With the changes that are taking place in your industry and even your workplace, how can you get a leg up? You may have heard that continuous learning is a must to thrive today. But what would that look like for you?
The media often writes about books that the most accomplished people read. Will reading those books lead to success? Not necessarily, trust me I know. There is a lot more going on beneath the surface.
You will not find the most important piece of information in the news. Passively reading books will not make a difference in your life. I know that you may be wondering what will make the difference in your career. The harsh reality is that the most successful people read books across disciplines. And they actively read books. They make the book theirs, reflecting and synthesizing what they read.
But how does an ordinary person emulate them, when a big piece of the reading and learning is missing from the jigsaw puzzle. Let this year be the one that you read across disciplines to dominate your career. This is the subject of this article.
I mentioned that it is important to read across multiple disciplines. Why would any professional want to do that when she has a specialty she needs to continue to master? But if this is something that the most successful people do, wouldn’t it make sense to emulate that practice?
Have you read?
Impact of Reading Across Disciplines and Reading for Solutions
How to Synthesize Information to See What Your Peers Don’t
How to Get the Most from Reading Across Disciplines to Dominate Your Field: An Example
This is not the best example to illustrate reading books across disciplines. However, the books in the example are very important ones. And the example will illustrate how you can do it.
In the Lifetime Learners Guide to Reading and Learning
, the author, Gary Hoover, teaches you how to digest the average nonfiction book in about 30 minutes. There’s a section in the book where he writes about how to see what others don’t. And he further writes about piecing information together. He tells you to go beyond the headline of an article. And to think about what pieces of information didn’t make it into the story. What happened before that you may not know that could add context for you.
Reading the book, you get an inkling of how to see what others miss. But does the information go deep and far enough? In the book, Non-Obvious
by Rohit Bhargava, he presents the Haystack Method, which he designed to help people synthesize information. The end result is that the technique allows you to see what others might miss. Do you see how this book and the Lifetime Learners Guide to Reading and Learning complement each other?
In Non-Obvious, you now have a structured process to walk you through how to see things in books that others will likely miss.
5 Components of the Haystack Method
- Gathering
- Aggregating
- Elevating
- Naming
- Proving
Step 1: Gathering
Gathering is the stage where you read the books to get the information you need. When I’m gathering information with the intent to learn, my primary sources are books, articles, and YouTube videos. Rohit Bhargava also recommends that you can collect stories and ideas from your interactions with people or with content. So in a Lifetime Learners Guide to Reading and Learning
, Hoover encourages you to tie new information to what you already know.
When you’re gathering information, a critical question to ask is, “Where have I seen that before?” This is an active process of piecing information together.
Step 2: Aggregating
When previewing books, I recommended that you look for the main idea and the secondary ideas that support it. Take individual ideas and disconnected thoughts and group them together based on bigger ideas. One again you’re piecing together information.
After gathering ideas, choose a time to combine early results of your observation and curiosity with thoughtful insights about what it means and how it fits together. Aggregating means adding meaning to the ideas and stories. This personalizes things when you add your impressions.
Step 3: Elevating
What interests you most about the idea? What is below the surface? What’s the bigger picture? Think about the underlying themes that relate one group of ideas to another, to describe a broader idea. Elevate an idea to make it bigger and more encompassing. Make connections across industries. Aggregate multiple groupings of information together into something that might be a trend.
Step 4: Naming
- Involves describing an elevated idea in an easy to understand and memorable way.
- Shares a specific point of view.
- Finding the name for an idea is important.
You have a concept in the Lifetime Learners Guide to Reading and Learning to see what others do not. Now Non-Obvious
is extending the concept and making it better. Do you now see how using this process when reading books across multiple disciplines can be a gold mine?
Step 5: Proving
Ensure that there are enough examples and concrete research to justify why the idea does indeed describe an accelerating present enough to be called a trend. Something is not a trend because you say it is. Find supporting documentation. That’s why it’s important to keep track of gathered information in a folder.
Hoover talks about spotting trends and Bhargava extends the conversation on how to do it. Do you see how things are shaping up nicely?
Now, I’d like to add another book into the mix!
The book is The Thinker’s Guide for Students on How to Study & Learn a Discipline
. Although, this is an excellent book, I never recommend it because it’s inaccessible. It’s too difficult to read and understand, and most people will not bother with it. However, it does have some very important information in it.
Both The Thinker’s Guide for Students on How to Study & Learn a Discipline
and Lifetime Learners Guide to Reading and Learning
emphasize the importance of history. To master a subject, you have to understand its history. And to understand the future you need to understand the past. Additionally, the authors of the two books also talk about systems. You have to understand the chain. If you want to anticipate where an industry is going, you have to understand the key companies operating in the field. And you keep on doing that to get granular.
Also when trying to master a skill, it’s important to study it along with other skills. What is the skill a part of, and what is the skill comprised of. Do you now see how the process works? This is the deep thinking that’s required to set you apart from your peers.
How to Get the Most from Reading Across Disciplines to Dominate Your Field: Another Example
The premise behind To Be a Machine
is that you can use technology to extend human life. And the main idea behind The Food Revolution
is that if you eat mainly a plant-based diet, you can save your life and our world. Both books are connected. The underlying theme is extending human life. One book looks at the topic from a technology perspective. And the other looks at it from a health perspective.
The reader has to find the thread that connects the books together. And that’s how you will get the most from reading across disciplines. And this technique will help you to dominate your field. Using the Haystack Method is a great process to use. As with anything in life worth having, it’s difficult to do at first. And then you find your rhythm, and things become easier.
In conclusion, reading across disciplines allows you to take an idea from one discipline, then use another idea from another discipline to strengthen the idea, making it bigger and better. And you’ll find the best ideas where the disciplines intersect.
How to Get the Most from Reading Across Disciplines to Dominate Your Field: Next Steps
The time is now to start reading different genres and disciplines. Do you world in one field, but have an interest in others. That’s where you start the process. If you could use some help, join my Performance Accelerator Plan. The program has 12 modules. And you’ll get weekly emails instructing you on the type of book to read that week. When you complete the program, you’d have learned the skills the World Economic Forum says to need to thrive in 2020 to 2022. In addition you’d have started on your journey to developing intercultural awareness.
How Avil Can Help You!
I invite you to Join the Performance Accelerator Plan that walks you through the process and more. You’ll be reading books to build skills and develop intercultural awareness. Get more reading and learning tips here. And I also invite you to join Read a Book, Solve a Problem Facebook Group. I’m building a tribe of people who want to use the knowledge gained from books to tackle some of the world’s biggest problems.
In December 2020, I published two books on Amazon. I would greatly appreciate your support if you bought my two short e-books Read 30 Books in 30 Days Like Francis Bacon and Performance Accelerator Plan: Guide to Learning and Mastering Key Skills for the Future.
Read 30 Books in 30 Days Like Francis Bacon is not about speed reading. It’s about approaching every book differently and reading only the sections that align with your purpose.
The Performance Accelerator Plan book is a stripped-down version of the paid reading challenge of the same name. Obviously, you won’t get all the resources that come with the program that I sell on my website. But if you are a self-directed learner, it will help you tremendously.
Note: There are several Amazon affiliate links on this page. That means if you click on Amazon and buy something the organization will pay me a small commission.
