Reading Books to Build Skills and Develop Intercultural Awareness

I love to read because it gives me so much pleasure. If I'm not careful though, I'll spend my time reading a few types of books instead of reading books across multiple disciplines. I love thrillers, mysteries and detective stories. In fact, I'm loving the Tanner Series by Remington Kane. However, I understand the importance of reading books to build skills and develop intercultural awareness.

One of the things I discovered over the past two months is that the Performance Accelerator Plan I created is for readers. The realization was a tough one for me to accept. I wanted to get more people to start reading. But now my focus is on getting readers to read more books. At least a book a week, which is doable if you learn how to read more effectively. And the Performance Accelerator Plan teaches you how to do that.

Performance Accelerator Plan: Reading Books to Build Skills 

The Performance Accelerator Plan is an adult reading challenge to build skills and develop intercultural awareness. “Say What….Another Reading Challenge?” you ask. But before you hightail it out of here, hear me out for a second. Yes, there are many Reading Challenges, and many of them are from well-known brands that get a lot of traffic. The traffic that I get on this site is minuscule compared to sites such as Pop Sugar, Book Riot, Bustle and Goodreads.

Those reading challenges are free but mine is paid, why? I'm not competing with Pop Sugar, Book Riot, Bustle or Goodreads. My intent is to attract a different audience. I'm interested in readers who want to emulate Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Mark Cuban, Oprah Winfrey, Serena Williams, and Jay Z, who are all readers. These luminaries read to learn.

The Performance Accelerator Plan is structured so you'll learn the key employability skills the World Economic Forum says you need to thrive in 2022. You'll be reading books to build skills. And develop intercultural awareness.

Reading Books to Build Skills: I'm Not Elon Musk, Or Bill Gates…

I know that you may be feeling overwhelmed when you see names such as Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey and so on. You're thinking, “I'm not in their league!” You know what, neither am I. I'm just like you, even though you might be thinking otherwise.

Let me tell you a story.

In October 2012, my mother died from a heart attack. To come to terms with the unexpected death of a loved one, I decided to keep busy doing something I loved. I created the Virtual Literary World Tour, a reading challenge to read the world. At the time, I was thinking about reading broadly. But my focus was reading authors born in different countries. Back then, reading broadly wasn't in the same context I view it today.

Take a look at the books I actually read while participating on the Virtual Literary World Tour.

List of Books I Read for the First Global Reads: Travel the World

1. Hunger: A Novel, Knut Hamsun, Norway
2. Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse, Germany
3. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell, United Kingdom
4. Gilgamesh: A New English Version, Mesopotamia (Iraq)
5. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl, United Kingdom
6. Pippi Longstocking, Astrid Lindgren, Sweden
7. Winnie-the-Pooh (The Complete Tales and Poems of Winnie-the-Pooh), AA Milne, United Kingdom
8. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot, United States
9. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis, United Kingdom
10. Popol Vuh: The Definitive Edition of The Mayan Book of The Dawn of Life and The Glories of Gods and Kings, Guatemala
11. Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, United Kingdom
12. The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway, United States
13. The Trial, Franz Kafka, Austria
14. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams, United Kingdom
15. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens, United Kingdom
16. Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang, Mordecai Richler, Canada
17. The Shooting Party (Penguin Classics), Anton Chekhov, Russia
18. The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, Mordecai Richler, Canada
19. Out Stealing Horses: A Novel, Per Petterson, Norway
20. A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L'Engle, United States
21. The Giver, Gathering Blue, Messenger, Lois Lowry (The Worlds of Lois Lowry 3-Copy Boxed Set (The Giver, Messenger, Gathering Blue)), United States
22. Son, Lois Lowry, United States
23. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon, United Kingdom
24. The Outsiders, SE Hinton
25. Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior, Chögyam Trungpa, Tibet
26. Pinocchio (Puffin Classics), Carlo Collodi ( The original, not the “Disneyfied” version), Italy
27. The Unbearable Lightness of Being: A Novel, Milan Kundera, Czech Republic, France
28. The Catcher in the Rye, J D Salinger, United States
29. Grimm's Fairy Tales, Brothers Grimm, Germany
30. Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, Hans Christian Andersen, Denmark
31. Robin Hood, Henry Gilbert (The original, not the “Disneyfied” version), United Kingdom
32. The Bloody Chamber: And Other Stories, Angela Carter, United Kingdom
33. Love in the Time of Cholera (Oprah's Book Club), Gabriel García Márquez, Colombia
34. The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, France
35. Slaughterhouse-Five: A Novel, Kurt Vonnegut, United States
36. Lord of the Flies, Centenary Edition, William Golding, United Kingdom
37. Ficciones (English Translation), Jorges Luis Borges, Argentina
38. As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner, United States
39. The Duppy, Anthony C. Winkler, Jamaica
40. Songs of Innocence and Experience, William Blake, United Kingdom
41. The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Germany
42. The Trial and Death of Socrates: Four Dialogues (Dover Thrift Editions), Plato, Greece
43. Medea of Euripides, Euripides, Greece
44. Jason and the Golden Fleece: (The Argonautica), Apollonius, Greece
45. Slowness: A Novel, Milan Kundera, Czech Republic
46. Superwomen, Albert Payson Terhune, United States
47. The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus: From the Quarto of 1604, Christopher Marlowe, United Kingdom
48. The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale, Joseph Conrad, Poland, United Kingdom
49. Ru: A Novel, Kim Thúy, Vietnam, Canada
50. Choose Your Own Adventure (The Abominable Snowman/Journey Under the Sea/Space and Beyond/The Lost Jewels of Nabooti/Mystery of the Maya/House of Danger (Choose Your Own Adventure 1-6) (Box Set 1)), R. A. Montgomery, United States
51. The Turn of the Screw, Henry James, United States
52. Aesop's Fables (Oxford World's Classics), Ancient Greece
53. The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank, Holland
54. A Streetcar Named Desire (New Directions Paperbook), Tennessee Williams, United States
55. A Very Fine Line, Julie Johnston, Canada
56. The Coroner's Lunch, Colin Cotterill, United Kingdom, Thailand
57. A Man Lay Dead: Inspector Roderick Alleyn #1 (Inspector Roderick Alleyn), Ngaio Marsh, New Zealand
58. Norwegian Wood Publisher: Vintage, Haruki Murakami, Japan
59. July's People, Nadine Gordimer, South Africa
60. The Dew Breaker, Edwidge Danticat, Haiti
61. On the Road: The Original Scroll (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition), Jack Kerouac, United States
62. A Jest of God (Phoenix Fiction), Margaret Laurence, Canada
63. The Laughing Policeman (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard), Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, Sweden
64. The Bookseller of Kabul, Asne Seirstad, Norway
65. Two Pints, Roddy Doyle, Ireland
66. Under the Glacier, Halldór Laxness, Iceland
67. Silence of the Grave (Reykjavik Murder Mysteries, No. 2), Arnaldur Indriðason, Iceland
68. No Telephone to Heaven, Michelle Cliff, Jamaica
69. Brother Man (Macmillan Caribbean Writers Series), Roger Mais, Jamaica
70. Whale Music, Paul Quarrington, Canada
71. My Brilliant Career, Miles Franklin, Australia
72. Buffalo Jump (Jonah Geller), Howard Shrier, Canada, Canada
73. The Water Rat of Wanchai (Import) Ava Lee, Ian Hamilton, Canada
74. Dead Light District, Jill Edmondson
75. High Chicago (Jonah Geller), Howard Shrier, Canada
76. The Disciple of Las Vegas: An Ava Lee Novel, Ian Hamilton, Canada
77. The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared, Jonas Jonasson, Sweden

Using Reading Challenges to Build Skills

Review the books I read listed above? What do you think? Reading them was a great experience for me. I started to learn intercultural awareness and hone my problem solving skills. That was back in 2013, today, things are very different with all the changes happening around us. More is required of you and me. You have to become learning agile. Reading books to build skills.

Why the Performance Accelerator Plan

I am concerned with the violence in the world today, and I am also concerned about jobs being automated. I think by reading the right books, you can develop cultural sensitivity toward those who are different from you, as well as acquire in-demand skills. But cultural awareness is also important in a global workplace.

There are a few reading challenge ideas that I'd like to share with you. One, if you prepare strategically, you can use the reading challenge to accelerate your career.  Two, you can use the Performance Accelerator Plan to acquire new skills.  It's about reading books to build skills. Three, you can use the reading challenge to learn about places and people, who you are curious about.

If you join the official Performance Accelerator Plan community, you get alerts on what types of books you should be reading each week. However, you still have a lot of flexibility with the books you choose to read.

I would love it if you joined this reading challenge today! The Performance Accelerator Plan will not help you unless you apply what you learn.

Performance Accelerator Plan: More Than Just a Reading Challenge

Unlike the free reading challenges, I already mentioned, for this one, you read the right books to build skills and develop intercultural awareness. On top of that though, you go through a process to pick out the big ideas from the books you read. You then start combining the ideas from different disciplines to come up with bigger ideas. The ultimate goal is to get ideas that you can tie to a human need.

I encourage you to speak with your boss to jointly come up with a stretch assignment where you use the skills you're learning. You're reading books to build skills, so you have to apply the skills to become proficient in them. This reading challenge is not your typical reading challenge or workplace reading program.

The Performance Accelerator Plan Is Not for Everyone

Let's be honest, you cannot be everything to everyone. The Performance Accelerator Plan is for professionals 25 to 47 years old. And it's more suitable for professionals who are already readers, who are looking to take their reading up a few notches. If you're looking for an infusion of new ideas to take your business to the level, then it can help you. This is how I'm using it right now. If you think the Performance Accelerator Plan is right for you, join today!

Here are some additional options for those who like to test the waters first.

In December, I published two books on Amazon. I would greatly appreciate your support if you bought my two short e-books Read 30 Books in 30 Days Like Francis Bacon and Performance Accelerator Plan: Guide to Learning and Mastering Key Skills for the Future.

Read 30 Books in 30 Days Like Francis Bacon is not about speed reading. It’s about approaching every book differently and reading only the sections that align with your purpose.

The Performance Accelerator Plan book is a stripped-down version of the paid reading challenge of the same name. Obviously, you won’t get all the resources that come with the program that I sell on my website. But if you are a self-directed learner, it will help you tremendously.

Note: There are several Amazon affiliate links on this page. That means if you click on Amazon and buy something the organization will pay me a small commission.