I’ve been busy the last few days. Whenever I’m busy, I default to writing these emails in the easiest possible way. In my case, that’s emails about interesting or valuable ideas I’ve read somewhere.
Today, I have a bit more time, so I can indulge in writing an email that doesn’t come so easy to me, the Q&A email. A reader wrote in with a question last night, following my email yesterday:
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This was very insightful, you somehow always send an email related to something I’m trying to improve at the moment, thank you.
In the context of Reading, what strategy would YOU recommend to read faster and retain the information?
Will be trying the mentioned focus on the subtlety and easy to miss. details.
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My 100% serious answer:
If you want to read faster and retain the information, my best recommendation is to read slow.
It’s what I do. It helps that I read very slowly by nature, almost at a 5-year-old’s pace. But these days, I even encourage myself in it.
Reading slowly is how I always have lots of interesting ideas that I read somewhere that I can throw into an email if I’m rushed for time. Actually, it’s reading slowly, and taking lots of hand-written notes — of things that surprised me, made me smile, or reminded me of something else I had been reading.
Like the following, said once by a man often called the world’s greatest living copywriter, Gary Bencivenga. Gary was talking about how he researches a book that he will then write a sales package for:
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You almost have to read a sentence, and think about it. Read another sentence. “Is there any possible drop of juice I could squeeze from this orange to turn it into marketing enticement in some way?” Don’t let a single paragraph go by without pausing. You don’t want to just race through it. Give it a lot of time, and think about each thing you’re looking at.
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Gary said that during his farewell seminar, which cost $5k to attend back in 2006, and the same large amount if you wanted to get the recordings.
Gary could charge that much money for a seminar because of his status — the results he had gotten, the endorsements from top people in the industry.
But there was another reason Gary could charge that much for his knowledge and experience. And that’s scarcity.
Gary never attended conferences. He never got up on stage to give talks. He almost never gave interviews.
In fact, I know of only two interviews Gary ever gave. One of those is with Ken McCarthy, and you have to join Ken’s System Club to get it. The other was a 6-part interview with A-list copywriter Clayton Makepeace, which was available for free on Clayton’s website until Clayton died and the website shut down.
If you take a bit of time and trouble, you can go on the Internet Archive and dig up all 6 parts of this interview. Or you can take me up on my offer today.
Because I’ve gone on the Internet Archive previously, and downloaded all 6 parts for my own files. If you’d like me to share them with you, write in, tell me which book or books you’re reading right now, and I’ll reply with the Gary B/Clayton MP interview.