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HOW TO READ A BOOK FOR ALL IT IS WORTH
By Coach Lorne
When it comes to reading, I'm a late joiner of the club. It was people like my mother and Jack Allan, my grade six teacher at Holyrood Elementary School, who ignited the reading flame. I soon learned to stop moving my lips when I read and that sped the process up. I learned that any book that's too good to underline is too good to read. I learned that a book becomes mine, not when I put my name in the front, but when I underline and mark it up with notes and ideas as I make my way through it. It's not the books you go through but the books that go through you that make the difference in life.
Readers are leaders.
Leaders are readers.
If you read like a bum you'll do life like a bum.
You are not helped by the books you don't read.
Proverbs pushes us with "In all your getting, get knowledge, wisdom, learning."
How can you get the most out of the books you read?
How can you read a book for all it is worth?
How can you tuck treasures from book into your life and lifestyle?
How do you know that you get the most out of a book?
You're getting the most out of a book when it significantly improves your life. An important goal when reading books is getting actionable ideas. To get the most out of a book, you must put actionable ideas into action.
Here are some steps you can do to get the most out of your books:
Preview the book you want to read
Before spending too much time on a book, you should know whether the book is worth reading. Preview the book by reading its cover, introduction, table of contents, and skimming through the chapters.
Besides helping you decide whether a book is worth reading, previewing also helps you be familiar with the structure of the book. It helps you understand the big picture of the book so that whatever you read later can be put in the right context.
Decide your purpose and the depth of your reading
If you think the book is worth reading, you should then decide your purpose of reading the book. Your purpose states the kind of actionable ideas you expect from the book. Is there a problem you expect to be solved? Is there an area in your life you expect to be improved?
Next, you should decide how deep your reading will be. It deals with the amount of time you are willing to spend on the book. The more actionable ideas you think it has, the deeper your reading should be.
For each chapter you read: Preview the chapter
Go through the titles, subtitles, and pictures in the chapter. Just like previewing the book, previewing the chapter builds your familiarity with it and helps you put the details you get later in the right context.
Quick read the chapter
Next, you can quick read the chapter. This step fills in the details of the context you build in the previous step while giving you a glimpse of which might be the important ideas.
Reread to highlight important ideas in the chapter
This time you reread the chapter to decide which are the important ideas of the chapter. I use a grading system. X Good, XX Very Good, XXX Premium Stuff.
Create the book map
After reading the whole book, I’d suggest creating a book summary of your own. Creating a book summary helps you internalize the ideas you get out of the structure of the book.
Write the ideas you get from each chapter
Next you can write the ideas you get from each chapter by simply looking at your highlights in that chapter. Remember, your goal is to get actionable ideas, so you should focus on them. Writing the ideas you get helps you further internalize those ideas.
Write the main ideas you get from the entire book
A good books often contains a lot of actionable ideas, so the list of ideas in step 5 may be too long to act upon effectively. You should then have a separate list for the main ideas from the entire book. This list helps you focus on the most important ideas so that it will be easier for you to apply them.
Create next action list
Application is what puts you ahead of 90% or more other people who just read the book but do not apply what they learn. In fact, application is the key. Actionable ideas are useless if you do not put them into action.
To help you apply what you learn, decide what actions you will do to apply it. Look at your list of main ideas (step 6) to decide what the most important actions are.
Integrate the next action list into you master next action list
After creating your next action list of the book, you can then integrate it into your master next action list. I’m sure you have a master next action list. By putting the actions for the book there, the application of the book is now integrated into your daily work-flow.
Don’t forget to be flexible. You do not need to apply all these steps to every book you read. For not-so-important books you can eliminate some steps. The more important a book is, the more steps you should use. ‘Important’ books are those which have bigger potential of changing your life.
You don't just read a book, mine it!
People who can read and don’t are no better of than people who can not read!
"The books you don't read won't help you!" Jim Rohn
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