Books I Have Read during My Reading and Learning Sabbatical Episode 2

Choosing Books to Read

How do you decide which books to read? For me, I learn about books from many sources. But during this reading and learning sabbatical, I wanted to read books that gave me strategies to use in my business. However, when I learned about intersection thinking – combining ideas from different disciplines – at the beginning of my adventure in learning, I created three broad disciplines: Business, Humanities and Science to focus on. I decided that I wasn't going to buy any books since my Kindle app has close to 11,000 books in it. Throughout this article you”ll learn the names of the books I have read during my reading and learning sabbatical.

As I mentioned in episode 1, I opened up the app and just started choosing some books that I've never read that I wanted to read. After some thought, I decided to read some mini-biographies of people I wanted to learn more about. You can emulate the skills of anyone you admire. I wanted to learn more about Bill Gates because I admire the way he reads and take notes. I wanted to hone those skills just like he did. 

Have you read?

Learn, Stretch, & Grow: Reading and Learning Sabbatical Episode 1

Here are some of the books I have read that left an impression on me. After I read some of the mini-biographies that I own, I thought I should learn more about marketing. I created products and I wanted to learn the best ways to market them. I also wanted to learn new information that I could make my products and services more valuable. With this in mind, I read the 10X Marketing Formula and it was very good. The author Garrett Moon, who founded Co-Schedule, says that you shouldn’t think of marketing as a department. Instead, think of it as a startup. The thing with startups is that they never have enough money, so they have to learn how to bootstrap. Growth hacking is big for them. 

I loved the way Moon presented the intersection of content marketing with growth hacking to get content hacking. He presents a formula to write blog posts and articles that engage readers — gets you more traffic. 

Storytelling is the rage these days, and to learn more about how to do it well, I read Storynomics. I own several books on storytelling, but this was my first choice because of who wrote it. Robert McKee is well known for his Story Seminar. Many Hollywood types who have won Academy Awards took his Seminar.

Now Mckee has entered the business arena and Storynomics helps the reader to write better marketing stories. I’ve always wondered how to introduce conflict in a marketing story and I learned that you use an inciting incident. The book delivers and I want to use intersection thinking to combine the ideas in Storynomics with those in the 10X Marketing Formula, as other related ideas I come across during my reading and learning sabbatical. Although I’m now working on other things since it’s September, my reading and learning sabbatical will officially end on September 30th.

I also wanted to learn more about growth hacking, so I read Explosive Growth. I enjoyed that books as well. Before I started to read books that would help me to accelerate the growth of my business, I read several books on learning, memory, and reading. I wanted to effectively learn as much as I could in a contracted time frame. The best way to do that is to learn effective reading and learning strategies. One book taught me how to digest the content of a book in 30 to 60 minutes. This is not an exaggeration.

Here’s the thing, I’ve always said that most books are longer than they need to be. Think back to the last 10 books that you read. After the fact, how many of them can you honestly say deserved to be read from cover-to-cover. Publishers have word counts. Because of that, authors add extraneous information, so they can satisfy the word count. We’re all busy. Why should I or you waste time reading non-essential information. You have to become more skilled at quickly deciding what’s important and not important in a book, then focus on the important bits.

This only works for non-fiction. You don’t want to miss the plot in fiction books that you read. Imagine how many more non-fiction books you could read if you knew how to read intelligently, digesting a book in 30 to 60 minutes. This is not about speed reading. I'm getting a lot faster at picking out what's important and not important information in the books I read. 

I’m applying the 80/20 Rule, which is to read 20 percent of the book to get about 80% of the knowledge. It doesn’t always work out that way because I’m reading books of varying levels of difficulty, so there are times when it takes a longer time to work through the important sections of a book. 

What I'm also noticing during the sabbatical, is that when I'm reading a book, I'm also connecting the content to the other books that I have read. This is also an important learning strategy. So even though I’m officially in the Gathering Phase of the Haystack Method, I'm also working on the Aggregating Phase even though I haven't formally started it. 

Before I list some of the books I’ve read so far, I wanted to talk about several books in a series that I’ve read. The books are written by Remington Kane and the lead character is an assassin. I’m not saying that being an assassin is a worthy profession, because it’s not, but there are some key lessons that we can learn from the main character whose name is Tanner.

Tanner is an autodidact and polyglot. He practices his craft and that’s why he’s the best in the world. Continuous learning is a must for him, so he’s constantly feeding his mind with good stuff. He has a code to live by, and there are certain lines that he will not cross, even when there is a substantial financial pay out. 

Tanner is the seventh Tanner, so technically he is called Tanner 7. When each Tanner realizes he can no longer function effectively, he trains a worthy person to take his place. The first Tanner started a journal, which includes all the effective strategies he tried successfully and the book gets passed down to his protege. Each Tanner adds to the journal. These are important lessons from these books I have read from the Tanner series of books.

What would happen if you stood on the shoulders of giants? That one book is a game changer for Tanner 7 because he has access to knowledge that other assassins don’t have. The Tanner journal is his secret sauce in his business. You can gain this kind of upper hand by reading books by and about people you admire. In Zero to One, Peter Thiel emphasizes the importance of having a secret sauce. What is your secret sauce?

Have you read?

Zero to One by Peter Thiel, Book Review

Books I Have Read during Summer 2019

1. The Summer Retreat, Sheila Roberts
2. The Wish, Patricia Davids
3. Mornings on Main, Jodi Thomas
4. Unforgettable You, Brenda Novak
5. The Best of Us, Robyn Carr
6. California Girls, Susan Mallery
7. Sister’s of Summer’s End, Lori Foster
8. The View from Alameda Island, Robyn Carr
9. The Pomodoro Technique
10. The 80/20 Principle
11. Lifetime Learner’s Guide to Reading and Learning
12. The Mountain Master of Sha Tin
13. Non-Obvious
14. Business Biographies and Memoirs
15. Finite and Infinite Games
16. Stone Bridges, Carla Neggers
17. Be Our Guest
18. To Pixar and Beyond
19. The Imagineering Process, Lou Key
20. Leadership Lessons: Warren Buffett, Walt Disney, Thomas Edison, Katharine Graham, Steve Jobs, and Ray Kroc
21. The Wisdom of Walt Disney
22. Deep Allegiance, David Archer
23. 10X Marketing Formula
24. Hacking Growth, Sean Ellis 
25. Explosive Growth
26. Storynomics
27. Never Stop Learning
28. Ultralearning
29. Influencer, Brittany Hennessy
30. Forget Mars: Circular Economy, the Next Big Opportunity
31. The Skills: From First Job to Dream Job
32. Make it Stick
33. How to be Great At Your Job
34. The Silk Road
35. How to Study & Learn a Discipline
36. Teach Students How to Learn
37. The Power of Broke
38. Do Cool Sh*t
39. Seven Figure Women
40. Straight Talk for Startups
41. Crossing the Chasm

Final Thoughts on the Books I Have Read during My Reading and Learning Sabbatical

Some of the books are excellent, some of them are not bad, and a few of them are not worth the read. The authors are saying a whole lot of nothing. In another Episode on my reading and learning sabbatical, I’ll talk more about what I’m experiencing on my reading adventure. What do you think of the books I have read so far during my reading and learning sabbatical?

If you’re interested in learning how to learn, I’ve created a two-month program for you!

All-Out War (A Tanner Novel Book 25)The Man, The Myth (A Tanner Novel Book 24)The Spy Game (A Tanner Novel Book 21)A Victim of Circumstance (A Tanner Novel Book 22)A Man Of Respect (A Tanner Novel Book 23)Tanner: Year One (A Tanner Series Book 1)Making A Killing On Wall Street (A Tanner Novel Book 3)Inevitable I (A Tanner Novel Book 1)Kill In Plain Sight (A Tanner Novel Book 2)