I may not have mentioned it on here before, but I am an avid reader. Now I’m not one of these ‘read 3 or 4 books a week’ types, I honestly don’t know how people find the time to read and absorb that many books per week (unless they are either retired or out of work). They are either speed-readers or they aren’t fully absorbing what has been taught or said in that book. Personally I don’t want to read a book as fast as humanly possible, I want to get as much out of it as I can by understanding what is being said or taught.
What I have found works best is to read no more than 2 books at any one time and those books can’t be about the same overall topic. So you wouldn’t read two books about marketing, for example, but you may read one about marketing and another one about something totally unrelated to that. Ideally something that just takes your mind away from everything to do with your business or career. A form of indulgent escapism, if you will.
Your brain won’t absorb the information if you try and read too many different books all at once, so focus on one book for business (i.e. what you want to learn ) and one for relaxation. That’s what I do and it WORKS!
Now I realize some of you reading this will be thinking something along the lines of, “Big deal Dean, you tell me to read 2 books at a time maximum, how’s that going to help me become successful?”. The answer to that is, “Your brain will focus and assimilate the book you are reading far more effectively“. It’s all about the POWER of FOCUS and absorbing the information you DO read so you can apply it to your business and your life.
I truly believe that reading books is something everybody should get in the habit of doing, even if you’ve never read a book before in your life (I know a man who read his first book at 62 years of age, so it’s never too late). Did you know that the highest-earners have often got extensive book collections and that people who read 7 business books a year, earn an average of 2.3 times that of someone that only reads 1 business book a year?
With all of this considered, if you read less than 7 business books a year are you now motivated to read more in 2013? Of course you are 🙂
The next book I am going to read is “The Alchemist“. If you have any good book recommendations, leave a comment on this post with the book title and why you enjoyed it and/or what you learnt from it.
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