How to Actually Build Knowledge to Accelerate Your Career

Do You Know How to Build Knowledge to Accelerate Your Career?

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

How do you read books? Seriously, I want to know. What kinds of books do you read? If you’re a financial analyst, do you only read about your industry? Are you a writer? If yes, do you only read about the craft of writing? How do you distinguish yourself from your peers? Those are a few questions. But I think we need to have this conversation. If you want to distinguish yourself, you need to think about how to actually build knowledge to accelerate your career.

Skills You Need to Succeed

Every two years or so, the World economic Forum reports on the 10 skills you need to thrive in the near future. Skills are always changing, but if you’re a lifelong learn, you have an edge over your peers. Will building skills enhance your career?

Over the past several months, I’ve been in a more pensive mood since the global pandemic hit. I’ve been thinking about how to build knowledge to grow your career. I’ve been also reading articles and books trying to understand what it means to accelerate your career and how to do it. The big word these days is pivot, but how do you do it?

Can Simply Reading Books Accelerate Your Career?

You often hear about the books that CEOs are reading. Or you hear about the books that shaped their thinking or helped them to achieve success. If you want to emulate the success that Oprah, Bill Gates, Elon Musk et al achieved, it’s important to know what they feed their minds. Now, you’re faced with the age-old dilemma – process versus outcome. Achievement is important in life. You need something to work towards. But the process you take to get to your goal is even more important.

Yes, for some successful people, reading was a way to lift them out of poverty. For others, it was a way for them to build more wealth. How are these accomplished people reading books? And how do they synthesize the knowledge from the books they read? In so many articles, you hear that Warren Buffett reads over 500 pages each day. Or that Bill Gates reads 50 books each year. That’s good information to have because it will inspire some to read more books.

Successful People Spend a Lot of Time Thinking about What They Read

What happens after Warren Buffett reads his 500 pages, or Bill Gates reads his 50 books? We know that they’re both thinkers. They reflect on what they read. That’s a big part of the equation – thinking about what you read or learn. Do you agree with the author of the book? Why? Why not? Can you actually build knowledge to accelerate your career by thinking about what you read? That depends on how you’re thinking about the text in the book.

Learn to Think: How to Grow in Your Career by Building Knowledge

8 Elements of Thought When Reading to Master any Skill

The Foundation of Critical Thinking introduces you to the eight elements of thought in their books. They’re basic structures that help you to understand a book. Look at the eight questions. If you’re able to answer them after reading a book, then you understand the book. You’ve gained knowledge.

1. Why did the author write the book?
2. What’s the author’s point of view on the issue?
3. Did the author make assumptions, and what are they?
4. What are the implications of her reasoning?
5. Think about the information she uses to reason through the issue.
6. What are the inferences and conclusions?
7. List the most basic concepts.
8. What’s the question the author is trying to answer in the book?

Ideas to Become a Master Learner

In the Thinker’s Guide for Students on How to Study & Learn a Discipline, the authors, Linda Elder and Paul Richard, present 18 ideas to become a master learner. The following four ideas are important to your understanding of a book.

1. Idea #2: Become an active learner. Be prepared to work ideas into your thinking by active reading, writing, speaking, and listening.

2. Idea #9: Relate content whenever possible to issues and problems and practical situations in your life. If you can’t connect it to life, you don’t know it.

3. Idea #15:   Learn to test your thinking using intellectual standards. “Am I being clear? Accurate? Precise? Relevant? Logical? Am I looking for what is most significant?”

4. Idea#18: Frequently evaluate your reading. Are you reading the book actively? Are you asking questions as you read? Can you distinguish what you understand from what you don’t?

 The Thinker's Guide for Students on How to Study & Learn a Discipline The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking Concepts and Tools How to Read a Paragraph How to Write a Paragraph

I think accomplished individuals know how to think. They understand the elements of thoughts and ideas on how to become a better learner. They may not name the concepts, but they understand and have mastered them. The other thing is, to them a book is a problem solving tool. They dive into the book to get what they need from it. How about you?

Reading a book summary is an excellent way to get the key concepts from business books. It’s also a great way to decide which books to buy to explore more deeply. Click the Readitforme link to join. Think of this subscription as your speed-reading superpower. You read the summary, therefore, you can digest and process the book faster.

Read Across Multiple Disciplines: How to Actually Build Knowledge to Accelerate Your Career

I’ve talked about thinking, while and after reading a book. Now I’d like to talk about reading across disciplines. If you're thinking about how to grow in your career. This is what you need to actually build knowledge to accelerate your career. You can learn a lot from Elon Musk. He is one of the few successful people who talk about how they read and think. I’ve been learning about reading across multiple disciplines.

Have you read?

How to Read Like Elon Musk to Unlock Hidden Potential for Breakthrough Success

There are several articles that describe Musk as an “expert generalist”, a term coined by Orit Gadiesh, Bain & Company Chairman, London. Dadiesh defines expert generalist as:

“Someone who has the ability and curiosity to master and collect expertise in many different disciplines, industries, skills, capabilities, countries and topics.”

That’s a good description of Elon Musk. But he does much more than master and collect expertise in many areas. He applies and monetizes that knowledge. Look at what he has accomplished so far. Musk has started businesses in sectors such as space exploration, energy, and telecommunications, to name a few. He is an intersection thinker and not an “expert generalist”.

According to Rohit Bhargava, author of Non-Obvious 2019: How to Predict Trends and Win The Future:

“Intersection thinking is a method for creating overlap between seemingly disconnected ideas in order to generate new ideas, directions, and strategies for powering your own success. It can create a crossover gamechanger. It allows you to think in a way your competitors aren’t.”

Why Does it Matter? Do You Need to Build Knowledge to Accelerate Your Career?

I think it matters. To build knowledge to accelerate you career, you need to read across disciplines. And you need to reflect on the new information. On top of that, McKinsey Global Institute released the report, The future of women at work: Transitions in the age of automation. Artificial intelligence technologies will have a devastating impact on women. Many will have to up-skill if they want to take home a paycheque.

“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.”

How will you synthesize the information you glean when you read across disciplines? I’ll talk about that in another blog post in the series. But, I’d like to say that I believe intersection thinking will give you a leg up.

Final Thoughts: How to Actually Build Knowledge to Accelerate Your Career

So far in the series on reading, learning, and memory, I’ve talked about:

1. Read with Purpose to Get the Most Knowledge from Books
2. Getting the Most from the Books You Read in the Time You Have
3. How to Decide What’s Important and Unimportant Information in a Book
4. How to Take Powerful Notes to Remember More of What You Read

Today, I talked about how to actually build knowledge to accelerate your career. Tomorrow I’ll talk about how to synthesize the essential information you gleaned from the books you read. This will allow you to generate ideas and see what others miss.

The most accomplished people read books every day. They carve out the time in their schedule. When they face a problem, they often find the solution embedded in the pages of a book. Let me help you to solve your own problems. Click the link MoreReads: Blueprint to Change the World to buy.

Note: If you click on a link and make a purchase on Amazon, the organization will pay me a small commission. First Published November 2019.