How many books, recordings, and seminars have you taken over the years, and how many of them can you point to as increased sources of profit – not just knowledge, but PROFIT – in your business?
There are too may people who read and read and read and never get anything out of it. One of the reasons why this is, is because learning doesn’t work that way.
You wouldn’t learn how to ride a bike JUST by reading a book on it. Even when we had to study something in school, we didn’t just read the history book once. It’s about comprehension strategies. Training modules available needs to be understood well in order to apply it.
We took it chapter by chapter. We reflected on what it meant and discussed it with others. And when it came time for a test, we applied and demonstrated our knowledge.
Whatever happened to that?
Do you want to change the way you learn and make every information product you buy more valuable? Read it slowly.
1. You’ll be able to sleep on it.
Sleep has a huge role in memory. It’s the time period where our brain decides which information is valuable and deserves to be stored for the next day.
If you read something once and forget about it, your brain learns to filter it out. That means you can’t act on it and take advantage of it.
If you read it chapter by chapter though, there’s more of a chance that the information inside will stick!
That’s also why it’s important to limit the amount of information you get and keep yourself from being overloaded. The less information you try to take in, the less you will confuse your brain about what is important.
2. Little Accidents
If you’re learning AND doing, you’ll gain more insight as you go, especially if you’re in an environment where you’ll get a lot of feedback from other people.
The more you allow yourself to DO, the more you’ll be able to adjust the quality of each small task. When you pinpoint what you’re doing wrong, you can give it special attention and fix it, just like a school student who is studying with a certain chapter. Conversely, imagine reading an entire book and trying to act on all of it at once! A real pain, right? It’s much tougher to dig out what your weak areas are and improve on them.
3. The power of suspense.
We read books in one or two big chunks because we always want to know what’s going to happen next. It’s too tempting to devour information in the same way. It’s natual. We do it without even thinking.
And it’s too tempting to think we can learn a new skill by reading a book. But chances are, that new skill will take a long time to implement. What’s more likely is that we will read the book very quickly, drain all the “suspense” out of it, and then get hungry for a new solution.
Now you’re a voracious reader and not a voracious businessperson. Bad.
Take things slowly.
Develop your skills.
Sleep on what you learn.
And act on it.
That’s the way to get lasting results out of everything that you read.