- Hey, what's going on, friends?
So today we are answering a question
that I've gotten asked
quite a few times over the years,
which is, what is the best format to read books in,
physical books, ebooks, or audiobooks?
Where I guess you aren't actually reading the book,
but you are still intaking it.
Well, I'm gonna save you the horse race here,
because, in my experience, I use all three formats,
and all three of these can be perfectly viable ways
to intake a book.
But depending on how you are reading
and the purpose of your reading,
one of the three might have a slight edge
over the others.
So that's kinda what I wanna go into in this video.
And I'm not gonna break this video down
by the format itself and section out that way.
Instead, I wanna look at the purpose
for which we read.
Because I think there are four main purposes
for why we pick up a book.
First and foremost, we sometimes read for relaxation.
We read for escapism.
We just want to have fun through reading.
We may also read to widen our learning,
our basic knowledge,
or to widen our T, if you wanna think about it that way,
the concept of a T-shaped person,
where you have deep knowledge in one area,
but then wide, expansive knowledge
in many other areas as well.
You may also read for deep learning,
to deeply understand a topic.
And finally, you might read for reference, for research,
for a specific purpose,
where you're trying to pull knowledge out of a book
and apply it to something you're trying to do.
So for each of these four different purposes,
what is the best format to choose?
Well, again, I think really it comes down
to what you enjoy using.
All the edges that we're gonna be talking here
are the advantages.
I think they're slight for the most part.
And ultimately reading
and the format you choose to read in
is just like exercise.
There's no perfect routine,
because the best overall routine
is the one that you enjoy
and the one that you will stick to.
For the first purpose,
for reading for escapism and for fun,
what is the best format?
Well, I think, in general,
the best format here is physical books,
and there's some actual research behind this.
Now the first study that we looked at for this video
was albeit pretty small in terms of sample size.
But they did find that, versus ebooks,
people who read physical books
were actually better able
to remember the order in which things happened
in a story.
There might be something
to the physical tactile sensations you get
through reading a book,
you know, the act of turning a page,
the act of remembering which side of the book
you were looking at when something happened,
that allows you to have a little bit better memory
of what went on
than when you're just looking at an iPad screen
or a Kindle screen,
just scrolling through, in my case,
a never-ending wall of text,
because I typically use the scrolling mode
on the Kindle app.
Another potential downside to ebooks in particular
is the fact that we often read them on tablets,
and even the Kindle devices have web browser built in,
albeit not a very good one.
And when we have access to additional information,
additional things we can do with our device,
it gets a little bit harder
to really sink into the world of the book
and to really feel like you are reading for fun,
to get lost in the story.
Now what about audiobooks for fun reading, for escapism?
There are quite a few audiobooks I've actually gone through
in terms of fiction that I've really enjoyed,
specifically the one that keeps coming to mind for me
while I film this video is "The Martian" by Andy Weir,
and I have the old R.C. Bray narrated version
that they no longer have on Audible,
which is absolutely amazing.
But I also know that I typically listen to audiobooks
when I'm doing things,
when I'm riding my bike or walking to work
or doing chores around the house.
And because I'm also doing something else
that takes a little bit of my attention,
not a ton, but a little bit,
there are gonna be pieces
that I just sort of tune out for.
I'm gonna have to navigate a road crossing or something,
and that means I'm not getting every single bit of the story
and I'm not totally immersed.
So, again, I think the edge really goes to paper books
for escapism-style reading.
Now what about widening your T,
widening your base of knowledge?
Well, like I said earlier,
the concept of being a T-shaped person
means that you've built deep expertise
in at least one area,
but then you're also reading
to widen your ray of knowledge
across a broad variety of topics.
And for doing that, again,
these are small edges we're talking about here,
but I actually am personally
going to give the edge to audiobooks,
and that is because for this purpose,
for just trying to widen your base of knowledge,
that need for complete immersion is less important.
And I'm a busy guy.
I've got a lot of things I have to do
around the house a lotta time,
I have to walk to work every single day.
There's time throughout the day
where I have to do something
where my attention isn't completely taken up,
and I might otherwise just listen to podcasts or Spotify
or just find something to listen to on YouTube.
But I can also select a book
and I can broaden my knowledge on something
in a pretty shallow way
that's still interesting and enlightening
using an audiobook.
For example, I've been riding my bike to work
over the past few months
listening to Bill Bryson's book on the human body,
and I don't feel that I need
a complete and super deep understanding
of all these different structures.
I just wanna learn for learning's sake.
So the audiobook format is perfect for that purpose.
Now, aside from audiobooks,
I don't think there's a huge edge
between ebooks and physical books
when it comes to this type of learning.
I might give a slight nod to ebooks,
simply because it is typically easier
to get a new book on a whim,
and there are even library programs
that will let you borrow ebooks
on your electronic devices.
So it's just easier to get your hands on an ebook
when you want to read something on a whim.
Now one area where I definitely think ebooks
have the clear advantage
is when you're reading for the purposes
of research and reference,
when you're trying to pull knowledge out of a book
and actually do something with it,
synthesize the information
and write a book report.
Or, in my case, the huge video that I'm working on
for later this month
is an ultimate guide to using credit cards.
I've been trying to pull information
out of several different sources, including books,
and synthesize it into something
that I can present to this channel
and present to my blog as well.
So I need to pull accurate information,
I need to collect it,
and I think ebooks definitely make this process easier,
not least of which because you can search an ebook.
You can easily bring up the little search field
and you can type in a term
and see where it pops up in the book.
Additionally, highlighting and taking notes
is quite a bit easier with ebooks.
On the Kindle app, for example,
you can just use your finger and create a highlight,
and those highlights actually get collected
in a centralized location within the book.
Whereas, with a paper book,
there are definitely ways to highlight;
I made an entire video about how I highlight
and take notes from books
that you can watch after this one.
But it's kind of harder to go find those highlights.
You don't know where they are,
you can't search them,
and it's a little bit harder
to collect the information from them
than it is with, say, a Kindle book.
Additionally, you can go even further
than simply highlighting in the Kindle app
or in the iBooks app,
because there is an app
that I use every day called Readwise.
And what Readwise does
is it basically just collects your highlights
from Kindle books,
but also from articles, from tweets,
from certain podcast apps,
and it keeps them in a central repository.
And it goes one step further,
because they have a public API
where you can export your highlights
to apps like Obsidian, Roam,
and, in my case, Notion.
So I use Readwise for the express purpose
of getting my highlights from Kindle books
and from other sources into a Notion database.
From there, I can add notes to them,
and I can even used synced blocks
to bring those highlights and those little passages
that I'm using for research
into the video script
and research areas that I'm working on.
Now, to be fair to paper books,
there is also a Readwise app for mobile devices
where you can actually take a picture
of the printed page,
and it has that optical character recognition technology,
so you can actually create a Readwise highlight
from a paper book.
But it is a little bit of a slower
and more friction-full process
than just creating a very quick highlight in the Kindle app.
And that brings us to our final purpose for reading,
which is reading for deep understanding.
As opposed to that wide understanding
that builds the horizontal part of your T,
we're talking now about that vertical bar,
building really deep understanding
of a specific topic.
And here I think the edge
actually goes back to paper books,
specifically because they make it so much easier
to focus, not get distracted
by whatever else is on your device.
It's just a little bit easier
to maintain focus on a paper book,
at least in my experience,
than it is on an ebook
when you're trying to read for deep understanding
and not necessarily trying to pull out references
for a research project,
though there is a potential alternative.
So recently a friend gifted me
the ebook version of Alex Hormozi's "$100M Offers."
And right in the first chapter,
he mentions that a trick he uses
is actually getting the audiobook version
and listening to it
while following along in the print
or the ebook version as well.
And he says it actually helps him read faster
because it helps him to pay attention
to the ebook for a lot longer.
Now I do want to mention
that if you do this,
it's probably not going to make you read faster
from an objective sense.
And that is because ebooks are typically narrated
at about an average of 150 words per minute;
whereas skilled readers
who are reading silently to themselves
and not sub-vocalizing
can typically read between 200 and 400 words per minute,
without losing a lot of comprehension.
So unless you wanna set the audiobook to 2x speed,
which does not sound very pleasant to me,
you're probably gonna end up actually reading
a little bit slower than you would
if you were just silently reading to yourself.
But if the focus benefit is there,
it might be a useful strategy for you.
Now one thing I wanna mention
that doesn't really fit
into any of these specific categories
is that ebooks do have a clear advantage
over many print books
in the fact that they are more accessible,
because you can easily change the font size,
you can switch things into dark mode,
you have a lot of options there.
So, again, at the end of the day,
the format that works best for you
is gonna be the one that is, number one,
most accessible to you,
but number two, is the one that you enjoy reading.
So hopefully this has broken down
a few of the different potential technological advantages,
format advantages, and focus advantages.
But, again, ultimately,
the kinda format that you enjoy the most
is going to be the best one
the majority of the time.
And it's also worth noting
that the format of the books you read
really isn't the most important factor
to reading more often, reading more deeply.
That is building a reading habit,
which, in my experience,
is pretty easy to fall out of,
but it's also possible to get back into as well.
One useful tactic that I've used in the past
is a 90-day reading challenge.
Essentially, I told my friend Martin,
"Hey, I'm gonna read nonfiction every single day
for the next 90 days.
If I don't, I'm gonna pay you 100 bucks,"
and I gave him a spreadsheet
where I tracked all my progress,
and he could follow along every single day.
And that was a very successful challenge.
I read 11 books during those three months,
many of which I reference all the time on this channel,
and actually built my reading habit
long-term after that.
And there are a lot of other tricks you can use
for building long-term habits,
whether it's reading more books,
or doing anything else you wanna do.
And if you wanna learn about some of those tricks,
you may wanna take my habit-building class
over on Skillshare.
This is a short, one-hour,
but information-packed class
on how to break down your goals
into actionable daily habits,
and then actually stick to them long-term;
which is probably something
you've been thinking about recently,
since this video is going live
pretty close to January 1st.
So if you've got a habit you've been wanting to build,
or you've been trying to build and you've been failing,
and you wanna find some better tactics
for getting it to actually stick,
I think you're gonna get a lot out of this class.
Over 60,000 people have already taken it,
and I would love for you to take it as well. And guess what?
If you are one of the first 1,000 people
to click that link in the description down below
and sign up for Skillshare,
you are actually gonna get a one-month free trial;
which means that you can take this class absolutely free.
And you can take a ton of other classes
during that one month as well,
including MKBHD's excellent class
on crafting great YouTube videos,
along with thousands of other classes
from expert teachers on business and marketing,
storytelling, audio engineering,
video animation, and tons of other topics.
So if you wanna start building your skills,
if you wanna start building your habits
with my class, and support this channel,
you can sign up for Skillshare
using the link in the description down below.
And again, if you are one of the first 1,000 people,
you're gonna get that free one-month trial.
You can also click right there
on screen to sign up.
And if you enjoyed this video,
if you're looking for something else to watch,
I've got one more video right there
on seven books you should read in your 20s.
And even if you're not in your 20s,
I think they are pretty good reads as well.