Recently, I was on an affiliate marketing webinar with Pat Flynn. He gave tons of really good tips that you can immediately use. He talked about an email marketing checklist that he created, when it struck me that I could create a reading checklist for you. All the information on the checklist, you can find in one article or another on this website. However, I've never taken the time to create a checklist such as this.
Reading Checklist 1: Read Diverse Books
Have you ever taken the time to assess your reading diet? I did a few years ago and was surprised to find out that the books I was reading were mainly written by Western writers. To do something about it I started to read the world. Recently, I assessed my reading again, and decided that I needed to start reading across disciplines. This is a result of me paying attention to what Elon Musk and Bill Gates read.
To ensure that I read diverse books, reading across multiple disciplines, I came up with the acronym STEAMB – Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts, Math, and Business.
Reading Checklist 2: Select Your Books to Read
You already have a sense of what topics you need to know more about, conduct research to identify the best books to read on your topics of interest. Get organized and plan the books you intend to read three months at a time. You don't want to finish reading one book and scrambling to decide what to read next.
Reading Checklist 3: Have a Purpose for Reading Every Book
In How to Read a Book
, Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren say that there are three reasons for reading.
- Entertainment
- Information
- Understanding
Starting off with one of the three reasons above is a great place to start. But stopping there is not enough. What do you hope to gain from reading the book? I recently read the book, Proposing to Giants
. And I was reading it for information.
However, I decided to read that book because I'm looking for strategies to take my business to the next level. For instance, my stated purpose was, “I'm reading Proposing to Giants because I'm looking for new techniques and strategies to grow my business.” It was my thinking that if I understood how to propose to large companies, then I could possibly secure a few of them as clients.
Reading Checklist 4: Prepare Your Mind for Reading
What? OMG, you've got to be kidding me, you might say. Well, your mind has to be in a relaxed yet alert state to absorb what you're reading. I personally listen to binaural beats audio. There is a soundtrack with 10 instrumental audios on the site. And I listen to them sequentially since it automatically moves from one to the other. I listen to the beats when I'm reading and writing, so I feel calm for most of the day. That's a great state to be in.
Reading Checklist 5: Review the Book Before You Read It
I know that you're eager to get to the juicy stuff in the book. And you just want to get to it, STOP! Get the helicopter view of the book before you dive into the details. When you take the time to get the overall picture of what the book is about, you'll have a place to hang the information when you start to read the book.
To scan the book first, read the following sections:
- Table Of Contents
- Introduction
- Foreword
- Preface
- Index
- Images and Illustrations
Place a check mark beside sections of the table of contents that demand further exploration. This guides your reading, therefore you focus on what's important in the book. I learned from a PhotoReading course that there's only four to 11 percent of important information on a page.
Reading Checklist 6: Take Notes
I've written several posts on the importance of taking notes. In fact, I created the e-book, Effective Note Taking Tips for Professionals. One of the big things about taking notes is being able to determine what's important and unimportant information in the book.
Using my example of reading Proposing to Giants, here are pieces of information I noted as important.
- Analyze both your direct and indirect competitor to include in your competitor analysis.
- Emphasize common benefits of your product or service including specific examples:
- Saves money.
- Reduces product costs.
- Performs a task faster
- Streamlines a process.
- Focus on the problems that your ideal client is trying to solve.
- Sections to include in a winning proposal.
What's important to you may be important to another person. In my example, I flagged information that aligned with my purpose for reading Proposing to Giants
.
Reading Checklist 7: Pick Out the Big Ideas in the Book
I'm reading books these days, primarily to take my business to the next level. Since this is the case, it's important for me to identify the big ideas in the books I read. Every well-written book has a main idea and some secondary ideas that support it. Getting ideas from the books you read is tied to note taking.
You'll find the big ideas in the important information you noted. The big ideas also include the information I presented above when I wrote about the benefits of your products or services in respect to proposing to larger clients.
So, while reading, if you identify any information that has the potential to do any of the following , more than likely it's a big idea.
- Saves money.
- Reduces product costs.
- Performs a task faster
- Streamlines a process.
I created the short e-book, how to get ideas from the books you read. Here are two diagrams to help you to quickly assess ideas.
Reading Checklist 8: Get Enough Sleep
What does sleep have to do with reading? I can hear you! You're reading to learn. And reading is a thinking process. To get the most from the books you read, you have to think about the newfound information. You must take time to reflect on what you're learning so you can tie it to what you already know.
Additionally, the brain works in focused and diffuse mode. You need both modes to learn effectively. You can make connections between ideas when your brain is in diffuse mode. When you want to think more freely, you’re in diffuse mode – when you want to see the bigger picture.
The brain has many neurons, which are the building blocks of the brain. Neurons send signals to other neurons. When you learn something new you strengthen links in your brain and create a new set of brain-links. When you practice something new, you activate neurons and the synaptic link between neurons get stronger.
Just before you go to sleep at nights, do an active recall of what your learned from the books you read that day. There are big changes after we learn something and go to sleep. Brain-links solidify when you’re sleeping. When you learn something new, practice and get enough sleep, you grow new dendritic spines and synaptic links. The more you do this the more it happens. The brain rehearses what it learned during the day.
These are important steps in the learning and memory process.
Reading Checklist 9: Synthesize Information
Let's say that you're reading books across multiple disciplines because you want to learn the skills that the World Economic Forum says you need to thrive in 2020 to 2022. Simply reading the books across multiple disciplines is not enough. You have to make sense of the information. And you have to tie all that information together, so that you can see what others miss.
I know you must be wondering right now how to do that. I've got your back. Rohit Bhargarva publishes Non-Obvious 
every year. The new edition should be coming out in the next month or so. In his book, he has an awesome model called the Haystack Method. Get comfortable with this model because it can take you places where your peers or colleagues don't know they could go.
The Haystack Method
- Gathering: You're collecting ideas from the books that you're reading across multiple disciplines. These ideas should be in your notes.
- Aggregating: Group the ideas and add meaning so they makes sense. Focus on how the ideas can satisfy human needs.
- Elevating: What interests you most about the ideas? What is below the surface? What is the bigger picture? Think about the underlying themes that relate one group of ideas to another, to describe a broader idea.
- Naming: Is there a pithy name that describes each elevated idea in a memorable way?
- Proving: This is more appropriate for identifying trends. But who is to say that you won't spot a trend when reading across disciplines? Can you find other supporting information to suggest that your ideas have “teeth”?
Reading Checklist 10: What Do You Do with Your Ideas
I can hear you saying, “What a dumb question?” Obviously the answer is implement the ideas. But not so fast. What if the idea is too expensive to implement? Perhaps the idea is ahead of its time and the technology doesn't yet exist to implement it. What now?
You need to test the feasibility of the ideas before you implement them. By the way, there's a great children's book, What Do You Do with an Idea?
Final Thoughts on the Reading Checklist
What do you think of the reading checklist? If you like it, I invite you to Join the Performance Accelerator Plan that walks you through the process and more. You'll be reading books to build skills and develop intercultural awareness. Download a PDF of the Reading Checklist here. If you like it, get more reading and learning tips here.
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.
