It’s not enough that you read a lot. To do great things, you have to read to lead.
Reading to
lead means pushing yourself–reading books “above your level.” In short,
you know the books where the words blur together and you can’t
understand what’s happening? Those are the books a leader needs
to read. Reading to lead or learn requires that you treat your brain
like the muscle that it is–lifting the subjects with the most tension
and weight.
it worked wonders for me: at 19, I was a Hollywood executive, I was at 21
I was the director of marketing for a publicly traded company, and at
24 I’d worked on 5 bestselling books and
sold my own to the biggest publisher in the world. I may have been a
college drop out but I have had the best teachers in the world:Â tough books.
Before the first page…
Break out of the School Mindset.
You are not reading for classroom test, Remember: now you’re reading for you.
Place. Names. Dates. These are unimportant. The lessons matter.
Forget everything but that message and how to apply it to your life.
Ruin the ending
When I start a book, I almost always go straight to Wikipedia (or Amazon or a friend) and ruin the ending. Who cares? Your aim as a reader is to understand WHY something happened, the what is secondary.You ought to ruin the ending–or find out the basic assertions of the book–because it frees you up to focus on your two most important tasks:Â
1) What does it mean? 2) Do you agree with it?
The first 50 pages of the book shouldn’t be a discovery process for you; you shouldn’t be wasting your time figuring out what the author is trying to say with the book. Instead, your energy needs to be spent on figuring out if he’s right and how you can benefit from it. Plus if you already know what happens, you can identify all the foreshadowing and the clues the first read through.
Read the reviews
What others think about the book is important, From Amazon to the New York Times, read the reviews so you can deduce the cultural significance of the work–and from what it meant to others.
If you are agreeing an opinion go and steal it. Use it.
The book itself…
Read the Intro/ Prologue/ Notes/ Forward
Read the intro, read all the stuff that comes before the book–even read the editors notes at the bottom of the pages. This sets the stage and helps boost your knowledge going into the book.
Look it up
if you find something that is not understand, don’t pretend you understood it. Go and look the meaning of the word/ concepts. don’t get bogged down with the names of the cities or the spelling of names, you’re looking to grasp the meta-lesson: the conclusions.
Mark Passages
Simply hold the page if you find anything good or mark it. As of my case i copying the same to word doc earlier, now a days i want to use a software to bookmark. If something worthy to note, write in the common place book. This way you can save the contemporaneous inspiration.
After you read
Go back through
Go back through the notes, summary you prepared. After 1-2 weeks read thee notes again and connect with your life. Apply in your problems and minds.
Read One Book from Every Bibliography
In every book I read, I try to find my next one in its footnotes or bibliography. This is how you
build a knowledge base in a subject–it’s how you trace a subject back to its core.
Apply and Use
This is most important part as of me (Bino).
Drop them in conversation. Allude to them in papers, in emails, in letters and in your daily life. How else do you expect to absorb them? The more fulfilling an outlet you find for the fruit of your
database, the more motivated you will be to fill it. Try adding a line to a report you’re doing, find solace in them during difficult times or add them to Wikipedia pages. Do something.