3 Simple Ways to Read Broadly and Deeply to Grow Your Career

The Thinker's Guide for Students on How to Study & Learn a Discipline

I’m sure you’ve heard it said countless times that you should read broadly and deeply. Sometimes the media uses the word diversely instead of broadly. You’re also aware of the reframing of the old adage, “Jack of all trades and master of none,” to “Jack of all trades and master of some.” Are there simple ways to read broadly and deeply to grow your career, so that you can become “Jack of all trades and master of some”?

• But what does it mean to read broadly and deeply? 
• How will reading broadly and deeply help you to make a meaningful contribution to society? 
• Can reading broadly and deeply help you to solve complex problems that matter in the workplace?

Those are very good questions to ponder.

The Case or Not to Read Broadly and Deeply

Bills Gates reads a lot to learn and understand. And based on his book recommendations, you can see that he reads both broadly and deeply. He engages in interdisciplinary learning. These days he is focused on global poverty, clean water, climate change, and energy. He sometimes writes about these topics of interest on Gates Notes.

Even today, the media talks a lot about the Think Weeks he participated in while he was at Microsoft. During that time of intense reading and reflection, he consumed a lot of content in different formats – print books, reports, journal articles and so on. But what happened after the Think Week? Did it allow Gates to generate innovative ideas? Today, does his diverse reading allow him to generate ideas to solve the world’s biggest problems in his areas of interest?

I think the media is enamored with the whole concept of a Think Week, and not so much with the outcome of that intense period of reading. It is difficult to find the substance I am looking for in the articles on Gates’ Think Weeks. How does someone duplicate this reading and learning sabbatical? What can you expect to happen if a professional participate in a Think Week?

I respect the philanthropist a great deal, but how did his Think Weeks help him and Microsoft, the company he co-founded? What successful products did he generate ideas for while on any of his Think Weeks? If you know the answer, please let me know.

I would have loved it if I knew more about the entire process and how it impacted his career. And whenever Gates reveals his book recommendations, once again the media is all over it. A time or two, I have also promoted the books he recommends. But looking back, what I think would have helped me much more, and it was also a lesson to myself, was always to let people know exactly why they should read a particular book. How did the book help the reader, who is recommending the book?

I know that I am being somewhat unreasonable, but I would have liked Bill Gates to say exactly how the books helped or shaped him. How did he profit from reading the books? And I am using the word profit loosely. What return did he get on his reading time investment? When Gates is reading a book, he never abandons it. He has to finish it. I got over reading entire books a long time ago. 

Some of the Books Bill Gates Recommends to Help You Read Broadly and Deeply

UpheavalNine PintsBorn a CrimeThe Heart: A NovelHillbilly ElegyThe Rosie ProjectEvictedWhat If?The Grid

Reading the Elon Musk Way

I am on a quest to understand how the uber successful read books. Unfortunately, many of these accomplished individuals do not share this type of information publicly. This makes it very difficult to emulate them. Not so though, with Elon Musk. So, I have also been reading about Elon Musk, because he too is a voracious reader. 

Elon Musk shares a lot about how he reads and not just what he reads. As many of you already know, he is knowledgeable about many topics and have a deep knowledge about a few. This manifests in the four diverse multibillion businesses he started in software, energy, transportation, and aerospace.

Musk is such an accomplished person because he reads broadly and deeply and processes what he reads. In other words, he reads across multiple disciplines. This is something that I have preached for many years. He has also mastered the art of learning. Reading broadly and deeply allows him to see what others miss. 

I am not going to cover information about Elon Musk that others have done successfully, but what I will do, is to focus on reading across disciplines and turning your newfound knowledge into actionable insights.

Have you read?

How Elon Musk Learns Faster And Better Than Everyone Else

Here's Elon Musk's Secret for Learning Anything Faster

The following conversation took place four years ago and was taken from a Reddit “Open Mike”

My Interpretation: Deeper Dive into Elon Musk’s Thoughts about Learning

There are a few points from the Reddit conversation that are very important and worth exploring.

• You are much smarter than you think and can learn a lot more than you think you give yourself credit for.
• Learning is like a jigsaw puzzle. You have to figure out the pieces within a subject and how they fit together. The pieces hold the subject together.
• There are many subjects within a discipline. If you study several subjects within that discipline you will likely see themes emerging.
• Every subject has a set of foundational ideas you must master if you want to learn the subject effectively.
• Think of any subject as a system of interconnected ideas. Look for the connections between the ideas in the subject to understand it.
• Once you have mastered the foundational ideas of the subject, you can then build on them. Then you can branch out to adjacent subjects.
• A good place to start when you are trying to master a subject is to answer the question “What is…?” For instance, if you want to hone your problem solving skills, answer “What is problem solving?”
• In continuing with the example above, you also want to learn the history of problem solving, so you have a timeline where you can place information on problem solving. And you also want to learn how to think like a problem solver.
• Problem solving, critical thinking, creativity, and decision making are related topics, so it makes sense to learn them at the same time.
• Everything you learn is related to every other thing you learn. This means that everything is connected. Elon Musk figured that out and that is one of the reasons he learns things so quickly.
• I highly recommend that you read The Thinker's Guide for Students on How to Study & Learn a Discipline: Using Critical Thinking Concepts & Tools by Richard Paul and Linda Elder. This book will give you insights into how Elon Musk learns.

What Are the Implications of Reading Broadly and Deeply?

You already know that work is changing at an unprecedented pace. To keep up you have to  learn new skills all the time. Your peers know this and they will be learning the new skills so that they can accelerate their careers. What most people will not be doing is reading and learning the Elon Musk way. He outreads many of the most accomplished professionals. Most professionals stay in a silo, reading solely about their industry.

“Between 40 million and 160 million women globally may need to transition between occupations by 2030, often into higher-skilled roles. To weather this disruption, women (and men) need to be skilled, mobile, and tech-savvy, but women face pervasive barriers on each, and will need targeted support to move forward in the world of work.” 

Source: McKinsey report, The future of women at work: Transitions in the age of automation

What the report suggests, is that you need to go the extra mile and do more than what your peers are doing. If your area is climate change, read about healthcare reform. Poverty and homelessness your area of interest, read about financial models. How many of your peers will be doing the same? Probably none or very few. 

Go deep in a few areas so that you can connect disparate ideas. When you read broadly and deeply, you will likely see what others miss. Magic happens at the intersection of these topics. Additionally, when you start reading more books, even those from different disciplines, you will start to see patterns and make unlikely connections.

Some of the Books Elon Musk Recommends to Help You Read Broadly and Deeply

The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings: Deluxe Pocket Boxed SetThe Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the GalaxyBenjamin FranklinStructures: Or Why Things Don't Fall DownSuperintelligence: Paths, Dangers, StrategiesIgnition!: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket PropellantsOur Final InventionThe Complete Isaac Asimov's Foundation SeriesThe Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

3 Simple Ways to Read Broadly and Deeply to Grow Your Career

1. Choose five very different books from the list of books that Bill Gates and Elon Musk recommend. 
2. Read books that the media are not recommending. 
   1. In a William S Burroughs’ Creative Reading audio class I stumbled across, he recommends the types of books Elon Musk would read. Choose five books to read.
   2. Gene Waddell, an archivist at the College of Charleston created a list of rare books to inspire learning – List One and List Two. 
3. Join my reading challenge, the Performance Accelerator Plan. You will be reading across disciplines while learning the skills to thrive in 2022.

If you decide to join the Performance Accelerator Plan here are the kind of skills that you will learn. This means you have to read the books that will teach you those skills.

Reading books is not enough to grow your career. You must read the way Elon Musk does, deconstructing the words and ideas on the page. What are the main themes of the books you read? Review the notes you took while reading the books, then extract the core ideas and the secondary ideas. Combine the different themes from the books you read to see what elevated ideas emerge. You are looking for ideas at the intersection of different disciplines.

Create a table like the one above. Record the main and secondary ideas from the diverse books you read. Start combining the ideas to generate bigger ideas. Try to ties the bigger idea to a human need.