I Stopped Reading Books and Learned More Than Ever (Headway App Review)

You see all these books behind me. I actually, I'm a pretty avid reader. I read most of these books, but Atomic Habits, Think and Grow Rich, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. There's probably 200 books back here on these shelves. But a few months ago, I actually kind of stopped reading entirely and I actually switched to Headway instead. So it's a book summaries app. And then I just got it on AppSumo for a lifetime subscription. So I don't even have to pay monthly anymore for it. I'm actually learning more now than I think I've ever learned before. I have a lot of books on these shelves that are like half read as well. Think and Grow Rich is a classic. Everyone says you have to read it. And I, I picked it up a little while ago, made it to chapter three, and then I didn't end up finishing it. And that's true with a lot of books. Let me know in the comments how many books you have that you have not read any of and that you've not read all the way through. But I mean, I probably have thousands of dollars worth of books that I haven't finished. And some of them I haven't even started yet. And the problem isn't the books. The books are great. The problem is me and just busy schedule and work meetings recording kids. I mean, just a lot going on. A lot of times I'll pick up a book intending to read it and I'll be asleep in like five minutes. Let me know in the comments if that you relate with that also. And then what's worse is even the books that I would finish, I would couldn't remember them a few weeks later. You guys know I have some, I've had a lot of concussions. I have some memory problems, but even books that I've read a couple times, I'm like, I can't remember quite what that book was about. What were the takeaways from that book? And then it kind of felt like, well, was it a waste of time reading that book? If I don't even remember what it said about three years ago, I started using the headway app on my phone. And basically it's an app that does book summaries for you. So it'll take you maybe 15 minutes to get through. It kind of walks through the chapters of the book and what they're about. And then gives you nice like to dues and calls to action based on those. And I was really excited because headway was now on app sumos. You guys know I'm a huge app sumo fan where basically you take these different software products that you usually pay monthly for. You can pay a one-time fee and you get lifetime access to it. So rather than paying, I've been paying, I think seven or eight bucks a month for headway for like three years. That's quite a bit of money. And then now it's an app sumo deal. So I can get it for free. I pay this one time $60 done for the rest of my life. So they have a very big book collection, pretty much any book that you would want to read is on here, but we'll just take atomic habits. It's one of my favorite books and you can listen to it. So it's a 13 minute kind of summary of it. Um, or you can read it. I prefer to read it, but you know, you could listen to it kind of like an audio book except for it's just 13 minutes while you're reading it, you get these really nice quotes, which you can highlight and then go back and kind of remind yourself of these. So can you replace a whole book with this? Honestly, no like James clear is a great writer. And if you read the summary and you're like, Oh wow, I really love this topic. You still should probably get the full book and read it. But if you're just kind of wanting the framework and you're wanting to apply the habit stacking and just kind of see what the book's about, this is a great way to get the summary or I've read this book many times, but the summary reminds me, Oh yeah, that's what that book was about. Same thing, seven habits. I've read seven habits of highly effective people many times. I didn't even know there was seven habits of highly effective families. Same, same author. So that would be a good summary to go through. But again, great summary. Take about 15 minutes to get through. The book will take you like a month to get through, but you can kind of get the main points from here. Again, a great way to review too. But I really like this too because there's a lot of books that I'm like, I'm curious about, but it's like, I don't have the time to actually go read the whole thing. Like Buddha's brain, the practical neuroscience of happiness, love, and wisdom. It's like, I kind of like to know what that's about. What's in there. Am I going to go buy the book and spend, you know, a month actually reading through the whole thing? No, but this is a great way to get a summary or fluent on the first try was one. I'm trying to learn Russian. And I'm interested in language learning. I find language learning very difficult. And so I'm kind of interested in it. But again, I don't have time to probably read a whole book on language learning. I'm busy trying to learn the language, but I can get the summary and kind of get the to do's and the, uh, the main points and then apply them to my situation. So, and as you read books, they'll start giving you, you know, summaries for you to go through. That's really interesting. There's daily micro learning sessions on different topics. They have collections. So if you're like really wanting to focus, I want to read everything about language learning. There's a collection for that, but I actually do most of my reading on my mobile app. I actually have it. So YouTube and stuff are disabled until I do a book summary. Um, but they have all these growth plans, which puts a bunch of different, you know, if you want to, uh, deeper family bonds here is an example, but it'll give you a bunch of books and it's like, okay, read this summary, read these summary, read this summary. Um, it's kind of like a learning path with different books in it. I think that's really cool. Like I have an eliminate time wasters learning path that I'm going through. And it, you know, has quizzes at the end of different, uh, book series. And they also have these shorts. So this can replace YouTube for you, but they're actually like learning shorts. They're about different books. And so it's like YouTube shorts, but you learn something from it. I should probably get my kids doing that. So what you don't get with summaries, um, they're great for ideas and frameworks and the core arguments, but it's not the same as reading the full book. So if there's something you like really want to dive into, then, you know, read the summary and decide, I love this, get the full book. And then you'll spend a lot of time in it. Also, this isn't great for like novels. Obviously the point of a novel is to be involved in it. So a 15 minute summary would make sense. Or like a biography. I read a biography of Napoleon, uh, one of my favorite books and the summary it wouldn't quite do it as well as, you know, reading the actual story itself, but for business productivity, self-help, I start with a headway summary every time. So, and I will leave a link to app sumo. Again, you guys know, I'm a huge fan of app sumo, but they give a lifetime subscriptions for one time fees. Um, so instead of paying monthly, cause it's like, Oh, do I want to add another $8 subscription? I'm already subscribed to Netflix, Spotify, Hulu, peacock, whatever else there is paramount plus. So I can watch star Trek. I want to add another subscription. App sumo takes that away for $59. You get lifetime access to it. It's refundable up to 60 days. So if you're like, okay, I'd actually don't want this, then that's fine. But I look on app sumo almost every day just to see, this is an example of one I was already paying monthly for. If this deal was around three years ago, I would have saved quite a bit of money. So should you ditch reading books? Maybe it depends on your life. For me, headway unlocks the books that I kind of wanted to read, but realistically I never would get to. Um, so I, I haven't been reading full books in a while, but I'm learning more than I ever have before. So if you've got a stack of half finished books or books you haven't started, give headway a try and drop your favorite book in the comments. We'd love to hear, uh, what you guys are reading right now, but appreciate you guys very much. Shout out to app sumo. Always appreciate you guys as well. God bless you all and have a great rest of.