superfood reading

The so-called "super food reading" is essentially like selecting super foods with high nutritional density, giving priority to good books with "high information density, adapting to personal growth needs, and low information redundancy", and using the minimum time investment to exchange for maximum cognitive benefits - it is not a packaged Internet celebrity reading methodology, but an efficient and wild way that ordinary readers have worked hard to save.

At the beginning of last year, I piled up 27 books on my to-read list, and I still had 12 industry quarterly reports to read. At the previous speed of reading page by page, it would take more than three months to complete one round. After trying this method, I finished reading them all in 22 days, and also output 7 industry reviews that can be directly used in projects. It is an exaggeration to say that the efficiency has increased by ten times, but it is true that it has increased by three or four times.

Of course, there are many people who criticize this method. A friend of mine who is doing contemporary literature research complained to my face, saying that this is "chewing books like protein bars, a pure waste of natural resources." Her point of view is actually very correct: Reading novels, essays, and poems requires attention to details. If you read "Autumn Garden" with the mentality of "high information density", you can finish the entire plot of the book in half an hour. However, if you don't turn slowly and page by page, you can't touch the weight hidden in the sentence "When the autumn rain falls, even the grass at the base of the wall sighs."

Just like you wouldn't stew bird's nest for three hours when you're in a hurry, right? It's perfect for chewing on a nut bar and carrying it all morning. The applicable scenario of super food reading is not for you to read leisurely books. My friend who is an operator will take on a new business in live streaming e-commerce last month. She has never been exposed to this track before. She used this method to screen out books with a score of 8 or above on all platforms, published in the past 3 years, and the author is a front-line trader. There are 8 books in total. First, browse the table of contents to identify the duplicated ones. Concepts (such as what is a public domain and a private domain, what is a traffic funnel) were simply crossed out, and each author only read the unique trading cases and pitfall records. In 3 days, he compiled a project proposal framework that could be passed directly to the boss. It was much more efficient than if she had signed up for a crash training camp worth several thousand yuan.

When I choose a book now, I first check the thickness and put a question mark on non-professional textbooks that are over 300 pages. Many best-sellers cram the truth that can be explained clearly in 200 pages into 400 pages. It is no different from the "pseudo-healthy yogurt" with half a bottle of syrup and non-dairy cream added. It seems to have enough weight, but in fact most of them are useless additives. Then go directly to the preface and postscript. If the author boasts over and over again about how many people his method has helped to make millions a year, you can basically pass it. Most of them are parallel imports from WeChat business soft articles. Authors who are really knowledgeable will directly say in the preface that "this book is suitable for people with more than 2 years of cross-border e-commerce experience. Newbies may feel jumpy." They will directly identify the suitable group for you, saving you from wasting time.

The biggest pitfall I have encountered before is that I use this method to quickly read all books. Last time I read a book about Sartre's existentialism. I flipped through it very quickly and felt that I understood the sentence "existence precedes essence". I turned around to chat with a girl studying philosophy, and she confused me in just three sentences - I only remembered the conclusion and did not understand the logic of his previous argument at all. It's like you only ate superfood extract tablets and did not eat the dietary fiber in it. If you don't digest it well, you will have a stomachache. Later, I drew a dead line on this method myself: I could write books on tools, industries, and skills improvement at will. Books on literature, philosophy, and poetry that were not originally written for "usefulness" had to be read slowly while putting aside my utilitarianism.

In fact, there is no one-size-fits-all method of reading. Some people like to stock up on a shelf of books and flip through two pages of a book. Some people need to quickly replenish their knowledge in a short time. "Super food reading" is just an extra choice for people in need. You can't just let people who are in a hurry eat energy bars if you like slow-cooked soup, right? Oh, by the way, last week I used this method to finish reading three AI marketing books. Yesterday when I was making a plan for a client, I happened to use one of the user layering methods. The client directly added 20% of the budget to the project, and it was really good. Of course, when I get home from get off work, I still sit on the sofa and slowly read "Night Submarine" that I haven't finished yet. After all, reading is useful, and being useful is an extra reward, and being happy is the most important thing.