Introduction: Enhancing Your Career: Strategic Reading Challenge

We are living in a dynamic environment where things are changing at the speed of light. Jobs are disappearing, even industries are disappearing or contracting. Participating in the Read the World Challenge will not guarantee that you won’t lose your job. But what it will do, if you actively participate, is enable you to gain new skills that will make you more marketable, enhancing your career. The Challenge is called Read the World, but to be more accurate, it is reading broadly and reading diversely, which encompass, reading the world. In addition to reading books written by authors born in countries different from your own, you will have many opportunities during the Challenge to read books that will help you to develop new skills, creatively solve issues in the workplace, more deeply understand your industry and niche, elevate your thinking and much more – all steps to enhance your career. At the end of 52 weeks, you would have read 52 books, so devote at least 15 of those books for the purpose of enhancing your career. Reading the right 52 books will transform your life. Jim Rohn once said,

“Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.”

Further Reading: Read the World Challenge

In most of the blog posts so far, I have focused on reading the world, emphasizing reading books written by authors born in countries other than your own. Today, we are focusing on the books that will enable you to become better at your job. Even if you are not an employee, at the end of 52 weeks, you should be better at what you do for a living. Based on the mistakes I made running the current Reading Challenge, I have learned that I have to do things differently this time around. With that in mind, I am going to help you figure out some of the books that you should be reading to transform your effectiveness on the job. To do this, let’s focus on The Invisible Mentor Model, but we will focus on the aspect of reading books.

Enhancing Your Career: The Invisible Mentor Learning Model

1. Stage One: Identify Your Goal
2. Stage Two: The BIG WHY – Reading Needs Assessment
3. Stage Three: Get Organized
4. Stage Four: Get Started – It’s Time to Learn
5. Stage Five: Journey to Excellence: Is it Working – Track Your Success

Stage One: Identify Your Goal

1. To achieve excellence in your professional life, what changes would you have to make?
   1. What do you want to achieve in your career?
   2. What are three skills if you acquired them would make a big difference in your career?
   3. What areas do you want/have to develop in?
   4. Solving which workplace problems would give you the greatest satisfaction? Or have the greatest impact on your career?
   5. What important issues are plaguing your industry, and how would you go about resolving them?
   6. What issues are you facing in your workplace?
   7. What stretch assignment could you take on in the next 52 weeks that would make influencers take notice of you? Are there skills needed to successfully work on such a project?
   8. What trends on the horizon, that if acted on, will provide you with unique opportunities in the workplace?

Stage Two: The Big Why – Reading Needs Assessment

2. Based on your responses above, what are the gaps between where you are today, to where you’d like to be in the next year?
3. What knowledge do you need to fill those gaps?
4. What books can you read to fill the gaps?
   1. If you are unsure of which books to read, ask family, friends, colleagues, your boss, or the librarian at your public library for recommendations.
   2. View the Table of Contents of each recommended book to determine at least 15 books that you would like to read during the Read the World Challenge. If the book doesn't have a Table of Contents, do a quick online research to get a sense of what the book is about, and if it will help you to fill the gaps.
5. Based on the requirements of the Reading Challenge, schedule when you will read each of the 15 books.

Further Reading:

Choosing the Right Books: Read the World Challenge

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: The Essential Value of a Classic Education

Stage Three: Get Organized

Review your learning goals based on the information gathered so far. To make sure that you are not overwhelmed during the Read the World Challenge, keep in mind that for each month, you are only required to read one book by an author born in another country.

1. List your three most important learning goals.
2. Prioritize the three learning goals, so that you will know which books to read first.
3. Plan to achieve your learning goals.
4. Determine the number of hours each day you have to dedicate to reading to achieve your learning goals.
5. Schedule learning time – what is scheduled gets done. Target to read at least 50 pages each day. If you finish reading a book before the week is over, start reading the next book on your list because there are times when you may not be able to read 50 pages – try as you might. Try not to lose the momentum.

Stage Four: Get Started – It’s Time to Read Books

Start reading the work-related books that you selected.

1. Key questions to ask while reading each book to increase your comprehension.
   1. What's the purpose for reading?
   2. What's the material about?
   3. What are some important themes?
   4. What are the key concepts?
   5. What do you already know about this topic?
   6. What does this remind you of?
   7. What past experiences have you had with this topic?
   8. How can you apply existing knowledge with past experiences to what you’re reading?
   9. How can you rearrange the concepts?
   10. How are the concepts related?
   11. What's the value of this information?
   12. Are there any patterns?
   13. What clues can you find?
   14. What is being implied but not explicitly stated?
   15. What did you learn?
   16. How has your thinking changed?
   17. How can you apply what you've learned in new contexts?
2. Take excellent notes.
3. What are 5 key ideas from each book?
4. Whichever work-related book(s) that you read during the month, remember to find ways to connect the ideas to the other books you read that month. Imagine what might happen when you connect disparate pieces of information.

Further Reading: Read it, Learn it, Analyze it, Apply it

Stage Five: Journey to Excellence – Is the Read the World Challenge Working? Track Your Success

1. Track your progress every month.
2. Record in detail what you have learned and how it has helped you in your career and life.
3. Have you resolved your initial issues or problems? If not, what aspects have not been resolved? Do you need to revisit another section of the model such as choosing different books?
4. At the end of 52 weeks, have you achieved your learning goals for the year?
5. Return to Stage One in The Invisible Mentor Learning Model.

Enhancing Your Career: Actions to Take to in 52 Weeks

1. Read the three Related Posts about the Read the World Challenge.
   1. Read the World Challenge.
   2. Choosing the Right Books: Read the World Challenge.
   3. Read it, Learn it, Analyze it, Apply it
2. Perform Stages One, Two and Three before the Challenge begins.
   1. Stage One: Identify Your Goal
   2. Stage Two: The BIG WHY – Reading Needs Assessment
   3. Stage Three: Get Organized
3. Purchase your books before you intend to read them. You may be tempted to borrow books from the library, but the difficulty with that is that you cannot write in them. Visit your local used bookstore to see what treasures they have in store for you.

Get Started Here – I want to help you get started on your learning journey! Sign-up for the Read the World Challenge.

In the meantime, THANK YOU for your time… Thank you for sharing this post, and thank you for connecting with me on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest! What was your biggest takeaway from today?

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