Hello everyone, this is Helen Huang @ Organizing, based in Beijing, China. In order to better learn and practice the YiXiaoNeng Time Management System, after finished publishing 100 Chinese articles, I decided to continue writing and publishing a daily English article in another 100 days based on the "YeWuBin Time Management 100 Episodes" audio program. Today is the 166th day.
Today's topic is: Read to Improve Specific Areas of Your Life
Today I want to talk about an important new topic: Reading.
Reading is a way to relax the body and expand the soul. In other words, if you will travel 10,000 miles, you should also read 10,000 books. Reading is a great way to improve your skills by learning from another's knowledge and experience. Reading is a form of studying. And a great way to master the knowledge you have read is to teach others what you just learned.
Let me share with you how I am able to continuously learn.
First, I learn through reading and taking courses. Then, I take action and practice those new skills. I reinforce the information I've learned by sharing it with others. Finally, I teach it to other people. Teaching information to others requires a mastery of the subject matter. If you can teach it to others, you know have truly mastered the material.
The steps I follow to read and train myself are a cycle of learning that I continuously practice. It represents absorbing information. Then I do the opposite and release that information to others in the form of coaching and teaching. A strange thing happens when you release the information – you actually retain and master the knowledge rather than lose it. Reading plays an important role in the entire learning process. Most people don't know that this reading method is so effective, and most have not mastered it.
So I'm going to talk about it today how you can make it worthy to you. We can divide reading into a few levels:
The first level includes those who make no time to read, or read without a purpose. This is a wasted opportunity.
The next level includes those who set reading goals like reading one book a week or one book a day. Many people are like this in the beginning – focusing on the number of books they read. In my opinion, this is the wrong way to learn. But like I said before, a bad beginning is good to create an interest in reading and develop the initial habit. Yixiaoneng advocates having a bad beginning and shaping that into good results.
Here is how you can develop the reading habit. I will talk to you about a special book in my life: How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie. It was the beginning of my reading life so to speak.
About 20 years ago, I encountered some interpersonal problems. When I first started working, I paid more attention to studying and learning, and less on making friends and developing interpersonal relationships. I think this is because I grew up in the countryside and favored work over friendships.
Afterwards, I happened to find this book How to Win Friends and Influence People. In it there was one sentence that really caught my attention: "15% of a person's success depends on specialized knowledge, while 85% depends on interpersonal communication." Reading this book was like discovering a precious treasure. The feeling was so great that I read it several times. It has left a big impression on my life.
Later, I wanted to improve the skill of reading so that I could learn more from other authors. I read a book titled How to Read a Book and learned many techniques from it. In it I learnt the several skills you can use to read, including different types of reading. This includes intensive reading, skimming, fast reading or speed reading , theme reading, and on-demand reading.
Skimming means to read only the important parts of a book. Intensive reading means focusing on each and every word for maximum absorption of the material. Combining the two skimming and intensive reading in selected areas is how you conduct theme reading. So uses both skimming and intensive reading on books of a specific topic that you wish to increase your knowledge in.
Currently, I believe there're are too many books to read, and not just books but also information on the internet, articles on social media, etc. Finding the right material to read can be difficult. For instance, whenever I participate in a training course, I usually look up the teacher's biographical and other sources' information. I then buy the teacher's books on Baidu or Amazon.
By reading other people's books, I discovered the three-dimensional reading method. The three dimensional reading method refers to studying about a specific topic using three learning techniques. These are training, reading and searching. I also document information using a technique called mind-mapping.
So in conclusion ...... Remember, we cannot do everything and we cannot read about everything. We need a healthy balance of the two.
Now I suggest you read lots of books, skimming the material for the important information that you want to learn and then focusing with intensive reading on the areas that you really want to develop. In this way you can cover a lot of ground. Choose themes that are important to you and that you want to develop your skills in.
Even after you master a topic, we still need to read to ensure we remain an expert in those areas. For example, when I decided to teach myself time management, I found all the books that I could in this field. I skimmed for the important material and then intensively read the areas that were very important.
During a deep learning, I made Powerpoint slides summarizing the knowledge I wanted to master and began sharing it with others in order to reinforce the material. Then I began to apply what I learned in every part of my life. Because only by applying the knowledge, can we learn and hope to master it.
Peter Drucker, the father of management, also promoted theme reading and even said that we should read a major theme at least once every 7 years. Why 7 years? This is because times are changing so fast that the knowledge documented in books becomes outdated and obsolete so quickly. We need to keep up with new information and methods by reading over and over again.
Yet there is some material that is timeless. So we need both. We need to study both classic books as well as read themed books in order to keep up with the changing of time. I believe you'll enrich your lives and expand your capabilities to unimaginable levels if you read in this on-demand way.
In future lessons, I'll talk more about different reading methods and how you can use them to increase your knowledge. Until then, open a book and get started!
That's all sharing today. Thank you being with me together. Have a wonderful day!