10 Secrets To Reading People Like A Book by Patrick King

In Read People Like a Book, Patrick King offers practical tools to understand and interpret others by observing their behavior, body language, and speech. This guide is broken into four parts. 

First, we explore the challenges of accurately reading people, such as biases, lack of context, or projecting our feelings onto others. 

Second, we discuss the driving forces behind behavior, including subconscious urges, the pleasure principle, the hierarchy of needs, and ego defense. 

Third, we learn to decode nonverbal cues—stress signals, mirroring, facial expressions, and spatial confidence—that reveal emotions beneath the surface. 

Finally, King outlines strategies to detect lies by observing inconsistencies, unnatural behavior, and subtle story flaws. 

By applying these insights, you can build stronger connections, resolve conflicts more effectively, and truly understand the people around you.

10 Secrets To Reading People Like A Book

By the end of this blog post, you'll be able to remember pretty much everything that you read. 

I'm going to show you the science of why you forget and what you need to do in order to remember, and I'm going to share some techniques with you. 

So, let's get on with it. 

So, about a week ago, I was at the seaside. 

The sun's shining, which rarely happens here, and I want to make the most of that. 

The nearest beach to me is Shingle, and the water's calm. So, I crouch down looking for stones to skim. 

And as I watch my stones bounce across the surface of the water, or in some cases, plunge to the bottom, my mind fills with thoughts about reading and memory. 

When I was at school, even at university and beyond, I was terrible at remembering what I read. 

Information would skim across the surface of my mind and never sink in. 

I'd forget 80% of what I read. Rereading didn't help. 

It doubled the time spent staring at the page, but it didn't help me retain any information. 

I could read the words and understand them, but something was missing in my process, and I didn't know what. 

I do now, but it took a lot of figuring out. 

That won't happen to you because I'm going to show you exactly how to do it. 

-: Human memory is complex. 

It involves different processes and different systems. There are short-term or working memory and long-term memory. 

Working memory can hold only approximately seven items for about 15 to 30 seconds. 

And this feature of memory was exploited in a famous British game show in the 1970s, revived in the '90s, called the Generation Game. 

Now, I'm not going to explain the entire format. 

Let's say it was of its time. At the end, the finalists stood in front of a conveyor belt as potential prizes streamed past them for a minute. 

To win, they had to recall as many items as they could. Whatever they remembered, they won. 

So, they were highly motivated. 

But watching them struggle to recall what they had just seen was what made it entertaining. 

And the reason they struggled is simple. 

-: Working memory is limited. 

And if that's what you're relying on when you read, it's not surprising you forget. 

In fact, you shouldn't be relying on it at all. But hold on. 

What about memory champions like this man who, in 5 minutes, can memorize more than 100 random dates and events or tell you the order of an entire deck of cards after 30 seconds? 

Aren't they using working memory? 

It can't be that bad. 

They certainly have cleaned up on the generation game. Working memory can be adapted or hacked to improve its capabilities. 

Chunking is one way of expanding working memory. 

-: You can try it for yourself. 

Now, I'm going to show you 12 letters, and I want you to remember them. I'll give you five seconds. 

Ready? Go. It's not easy. Let's do it again, but this time we'll chunk them. 

Ready? Go. 

Now, that was much easier because although our working memories are limited to about seven items, chunking allows us to group information, meaning we can remember more. 

There are also techniques that combine long-term working memory and visual imagery, like the method of LOI, sometimes known as the memory palace. 

You picture a familiar location in your mind's eye and place what you want to remember in different rooms. 

It's effective and particularly good for memorizing lists. But remembering what you read—that requires something else. 

Because reading isn't just about memory. It's about connecting ideas, breaking down structure, and asking questions. 

Do you ever find your mind wandering when you're reading something? You start thinking about lunch or what you're doing tonight or whether you should buy a MacBook Pro. 

They have less memory, but it's unified memory. 

So, does that justify the extra cost? Anyway, if that happens to you, it's a sign that you're not reading properly. 

Our minds do not like being bored. And when that happens, they occupy themselves by going off and doing their own thing. 

And to prevent that, you need to engage with what you're reading. 

-: Not the words, the ideas. 

Remember the stone skimming. 

That's what the words are like. 

They skim across the surface, describing topics and concepts, but alone, they have no depth. 

You must go beneath the words and wrestle with the concepts they're attempting to explain. 

And this turns the notion of memorizing upside down. 

Instead of reading, trying to remember, and then understanding, you should read and understand through interrogation. 

-: Then you will remember. 

So how do you do that? Well, there are several stages, and the first is something known as encoding. 

To save information on a computer, whether it's an image, text, or audio file, it has to be converted into a form that a computer can understand and store. 

In the computer's case, it's ones and zeros, or bits. 

The brain has a similar process. 

It takes real-world sensory input and converts it into a neurologically storable format so it can be saved and retrieved. 

That's encoding. 

And if it's not done the right way, you will forget, and this is why you don't remember what you read. 

You're not encoding it properly. 

There are different types of coding and various techniques to optimize each one. 

But today we're going to be focusing on the most important type, which is semantic encoding. 

Get this right, and reading becomes unforgettable, and each new book will add to your lasting knowledge and expertise. 

-: This is not superficial memorization. 

Semantic encoding requires you to focus on the meaning and context. And you do that by asking yourself questions while reading. 

How does this relate to what I already know? 

What real-world applications exist for this idea? 

You're aiming to integrate the new ideas and concepts from the book into your knowledge network. 

It's an active process. Your mind isn't wandering; it's focusing. 

You're like a spider carefully constructing a web of expertise. Oh yeah, that's the other thing you should do. 

Use analogies for abstract ideas. 

You're making the knowledge yours by constructing your own understanding and ideas around it. 

Because reading is not a passive experience. 

It's an active dialogue between you and the author. But this philosophy doesn't just apply to books. 

It applies to all input. Whether it's a lecture, podcast, or video, if you want to remember it, engage at a deeper level. 

Because content consumption does not equal understanding and learning. 

To truly remember and understand, you must push into the upper levels of Bloom's taxonomy. 

That's where higher-order thinking takes place. 

Here, you're not skimming over the surface. 

You're analyzing, evaluating, and even creating new ideas. 

And at this point, you will be remembering almost everything on the page. It's hard work, but it is extremely rewarding. 

And there's another technique that will help you get there. It's something you may already do, but I think you can improve on it. 

When I was at school and university, I thought notetaking meant writing down an abbreviated version of 

-: The text on the board or in the book. 

That's what school taught me. 

You might have had a similar experience. 

It took me years to realize that that's not how note-taking should work. 

Not if you want to remember what you're reading, and definitely not if you're reading to develop expertise. 

Doing that will lead to you forgetting almost everything because it's passive. You're transcribing, not thinking. 

My notes were so useless, I completely gave up taking them until I discovered how to do it properly. 

Notes should be a record of your thinking, your understanding, your interpretation, and your questions. 

I use two types of note-taking when I read, informal and formal. Informal notes are where I write in the margin of a book. It's kind of a dialogue with.

the text. 

I put brackets around sections I want to find quickly. Again, now I want to show you one, but I forgot to bring it down. So, I'm going to go and get one and show you like this. 

I underline phrases that link with other ideas in my mind and add a brief note. 

If something is confusing or the logic doesn't flow for me, I note that down, too. 

And I'll occasionally summarize a difficult concept in my own words in the margin. 

By the time I reach the end of the chapter, my book is covered in annotations, which is why I'm unpopular at my local library. 

Your annotations will depend on why you choose to read the book. 

If it's just for interest, then your notes will be different than if you were reading to research an essay. 

Say, in this scenario, you must be more focused and keep relating your notes to the essay topic. Back to the informal part, and I do that with most non-fiction books that I read. 

It helps me remember what's in them, and the notes act as a memory jog when I revisit them later. 

There's a name for this. It's called marginalia, and it's been popular with great thinkers and writers throughout history. 

Isaac Newton, Machiavelli, Oscar Wilde, and Sylvia Plath all annotated their texts. 

The most famous and mysterious of them all was Pierre De Fermat, the mathematician. 

In about 1637, he wrote in the margin of a Marburg, "I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this, which this margin is too narrow to contain." 

He was referring to the idea that what you probably know as Pythagoras's equation has no solution for powers greater than two. 

Then he died, and no solution was ever found in his notes. 

It took mathematicians 358 years to prove it and created a branch of math called algebraic number theory in the process. 

Andrew Wiles created the first successful proof in 1994. 

And the story is covered in the book Fermat's Last Theorem by Simon Singh, which became a bestseller and briefly made everyone want to be a mathematician. 

But there's more to note-taking than marginalia. And that brings us to the second type: formal notes. These are slightly different. 

I create them separately in a folder like this. And I always take them by hand, and you should too. 

And I'll show you why in a minute. And as with notations, the goal of your formal notes is not to create a summary. 

It's to build understanding and wrap new knowledge around what you already know. You're aiming to make it yours rather than someone else's words on a page. 

And this is how I do it. 

First, quickly skim through the chapter, read the first paragraph and any headings, and then read the final paragraph. 

I try to get a feel for what the chapter says. Then I go to my notes and, in my own words, write what I think the chapter is about, how it fits into what I already know, and what I expect to find difficult. 

Then I read the chapter in sections, pulling out the main points and writing them down. 

I add the secondary points underneath in a nested hierarchy. 

I try to write as little as possible, capturing only the key ideas and arguments. 

I try to question the argument and look for exceptions all the time, connecting everything I can to what I know. 

Approach it like you're reading a mystery, a whodunit you're trying to solve. 

Colonel Mustard in the library with the candlestick. If all this sounds difficult, I have something I'm going to share that will help.

But first, remember I said it's better to take notes by hand. It's not just my assertion. 

In 2014, this research article compared students taking notes by hand with those using laptops. 

It found that longhand notetakers perform better when tested. 

Their notes were shorter and higher quality, and they prompted better encoding. 

So, if you want to take better notes, do it by hand. 

Now, I said I'd help you with your I don't know what that was. I said I'd help you with your note-taking. 

I've created a Notion template that you can use to guide your note-taking. Print it out and fill it in by hand or copy it down. 

It's designed to help you structure your notes so that you think about the underlying concepts more deeply and remember much more of what you read. 

Give it a go and let me know how you get on. 

Have you heard of active learning? It's a method of learning that encourages you to engage with concepts and ideas. 

It deepens understanding, and it's good for building expertise. 

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