The One Problem: Avil Beckford, Author of Digest 30 Books in 30 Days

For those of you who don't know me, my name is Avil Beckford. I started a series recently called The One Problem. Digest 30 Books in 30 Days by Avil BeckfordThis is an interview series, but it would look silly if I interviewed myself, so instead, I state the One Problem and answer it.

There are lots of problems in the world, but what I wanted to focus on is just one of those problems you can talk passionately about for five to ten minutes. So, you don't have a lot of time. I am going to be talking about a problem that's dear to my heart, and it's that enough professionals are not reading enough to learn.

Now, I've got some feedback and people are saying that two reasons why they don't read more books and that's because they don't have the time, and they cannot focus. I have a solution which will address both of those problems. Or you may call them a challenge. And what I'm going to say is only for non-fiction books. The problem is that publishers have word counts, so sometimes authors add extra information to satisfy the word count. Now, why should you be reading all that extra information?

Avil Beckford Talks About How Professionals Can Read More Books if They Read Selectively and Strategically

Have you read and watched?

The One Problem: Interview With Kelly Daring, Author of Is Love Enough

You never take up a non-fiction book and start reading from cover to cover. No, you don't do that. But before I talk a little about that, there are some things you need to do to prepare yourself. So the first thing is to write a one-sentence purpose for why you want to read the book. And that is important because that keeps you focused. The second thing is that you prepare your mind for reading so that you absorb the information from the book.

The way that you do that, you do what's called brain gym exercises, which connect both sides of the brain. A quick way is to do  some jumping jacks, about ten of them and maybe some marching band. That will get the juices going, the creative juices going and the blood pumping. OK, so you have done that.

You have the book a nonfiction book you want to read. So what you do is you read the Introduction, the Preface, the Foreword, scan the Index to see what  terms and phrases have the most references, because that tells you what the author thinks is important. That's gathering intelligence. Now, you look at the Table of Contents, which is the most important section. You look at that and you put a check mark beside the chapters and sections that you want to explore further.

Flip through the book to look at the pictures, because it's been said that a picture is worth a thousand words, and so that's what you want to do. The next thing is that you go to the sections and chapters that you flagged, and that's those are sections of the book that you're going to pay attention to. Now, I want to say something. You read as much or as little of the book as you need to read, OK?

It doesn't make any sense for you to rush through a book and not understand what it is about. I usually set a timer for an hour and I do these things, sometimes I may have to add a little bit more time, and sometimes I don't need as much.

This morning, I read the book, From Rep to Manager, that Ray Green had done a short review on. So I went through it and I needed less than an hour. In fact, half an hour was enough to get the goods from the book because there was no fluff in it. It was about 50 pages and that's it. So I could get through it quite easily.

So just think of the book, what do you need to get from it. What problem are you going to use the information to solve? And then you read as much or as little of the book as you need to. So the information that you're going to note when you're reading the sections you marked as important is what I call essential information.

Essential information is information that aligns with your purpose for reading the book, information that answers any questions you may have about the topic. Also, any kind of information that would allow you to solve problem, cut costs, increase revenues. That's also essential information. You have read the book and you have your notes. The next thing to do is to review your notes a few times. And what you're going to do is to pick out some big ideas.

Now, the big ideas would be similar to essential information, so just think about information that can solve a problem. You pick out your big ideas. Now you have your big ideas. The next step is to make them into bigger and better ideas. You look at all your ideas and start combining them. What makes sense? Sometimes it's obvious and sometimes it's not so obvious. You spend a little time doing this.

This technique works best when you're doing it with more than one book. So this is a problem I wanted to talk about, and this is my solution. I hope that it was helpful. Thank you. And have a good day.

Avil Beckford's Step to Read Selectively

1. Write down your one-sentence purpose for reading the nonfiction book.
2. Do some jumping jacks or other brain gym exercises.
3. Preview your book.
4. Read the Preface, Foreword, Introduction.
5. Review the Table of Contents
6. Place a check mark beside the chapters and sections that need further exploration.
7. Read the sections you flagged as important.
8. Take notes.
9. Review your notes, picking out the big ideas.
10. Combine ideas to make them bigger and better.

How Avil Beckford Can Help You if You Want to Read More Books

The most accomplished people use books as problem solving tools. They carve out the time in their schedule to find solutions in the pages of a book. Let me help you to solve your own problems. Additionally, this program helps you to learn valuable career skills. Click the link MoreReads Individual Leadership Development Program to buy.

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