t change much.
Why do millions of books that were bestsellers in their day disappear?
Because they answered the specific anxieties of a specific moment that has already passed, without touching anything deeper than that moment.
Nassim Taleb called this phenomenon the “Lindy effect.”
The longer an idea has survived, the greater the probability it will keep surviving into the future. It’s the exact opposite of how fashion, trends, or viral content work, which burn out as fast as they appear. A book that has held up for five hundred years statistically has a better chance of still being relevant in a hundred years than a Twitter thread with a hundred thousand retweets today.
Natural selection eliminates organisms that don’t fit their environment.
History eliminates ideas that don’t fit reality.
It’s the most reliable quality signal that exists, far more reliable than any annual bestseller ranking. Reading great thinkers will show you that you, too, are conditioned by your own era, just as they were by theirs — you simply didn’t know it yet.
From there, you can begin to expand your mind.
III. How to Extract Everything from a Classic
Let me give you an example from something that happened to me recently.
Imagine you’re going to read The Art of War, as I did this past July.
90% of people who buy it saw the cover on an airport bestseller table and read it as a military manual from fifth-century-BC Chinese dynasties. They finish the book knowing something about infantry formations, the mountainous terrain of the state of Wu, and how armies were organized two and a half thousand years ago. They close the book, put it on the shelf, and that’s where it dies. Interesting — zero application.
Reading it to think better is something else entirely.
You need to ask yourself, page after page: what timeless, universal concept lies behind this passage?
Read it again. Remember it.
When Sun Tzu says that the greatest victory is subduing the enemy without fighting, you can take it as something about armies, or as a principle of positioning that applies just as well to a business avoiding a price war, or to a salary negotiation that’s won before you even sit down at the table, because of the reputation you’ve already built. It works for any form of anticipation.
The idea is that the best victory is the one you win without having to fight for it.
The terrain has changed. The mechanism hasn’t. That’s what I mean.
This is what I call “abstraction of principles,” and it’s the reading skill that has completely changed how I approach books. I read slowly, but that’s because every page is worth ten times more. The process is simple, and I want you to understand it — let me walk you through it:
Strip away the context: Every book comes wrapped in a context or setting. The example I mentioned, The Art of War, comes wrapped in a military context. None of that is the high-value content. The first step is consciously recognizing which part of the text is just backdrop.
Look for the concepts: If you removed the proper names, the dates, the technology, the circumstances of the era… what concept would still hold true? For example, the fear of losing status in front of the group works the same in a Paleolithic tribe as in a modern corporate office. Look for that.
Extract the concepts: This is the step nobody takes. Recognize the principle and put it into your own words. Don’t remember things like “Sun Tzu says you must know the terrain.” Remember: “I shouldn’t make any important decision without thoroughly understanding the real context I’m competing in.”
Name it: That’s a very long phrase to remember, but you can give it a memorable name. For example, call it the “Law of Terrain” — the law stating you shouldn’t decide anything vital without knowing the context in detail. Congratulations, you’ve just created your first concept for thinking and acting. Store the idea in your mind, as a piece of your mental toolbox.
Put it to the test: A principle that can’t be applied to any concrete situation in your life is just a pretty sentence to underline and forget. It’s smoke. Take the principle you just named and actively look for where it fits into something you’re currently living through: a business decision, a personal conflict, a doubt about what to learn next, anything. If you can’t find where it applies, it’s not useful. Keep reading. There are thousands more in every book.
Write it down: If it worked for you, you need a place — physical or digital — to store it, so you remember it and keep applying it until it becomes so natural you do it unconsciously. I use my Zettelkasten for this.
Don’t read The Art of War to learn about ancient Chinese military strategy.
Read it to discover the laws of conflict that have never changed, and that will keep operating the same way five hundred years from now. Hold on to that — they need to be timeless, universal concepts. In other words, ones that work in any era and any place.
Only then will you transcend time and space with a breadth of mind that’s startling.
“Books took her to new worlds and introduced her to extraordinary people who lived exciting lives. She traveled all over the world while sitting in her little room in an English village.” — Roald Dahl, Matilda
— Álvaro
Want to know more? Here are 3 related ideas to explore:
How to choose your next book: A simple method so you don’t get it wrong
The Antilibrary: The books you haven’t read are the most valuable ones
P.S. I also offer 1:1 consulting to help you grow on Substack.
If you’re just starting out and don’t know how it works, or if you’ve been at it for a while but are stuck, this will help you. I’ll help you find your direction, position yourself as a leader in your niche, and build a system tailored to your needs for sustainable growth.
My credentials? Over 100,000 global readers in 2 years, 100% organic growth, with 300,000 monthly visits. All from scratch, writing all by myself in my spare time.
If you’re interested, email me at: jardinmental@proton.me
It is so tempting to rush through a read, isn't it? Especially when it is a chonk. I am so glad to see your post today, as I just started re-reading one of the classics of the writing craft genre: Story by Robert McKee. Just going over my notes from my original read years ago has me excited to plunge back in. But I will take my time. I am already adding some of his observations to my commonplace book, which I did not do the first time around.