How to read a lot: Building focus and endurance

Most worthy human endeavors take significant effort over long periods of time to accomplish.

To accomplish them you must have focus and endurance.

Both focus and endurance can be trained and improved.

It's not about how quickly but how much

"Dui, you must be a very fast reader!"

I often hear the fast reader remark, assuming I'm fast given how much I read.

But the opposite is true: I'm a slow reader compared to most people.

What I do, though, is read a lot. Many hours a day, many, many hours a week. I know it because I track my time precisely in 30-minute intervals throughout the year.

For example, here's a breakdown of a year in which I read 800 hours, an average of 16 hours a week.

It wasn't always this way. I started small and built up to this level of focus and endurance over many years of practice.

Looking at my first time log from several years ago, I read much less and watched much more TV. My reading intervals were 1 hour at a time at most, not the 3 hours a day of today.

No amount of "fast reading," whatever that means, would have made up for the sheer volume of reading I do now through improved focus and endurance.

Building focus: sticking to it

I know many training partners in jiu-jitsu who say, "I could have been a black belt today if only I had stuck to it when I started."

I'm one of them. I'd have 6 more years of jiu-jitsu practice if I hadn't stopped many years ago.

But I did stop. I didn't stick to it.

There's an opportunity cost to doing anything. When you do something, it's harder to do something else.

When you say yes to something, you automatically say no to something else.. or even everything else.

Back when I watched more TV, I read fewer books. Now that I read more books, I watch less TV.

Sticking with it is about focus, and focus is about choice. You must constantly choose what you're focused on over the other options.

• Did you decide to exercise? You must choose to exercise instead of waking up later.
• Did you decide to write? You must choose to write instead of having a slow breakfast with the family.
• Did you decide to take evening classes? You must choose to study instead of watching TV or having a family dinner.

If these sound like difficult trade-offs, it's because they are. The hard part about focus is choosing between two great options because only one is your focus.

Focus is about concentration and being fully present. If you focus on writing, you're not checking social media or listening to a podcast.

Once you decide you are focused on something, that is your only choice. Otherwise, you end up with allocation but no progress like those stuck on the same level over several years.

And then you must have the energy to act on your choices. To do what you chose to do. And that's also hard.

Building endurance: doing the work

A clear ability to choose your focus is not enough: the work is hard, but it still must be done.

To do hard work day after day after day, you must have endurance.

Endurance is your ability to endure. It's about how hard things can get while you still overcome.

While focus is cognitive and emotional, about where your mind is, endurance is physical. It's about having the energy and doing what you have decided must be done despite setbacks.

Endurance in all areas of life is built like the endurance of the athlete: a little bit per day, over many, many years.

Nobody can run a marathon on their first run. Similarly, nobody will read 800 hours a year in their first year.

Endurance is not a decision – it's physical. You build it through discipline and by putting in the work and getting out of your comfort zone day after day.

You must build up to it. Endurance is built.

Haruki Murakami on focus and endurance

I'm inspired to talk about focus and endurance by Haruki Murakami's excellent memoir, What I talk about when I talk about running.

In the book, the author explains how you can build focus and endurance as a writer by doing the work and writing every day.

Fortunately, these two disciplines — focus and endurance — are different from talent, since they can be acquired and sharpened through training. You’ll naturally learn both concentration and endurance when you sit down every day at your desk and train yourself to focus on one point. This is a lot like the training of muscles I wrote of a moment ago. You have to continually transmit the object of your focus to your entire body, and make sure it thoroughly assimilates the information necessary for you to write every single day and concentrate on the work at hand. And gradually you’ll expand the limits of what you’re able to do. Almost imperceptibly you’ll make the bar rise. This involves the same process as jogging every day to strengthen your muscles and develop a runner’s physique. Add a stimulus and keep it up. And repeat. Patience is a must in this process, but I guarantee the results will come.

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (Vintage International) (pp. 78-79). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

In practice: choose and endure

We often don't get what we want because we aren't clear about what we are focused on doing.

We say, "I want to lose weight," which is a future state, but we don't say, "I'm focused on eating correctly," which is a focus of something we're doing.

1) Choose

A focus must be an action you're focused on doing.

A focus is not something that just happens – it's something you do:

• Instead of "I want to play this piano song," say "I'm focused on studying the piano."
• Instead of "I want to not have back pain," say "I'm focused on exercising every day."
• Instead of "I want to feel good every morning," say "I'm focused on sleeping early every day."

Turn your focus into choices, choices you're making at the exclusion of other choices.

If you haven't made a clear choice of an action to take, you don't have a focus, and the chances of you succeeding over the long term are minimal.

To make tangible progress over a long period, you must choose.

2) Endure

Now comes the hard part: you must endure.

If what you chose is a worthy endeavor, it's likely also hard. Very hard.

The good news is it will get easier – you'll adapt to it. You'll soon get used to exercising, eating that food, and sleeping early.

Endurance is not something you can just decide to have. It must be built day after day by enduring.

There's no escape: you must do the work without stop, with no rest.

Your endurance will be built once you do it for long enough.

Embrace focus and endurance

Focus and endurance are requirements of accomplishment.

As you think about the accomplishments you want to achieve, identify what you must focus on and endure to accomplish them.

And once you find the right area, do it.

Focus and endure.