a year, but one article with one key idea can save you years of hard work.
Sometimes, a single insight in a single article written by a specialist in your
field can change the direction of your career. Remember the Law of
Probabilities. The more ideas that you expose yourself to, the more likely it
is that you will expose yourself to the right idea at the right time.
Read publications like Forbes, Fortune, Business Week, Inc., the Wall Street
Journal, Investors Business Daily, your local newspaper and business
section, and all the specialty magazines in your field. One good idea is all
you need to solve a major problem, or even change the direction of your
business.
Falling Further Behind
A friend of mine is a management consultant. He was hired by a company to
advise them on how they could turn around their business. Their sales and
Time Power
profitability was falling. They were falling behind in the market. Their
competitors were surging ahead of them. They needed help desperately.
My friend asked them a few questions about their business and then asked,
“Can you give me the names of the major magazines, books and newsletters
that are written on and about this industry?” The president of the struggling
company looked at him with surprise. He said, “I have no idea what books
or magazines to recommend to you. I don’t have any time to read that stuff. I
can’t even attend the annual conventions for this industry. I am too busy.”
My friend the consultant stood up and said, “Well, I can save you a lot of
money. I will tell you what your problem is right now, without further
investigation. You have no idea what is going on in your industry. If you are
not reading and keeping current with the changes in this business, you have
no future.”
It is the same with anyone in a fast-changing, hard-driving, competitive
business. If you are not aggressively keeping up and ahead of your field, you
have no future in that field.
3. Invest in Your Most Precious Asset
Decide today to invest 3% of your income back into yourself, into upgrading
your knowledge and skills. Spend 3% of what you earn on your own
personal and professional development. Subscribe to every magazine in your
field, buy every book written that can help you in your business, listen to
educational audio programs in your car, watch educational video cassettes,
Time Power
alone and with your staff, and take all the additional training and seminars
that you can find.
Here’s my promise to you. If you invest 3% of your income back into
yourself, within a few years, you will not have enough time in the year to
spend the amount of money that 3% represents. Three percent does not seem
like a lot, but the impact that investing this small amount will have on your
life and career will be so extraordinary that it will amaze you.
Not long ago, they did a survey in New York of a cross section of
professionals in business and academia. They asked them this question, “If
you had managed to accumulated $100,000 from your job, what would be
the very best way to invest that amount of money?”
They received a variety of answers from business people, academics,
teachers, doctors, journalists and other specialists. The most popular answer
that they finally settled on was different from what most people had
expected. They concluded that, if you had saved up and accumulated
$100,000 in your work, the very best investment that you could make would
be back into yourself, and into becoming even better at what you had done
to earn the money in the first place.
4. The Guaranteed Formula for Getting Rich
Sometimes, I will ask my audience this question, “If I could give you a
guaranteed formula to become rich, would you be interested in hearing it?”
Time Power
Of course, everyone says yes and raises their hand. I then tell them the
“guaranteed formula” for success and lifelong riches. It is this. Invest as
much in your mind each year as you do in your car. That’s it. Simple.
Guaranteed. Obvious. And it works every single time.
The average driver spends $600 per month on their car in terms of purchase
payments, insurance, fuel, maintenance and so on. If you are a high earner,
you probably spend much more. But whatever the amount, resolve from this
day forward to invest that same amount back into your mind, into becoming
even better at what you are doing today.
In the first year of practicing this formula, your income will increase 25% to
50%, or more, and your entire career will take off.
5. Appreciating Assets versus Depreciating Assets
An automobile is what is called a “depreciating asset.” It is subject to what
accountants call “straight line depreciation.” This means that, from the time
you acquire the car, the value of that car depreciates a certain amount each
year until it reaches a value of zero. At a certain point in the life of a car, it
becomes a piece of scrap metal, suitable only to be melted down and turned
into a new car.
Your brain, on the other hand, is an “appreciating asset.” The more money
you invest in it, by reading and acquiring additional knowledge and skills,
the more valuable you become. No matter how much you invest in your car,
Time Power
it will soon be worth nothing. But when you invest in your brain, you
increase your “earning ability” with every new idea or concept that you can
apply to producing value or result for someone else.
This is why people with more knowledge and experience earn more than
people with less knowledge or experience. It is because their earning ability
is greater. They have turned their brains into appreciating assets that are
worth more and more each year in terms of the quality and quantity of
results they can achieve by applying their minds to their work. You should
do the same.
6. Practice the Rip and Read Technique
It is essential that you be alert and aware to what is going on in the world of
business, and in your business in particular. However, we are overwhelmed
with a deluge of information that pours into our lives from all sides every
day. You cannot get through it all. It is estimated that the average executive
has 300-400 hours of reading stacked up around his home or office. You
have to find away to sort the relevant from the irrelevant and read the most
important material.
One method you can use is called the “rip and read method.” Instead of
reading a magazine the way it is written and laid out, you instead go to the
table of contents, identify the articles of interest to you, and then turn
straight to those articles. You then rip them out and place them in a file
folder for reading at a later time.
Time Power
Carry Articles with You
Many people keep a “rip and read” folder in their briefcases that they carry
with them to read during “transition time.” This can be in taxis or waiting
rooms. Transition time takes place in airports and airplanes. You can keep
this file handy and read the articles, one at a time, whenever you get a few
spare minutes. You will be amazed at how efficient you become in plowing
through huge quantities of key information using this method.
Remember, magazines and newspapers are written and designed to sell
advertising. For this reason, you must resist the temptation to read a
magazine from front to back, from cover to cover. Instead, you approach
each newspaper or magazine with the assumption that most of the material is
contains is of no use or value to you. The best way to save time in reading an
article is not to read it at all.
The Way Adults Learn
Here is an important point about learning. The adult brain is designed so that
you only learn and remember something if it is immediately relevant and
applicable to your current work or personal situation. No matter how
interesting it might be, if you cannot connect it to your current life or work
and visualize how you might apply the idea immediately, it will slip through
your mind, like water through a grate, and you will not remember it at all.
For this reason, you should not waste time reading in subjects that may be of
interest to you “some day.” Remember the Law of the Excluded Alternative”
Time Power
which says, “Doing one thing means not doing something else.” If you are
reading something that has no immediate relevance or applicability to your
work, you are simultaneously failing to read something that may help you
immediately. Especially when reading well laid out magazines and
newspapers, you must discipline yourself to keep focused on only those
subjects that are relevant to your current work.
7. Use Gifts of Time Wisely
Take advantage of every “gift of time” that you receive. These are short
periods, sometimes just a few minutes, which you receive during the day.
Always carry reading material to go through when you get these unexpected
moments of waiting or inactivity.
Many people harbor the secret desire to read the “classics” of literature.
They even purchase the “great books” and keep them in their bookshelves,
hoping someday to sit down and read them. But this seldom happens.
Here is a great idea for you. Purchase a paperback version of a classic book
that you have been wanting to read. Tear out twenty pages and put it in your
briefcase or purse. The next time you have a “gift of time” you can read a
few pages. When you have finished reading the torn out pages, replace them
with a new set of pages from the paperback and put a rubber band around the
old pages.
If you read a book per month in this way, you will read 12 books per year,
120 books in the next ten years. You will become one of the best-read
Time Power
people in the world by using this method. One estimate concluded that if you
read in the classics for 15 minutes per day, over the course of a few years,
you would have read all the great books of literature.
8. Learn From the Experts
Read the books written by experts in your field. Read books that contain
practical information that you can use immediately to improve the quality of
your work and your life.
Often people ask me what books they should read. Here is a simple
technique. With few exceptions, you should only read books written by
people who are active practioners of their craft. Books written by university
professors are usually theoretically true but practically useless in the course
of operating a real, live business, or living a successful life.
When you see a book that interests you, immediately read the biography of
the author. Find out what he or she has done and accomplished, where he or
she has worked, what kind of experiences he or she has accumulated in the
course of his or her career. You are looking for books by people who have
established a successful track record in your field.
Once you have determined that the author is a credible source of
information, look at the table of contents to be sure that what the author is
writing about is relevant and applicable to your field today. Avoid theory
whenever possible. Look for practical ideas with practical solutions to
Time Power
common problems. The very best way to save time with any book is to
decide not to read it at all.
Some of the best selling business books are written by academics. They are
full of ideas that are completely impractical. No one is ever able to achieve
improved business results applying their ideas in a real corporation. The
material looks wonderful on paper but it has no relevance to the real world.
Another way to determine whether you should buy a book is by looking at
the number of books that it has sold, especially if it has come out in a
paperback version. Any book that gets into a paperback version has usually
sold well in hard cover. This is not a guarantee of quality, but it is a helpful
guide.
9. Build Your Own Library
We are all creatures of habit. When we are young, we often develop the
habit of going to the library, checking out books, reading them and then
returning them to the library. There are many adults who continue to do this,
even when it makes no sense at all.
Your time is your most precious resource. If you earn $50,000 per year,
divided by approximately 2000 working hours, this means that your time is
worth $25 per hour. You must think continually in terms of your “hourly
rate” in the way you use your time. Some people will spend two or three
hours going to a library, browsing, checking out a book, taking it home and
then returning it to the library. It is much cheaper and more efficient for you
Time Power
to buy the book, take it home and have it at your fingertips for the rest of
your life.
When you read, get over the idea you were taught in school that you must
not leave any marks in your textbook. Instead, use a red or blue pen to
underline and mark the key ideas and concepts that you come across. Turn
down the corners. Write exclamation points and stars in the margins.
Personalize everything you read so that you can quickly go back and access
the most important ideas.
Many people will read a book, making notes throughout of the important
points. They will then go back through the book with a Dictaphone and
dictate all the key ideas. They will have a secretary type up this synopsis of
the book which they will then 3-hole punch and put in a binder. From then
on, you can go to that binder and quickly review all the key points that you
discovered in your reading. Each time you review these points, you will
have new ideas and insights on how to apply them to your work or business.
10. Join Book Clubs
Join the book clubs in your field. Get on their lists. You will often receive
solicitations in the mail offering you three or four free books when you join
new book club. Take them up on their offer. Each month after that, you will
receive recommendations for what they consider to be the top books
published in that area in the last few months.
