How to Design a Reading Plan

When I left school, I felt lost. I wanted to learn by myself, free from any deadlines, exams or constraints, but I had no idea how to do it on my own.

I love structure in my learning. It frees a weight off my shoulders, and instead of being overwhelmed by decisions, I can focus on the reading itself.

That's where reading plans come in.

Reading plans are a list of books which help you achieve a set goal/

They can be long or short, easy or difficult, general or obscure -the path is totally yours to define.

Here I look at why reading plans are so valuable for those with ordered personalities, and how you can make your own.

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Reading charts wiki
(keep in mind anybody can add to this -I don't condone or support anything on there in particular)

The article on David and Goliath I showed

Goodreads

TIMESTAMPS
00:00-1:10 Feeling lost
1:10-2:28 Value of reading plans
2:28-6:13 Pre-made plans
6:13-6:48 Build your own
6:48-8:45 Step 1 - Set goals
8:45-13:10 "I don't know what to read about"
13:10-13:45 Step 1 in action
13:45-14:35 Step 2 - Decide on length
14:35-17:27 Step 3 - Research books
17:27-19:49 Step 4 - Refine choices
19:49-20:45 Step 5 - Order the books
20:45-23:11 Some tips to help you succeed

[odysseas__]

It's a shame, but the wiki has been shut down. I'll make an update if I rediscover anything similar.

[comedygeek]

Bibliographies and Further Reading sections of books are a really good place to get curated reading lists. You can start with a general overview book like one from the "Oxford Handbook of..." or "A Very Short Introduction to..." series. And then you can add the Bibliographies and Further Reading Lists to your TBR. As you go through those books, they will also have their own bibliographies and sometimes Further Reading sections too, which you can likewise add to your TBR. Etc. and so on. So, it's like each book you read starting from the general overview offers a curated list of reading material to dive deeper into the topic at hand

[adellajones]

I love to learn but it is more than reading. I want a deep dive into what, where, who, how...etc...Such as if I want to learn physics - where do I start? I need to get my math skills better but I am good at addition, subtraction but I want to learn more - where do I start. I get overwhelmed. I am also over 60 years old so it is not easy like it would be if I were in my 30's or so.

[xedgerenegade]

tbh, school has killed my thirst for knowledge long time ago but i am reviving my passion for knowledge by watching videos like these

[Disappointed]

Two thoughts:
1. Be humble enough to start your search with a jaunt through the Wikipedia articles on your interest area. For many fields, this gives you an excellent outline of a field--e.g. cosomology--and many of the articles are written by highly qualified indiviuals.
2. Know the structure of most academic writing: The core ideas are in the first three chapters, and the last three chapters are usually fluff or idiological, not based on research, facts, or reason.

[Hitmankiwi]

Really great video. Very much the opposite from my experience of "Education made reading not fun" to be reminded that "Reading can make education fun again".

[BunsBooks]

Having been homeschooled this method is comfortable for me, a bit similar to how my mom cultivated our reading lists. I graduated from university in 2020 and i’ve been wanting to take history and literature classes again but I don’t have the funds to do so. I want to gain a basic understanding of the history of the Byzantine Empire. I will try this structure out.

[the.dirt.man.]

I like how raw your videos are. The editing is clean but unobtrusive

[Freudenfreude]

I think reading lists are great and can be super broad at the same time which is something you point out, what is amazing about this is how structure and discovery actually go together well.

[bn]

This is one the most useful and unpretentious book channels on Youtube. Keep up the great work! & thank you.

[productivity]

1 Pick a topic/goal (or question you want to answer) & how long you want to take to achieve this.
2 Do research into the books necessary to achieve this goal. Meta-learning, scope out the subject. The number of books is relative to the goal and length of the goal.
3 Find the books using different tools such as Google & GoodReads & YouTube Recommendations (ChatGPT & Gemini are also useful).
4 Refine the book list (go through reviews, etc., in Adlerian steps, do an Inspectional Read of everything… Find out if it's truly useful). Also order them into a useful sequence for the syntopical reading project. Highlight the topics covered, how difficult they are, relevancy, etc.
5 Order the books (or download them)

Reminds me a bit of Scott Young's Metalearning step, and doing a skill decomposition in van Merriënboer et al.'s 10 Steps to Complex Learning


Warm regards,
Mr. Hoorn

[IcaroaoResgate]

Congratulations for the new sponsor! Thank you very much for your content. Cheers from Brazil! 🇧🇷🍻

[robbedblind]

Just wanna say, you've been a massive inspiration for me. I appreciate your craft and look forward to seeing more of your journey!

[JoJo-is-the-name]

Each video you're making gets better and better, honestly! Such a joy to watch. I really appreciate that you took the time to do an example run of this process, helped tremendously!

[maherhasan]

Great video. I've wanted to read about ethics, particularly animal ethics, for a while. This video motivated me to build my first reading plan. I added books and articles to keep things more fun.

[JonStallings]

My reading plan as always been no plan. Reading allows me to indulge my vast number of interests. But as a Pastor I recently wanted to read more theological academic works. I started with the books already on my TBR that mer that criteria. I also reached out to a University that had a Masters of Theology and asked for their reading list. I won't follow it completely but provides a good source of books I can draw from

[ghassenjabri]

as i'm well versed in economics. the "at large scale" you told chatGPT is called macro-economics. but there also value in micro-economics, because it deals with the small details of economic activity. and can also be of greater value to your personal life. just make sure you choose the right topics. i recommend game thoery, information theory, Behavioral Economics, welfare economics, the theory of contracts

[AutumnRide]

You have "Life of Christ" by Fulton Sheen on your shelf. This reminds me to finish reading it. This channel just keeps on delivering!

[timdemoss]

love this! and also for anyone watching who isn’t getting the newsletter yet, I’d super recommend it - they’re fun and informative and actionable. really been enjoying them a lot

[sablisland]

Great process! I started my reading list for much the same reason you did, I had interests but not much knowledge to accompany them. I use a Notion database to store my reading list as well as the notes I take when I read. You can make a database as simple or as complicated as you like but my headings are name, type (article, podcast, video, book), status, link and tags. Each note itself gets a simple template for with headings for people (authors/people featured), quotes, the notes themselves, and related notes.

My reading list is entirely nature/human history based, anything from volcanos to archaeology to trees to climate. I don’t have a specific goal for all this reading but if I do decide that for the next few months I’d like to learn more about e.g. animal migration, I can filter my list by tags. It’s been working really well for me and I find not only do I actually know and retain more, but I am making connections within all the various things I read.