How Bill Gates reads books

I don’t let myself start a book that I’m
not gonna finish you know when you’re
reading you have to be careful that you
really are concentrating particularly if
it’s a non-fiction book are you taking
the new knowledge and sort of attaching
to knowledge you have and for me taking
notes helps make sure that I’m really
thinking hard about about what’s in
there if I disagree with the book
sometimes it takes a long time to read
the book because I’m writing so much in
the margin it’s actually kind of
frustrating oh please say something I
agree with so I can get through to the
end of this boat so there’s this one
it’s a fiction book called Infinite Jest
what I’m trying to decide if I started
or not because I watched the movie the
end of the tour I loved it David Foster
Wallace comes across as a super
interesting broad thinking person if the
book was like two or three hundred page
book there’s no doubt as soon as I
watched that movie I dive in but it’s
quite long and complicated and you know
I don’t want to make an exception it’s
my rule to to get to the end over time I
will make the switch but when I’m just
sitting there at night reading often a
paper magazine or the the book I’m used
to that and it’s ridiculous because I
care I have whole book bag that goes on
my trips with me and it’s it’s
voluminous and antiquated if you’re
reading books like these you’d want to
be sitting down for an hour at a time
because otherwise just getting your mind
around okay what was I reading is not
the kind of thing you can do five
minutes here ten minutes there magazine
articles fit our short YouTube videos
fit into those little slots and so you
know every night I’m reading a little
over an hour and so I can take my
current book and make some progress
[Music]