Clear Your Mind

You read something because you want to acquire information about a particular topic. If you want to be efficient in this endeavor, your brain will need to flip to a clean page so it can write everything down.

To clear your mind, you must:

Remove distractions

Find a reading hideout where you will not experience frequent interruptions. Each time you are interrupted, it will take you a while to get back into the optimal state of mind necessary to read at exceedingly rapid rates. People are the number one cause of external reading interruptions. Consider breaking away from human contact while reading (no phone, facebook, etc.), unless you can find a reading partner who excels at keeping on task.

Still your mind

You need to stop your brain from thinking about anything besides digging information out of your book. Stop stressing about what so-and-so said or thinks about you, and stop worrying about whether or not you are going to get everything done that needs doing. Take a moment to still your mind using either the heartbeat method or the inner flame method, you will love the benefits.

Heartbeat -- Become very still. Take calm, deep breathes, and sense your heartbeat. Stay positive, it might take a while to feel your pulse the first few times, but it will become easier each time. Once you have become still enough physically and mentally, you will find that you have a blank slate with which to imprint the contents of your book.

Inner Flame -- Hold the image of a flame in darkness in your mind. Feed everything on your mind into that flame. Annoyed that someone was a jackass and cut you off driving? Feed that feeling into your flame. Continue feeding things to your flame until only the flame remains. Now you are ready to consume the contents of your book.