How to Read and Digest a Book!

This is my take on the subject and some of the strategies I personally use to improve my reading effectiveness. How I read for leisure is different to how I read to learn. This post is focused on improving the reading we do for personal and professional development, rather than leisure reading.

Charles Tremendous Jones believes that:

“The only difference between who you are today and the person you will be in five years will come from the books you read and the people you associate with”

I agree with Charles, this is why all effective leaders are readers! Rudi Guliani mentioned in his in his book, “Leadership“, that “great leaders lead by ideas”, I can relate to this, I have personally experience how great ideas from books have help me to develop and shape my leadership ideas and principles. To read and digest a book I use the process as show in the figure below:

Selection

When selecting a book its important to remember that the impact that a book has on your life is greatly affected by the season of your life, and where you are in your personal journey. Its necessary to choose the books you read wisely, you want to ensure, as far as possible, that the book you read is worth the investment of your time and energy. Some of the criteria I use when selecting a book to invest my time and energy in are:

• I select a book based upon what do I need to learn or develop, given where I am in my personal journey.
• I select books from authors that have previously impacted my life and with whom I connect. For me these are authors like Jim Collins, John Maxwell, Peter Senge, Warren Bennis, Tom Peters, and Noel Tichy.
• I select books that will help to improve my strengths.
• I select books in key subject areas I’m interested in, such as, leadership, communication, management, and strategy.

Slacker Manager’s post on “How to Read a Business Book” recommends the following websites as a means of assisting in the selection of a good book:

• Websites that watch blog activity for books being talked about, such as All Consuming, OnFocus and Technorati’s Booktalk
• Fast Company’s Book recommendations.
• 800-CEO-Read.com’s Blog, Book Excerpts and Recommendations.

Preparation

Effective reading requires a productive reading environment, this can be created by:

• Removing ALL distractions!!! Humans cannot effectively multi-task.
• Ensure the the lighting is sufficient.
• A regular place to read, this helps to keep you focused when “reading to learn”.

Its useful to keep in mind your primary purpose for reading, this will help your to focus and improve concentration.

Read Actively

To read actively you need to engage with the book, to do this its usually better to read a book in numerous short sessions, ranging from one to two hours, rather than in a single sitting. The Engineer2Entrepreneur blog posted a good article with suggestions for highlighting important ideas and principles as you read, including:

• Using a highlighter.
• Using coloured pencils, this allows you to colour-code your highlights.
• Using a pen or pencil to make notes in the margin.
• Using post-it notes, which have the advantage of being able to be moved around.
• Using index cards or a clipboard to take notes.

Essentially reading actively keeps you focused and helps locate important concepts quickly later on. Don Blohowiak, in his post Reading with Gusto, takes highlighting to another level by recommending that you indicate why the highlight was made, using the following notation:

• R = Research this further
• Q = Quote directly
• T = Technique to integrate into the processes of my work or life
• A = Action item to put on my To-do list related to work in progress

Whilst reading then, highlight those ideas and principles that have meaning and application in your life. If you find that little in what you’re reading impacts you, it usually means, at least for me, that the book is not worth completing and I put it aside. This typically occurs for two reasons:

1. The book does not resonate with the season and journey of my life, I then put the book back onto the bookshelf and ready to be read at later date.
2. It’s simply not a good book, in this case I usually give it away!

Read selectively, by this I mean feel free to stop reading a book if it’s not adding value to your life, similarly skip chapters or paragraphs if they’re not relevant or resonating with you. Identify and focus on those chapters or paragraphs which will add the most value.

Reflect for Insight

After completing a first-pass of the book highlighting important ideas and principles, the next step is to re-read and reflect on the books “bigger picture”, to gain insight and understanding. Take as step back, and reflect on the whole book, answering the question “what does it mean to me?” This involves re-reading your highlighted sections to gain a deeper understanding of the key ideas and concepts. Reflection includes thinking though ideas, how they apply to you and how you should respond to them.

“To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection” – Jules Henri Poincare

The keys to good reflection on the ideas contained within a book are:

• Reflection needs to be intentional, this means I need to schedule time to reflect.
• Reflect in a suitable environment removing ALL distractions.
• Seek insight and understanding, not just of the idea, but how it affects my worldview and personal life.

Systemise for implementation

People fail to get the most our of a book because they don’t have a system in place to extract and implement the key ideas from a book that will benefit their lives. Systemise, then involves having two systems, one for extracting key ideas and principles from the book and placing them in a system so they are not lost. Another system is required to systemically integrate these new ideas into our lives. If the book contained sufficient ideas and principles to cause you to spend time reflecting, then they are worth systemising!

The first step in systemise is to capture key ideas and principles. Fortunately, there are some tools available for use which can be adapted to assist in capturing ideas. Some potential tools for capturing key ideas highlighted during the “Read Actively” step can be found from the Innovation Tools website, such as, “Ten power tools for recording your best ideas“. Personally I prefer to use a MindMap to capture ideas and principles from the books I read. How I do this is, I use MindManager to take notes from the books I read, which I print and bind making a portable collection of notes (a freeware / opensource alternative to MindManager is Freemind“). The resultant collection of notes I use daily, as I strive to integrate new ideas and principles into my life.

The second step in systemise is to have a system to implement and integrate that which are meaningful to you into your personal life. Knowledge without application is useless. Its only as we allow new ideas and principles to change our lives that we become wise. There is nothing that will cause you to grow more than when attempting to put new ideas and principles into action. I do this using a “To Do” or “Action list” which I review daily, as described in David Allen’s book “Getting Things Done“. I review this list every morning to orientate my day and I then attempt to apply some of these principles throughout the work day. I do this until new habits are formed, which typically takes 21 days.

Other strategies I use to ease implementation are:

• Teaching others these new ideas and principles. To teach is one of the best ways to learn and clarify new ideas.
• Create motivational posters with key quotes and pictures to keep me inspired and focused.
• Create reminders, in my calendar or on my computer desktop.

To integrate and apply what we learn requires us to be intentional, setting aside time to practice, experiment and apply new ideas. To systemise then I use the following key principles:

• Extract key ideas and principles from the book.
• File them into a system so they can be easily located when required.
• Use a system, a step-by-step approach, to implement and integrate these new insights into my life.
• Set a deadline for the implementation.
• Develop reminders, questions or even posters to keep you motivate and focused.
• Teach what I have learnt to others.
• Experiment with the ideas and principles as I wrestle with implementation.

I use a daily and weekly review, part of “Getting Things Done”, to reinforce ideas and principles I an integrating into my life.

And that’s it, I then move onto my next book!!!

“The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.” – Mark Twain (1835-1910)

Technorati Tags: Reading; GTD; Books; Lifehacks

Related posts:

1. How to read a business book
2. How to Select What to Read for Personal Development
3. The 2008 800-CEO-READ Leadership Book Awards
4. Leadership: The Art of Translating Ideas into Action
5. Reading for busy people

Tagged as: Getting Things Done, Learning