Introduction: One Year Extreme Reading Challenge
The One Year Extreme Reading Challenge that I created is about you. It’s designed to help you to elevate your career. To get the most from the one-year extreme reading challenge, there are specific things that you must do. And it takes some planning on your end. To successfully use the challenge to elevate your career, you have to carefully choose the books you read. To choose the books that are right for you, you have to know where you are going with your career.
Create a Career Bucket List
- List all the things you'd like to achieve in your career. List even the far-fetched ideas.
- Where would you like to end up in your career?
- What are the next three positions you'd like to have? Look at where you are right now and where you'd like to go, what gap exists?
- What skills would you have to acquire to secure those positions?
- What activities would you have to perform to get there?
- Segment the activities into short-, medium-, and long-term.
- Focus on the activities you have to do in the short-term – six months to a year.
Related Post: How to Get a Promotion at Work – Anytime
One Year Extreme Read Challenge: Choosing Books to Accelerate Your Career
- Figure out which books you have to read. Ask friends, family, colleagues, and managers for recommendations if you have to. Do not only read books by authors from your country.
- Match the books you need to read against the requirements of the one year extreme reading challenge.
- Schedule to read the books in the order of the monthly reading requirements.
- Do you have to buy the books or borrow them from the library? Just a word of caution, if you’re borrowing books from the library, it may mess up your schedule since you often have to place books on hold. Do you read print books or e-books? Studies report that when you read e-books, you forget what you read. The medium is one that encourages you to scan instead of reading. Keep that in mind.
Related Reading
Mic Science Has Great News for People Who Read Actual Books
www.cbsnews.com Books vs. e-books: The science behind the best way to read
Get your books for the first three months of the one year extreme reading challenge. For each month, decide on what order you are going to read the books. Buy your notebooks. I recommend that you take notes by hand because the research says you remember more of what you read (Listen to Dan Pink talk about this study – very short video). I use digital note-taking. I have the Livescribe Echo Smartpen
. You can connect the pen to your computer to upload your notes. Recently, I discovered the Wacom Bamboo Spark with Tablet Sleeve
, another digital note-taking tool that works with the iPad.
Related Reading
The underlying research: The Pen is Mightier Than the Keyboard: Advantages of Longhand Over Laptop Notetaking by Pam Mueller at Princeton and Daniel Oppenheimer at UCLA.
How to Get the Most from the One Year Extreme Reading Challenge: How to Read Books
For each book you read, what question are you trying to answer? Skim and scan the book before you actually start to read it. Look at the Table of Content and the Index at the back. What information jumps out at you? If you have a purpose for reading each book, as you are reading, look out for the answers to the questions that you have. There is no reason for you to read word for word, that is not good use of your time. Focus on the information that you can use in your career. I’ve said it before, when you are reading, take handwritten notes, rephrasing important information.
There are many opportunities for you to read fiction while participating in the one year extreme reading challenge. Don’t scoff at the idea. Reading fiction can help you understand people, a worthy skill to have in the workplace. Look at what the characters do for a living, you will be amazed by what you can learn from them. The best authors invest a lot of time conducting research before they write. Learn from their hard work.
After you finish reading each book, pick out the five big ideas. You will have a sense of what a big idea is for you. One of the big benefits of the reading challenge, is when you start to combine the ideas from the books you read. Right now, I am reading Becoming an Idea Machine. Each day, based on certain prompts, you write down 10 ideas. The author, Claudia Altucher mentions mixing ideas.
“Idea sex is mixing ideas and releasing control. It might lead to the birth of brilliant, more powerful ideas.” Become an Idea Machine, Claudia Altucher.
You Can Achieve Success Participating in the One Year Extreme Reading Challenge
The Extreme Reading Challenge is not easy. You read 60 books in a year. But if you choose the right books, and you read every day, the experience will make a difference in your life.
Sign-up for the Read the World Extreme Reading. Participate in the Read the World Facebook Group!
Please take the conversation to my Facebook page.
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