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Book clubs tend to be very selective in the books they choose and
recommend, because they depend entirely for their income on selecting
books that you will buy and keep. They read an enormous number of books
before they select the ones that they recommend to you.
11. Read and Listen to Book Summaries
Subscribe to Sound View Executive Book Summaries. This company selects
and condenses three or four top business books each month and sends them
to you in a six to eight page condensation that enables you to quickly get the
best ideas of the book in just a few minutes. With book condensations, you
can pick out the most practical and usable ideas that the book contains, and
then determine whether or not you would like to read the entire book.
You can also get book summaries on audiocassette or CD each month. You
can listen to them in your car as you drive to and from work. Each time you
do, you will pick up some of the most current ideas on effective business
operations.
12. Open Internet Accounts and Use Them
Open an account with Barnes&Noble.com and Amazon.com. Put in your
address and credit card number. Whenever you hear or read about a book
that maybe of interest to you, pull it up on the Internet and read a brief
synopsis of the book. If you like what you read, you can order the book and
it will be delivered to you in 3-4 days. This is a great saving in time from
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visiting the library or driving around to the bookstores. You can accomplish
the same results that might take you an hour or more in one or two minutes.
13. Take a Speed Reading Course
One of the most valuable things you do in your adult life is to take a speed-
reading course to learn how to accelerate the amount that you read and
retain. Most speed-reading courses are based on similar principles. You can
actually triple your reading speed in the first lesson or class. These courses
are given in every city and are usually advertised on the Internet or in the
yellow pages.
With a good speed-reading course, you will quickly learn how to read at
1000 words per minute with about 80% retention. You will learn how to
plow through large quantities of magazines, newspapers and books. You will
learn how to get through more reading material in two hours per day than
many people get through in a week.
14. Learn How to Read Efficiently
Learn how to read a non-fiction book efficiently. Perhaps the best method I
have found is called the “OPIR Method.” The four letters of OPIR stand for
Overview-Preview-Inview-Review. Here’s how it works.
Start With an Overview
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When you pick up a book for the first time, instead of opening it up and
reading it from front to back the way you normally would, you instead
begin with an “overview.” Read the front and back covers. Look at the flaps
inside each cover, which contain important information about the book and
the author. Read the table of contents from beginning to end, looking for a
subject or heading that is of special interest to you at the moment. In the
OPIR method, you then flip through the pages quickly, one at a time, to get a
feel for the way the book is structured.
You look at each chapter heading and the way the pages are laid out. Read
the subtitles and look at the charts, graphs or visual elements. Get a sense for
how the material flows in the book. This entire overview will not take you
more than about 10 minutes. As a result, you can now read “on purpose.”
You can establish a clear purpose for reading the book by deciding in
advance what it is that you want to get out of the book.
Preview the Book Before You Read It
In the second part, the “preview,” you flip through the pages one at a time to
get an even better feeling for the layout and content of the book. During the
preview phase, stop and read an occasional sentence or paragraph, usually
the first sentence or paragraph of each section. If there are questions or
summaries at the end of the each chapter, read them through carefully to get
a better sense for what you will learn when you start to read the book
seriously.
Read the Book in Depth
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In the “Inview” stage, you sit down and read quickly from page to page. The
overview and the preview will have aroused your interest and triggered your
curiosity. In the inview phase, you will be looking to fill in the gaps in your
knowledge. You will actually be engaging in what is called “anticipatory
learning.” This is where you are searching for information and ideas that are
contained in the text.
During the inview, use your hand to move down the page just below the
sentence you are reading. Read with a colored pen in your hand and make
notes whenever you come across an idea that you find interesting or
important. Turn down the corners of pages if the material is important and
you want to come back to it at a later time.
Review What You Have Read
In the final phase, the “review,” you go back through the book again, from
cover to cover, page by page, and reread the parts that you noted that are
most important to you. Remember that repetition is the mother of learning. It
usually takes between three and six exposures to a new piece of information
before you internalize it and transfer it into your long-term memory.
This four-step method, Overview-Preview-Inview-Review (OPIR) will
reduce the amount of time it takes you to read a 300-page book from 6-8
hours to 2-3 hours. The more often you practice this method, the faster and
more efficient you will become and the more you will actually remember
and retain from each book. Using the OPIR method repeatedly will enable
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you to read 2-3 books per week. If you then follow through and then dictate
the key notes from each book, you will develop a personalized library of
notes that will enable you to reread the key points of any book months or
years later, in just a few minutes.
Increase Your Intelligence and Learning Ability
The more you learn, the more you can learn. Your mental capacity grows
and expands, like adding additional microprocessors to your mental
computer. And the faster you read a book, the more information you get.
The faster you read, the more you retain. The faster you read, the more you
are forced to focus and concentrate your mind, which actually makes you
smarter. The intense concentration required by speed reading drives more
blood into your brain and activates more of the neurons and ganglia in your
neocortex, your thinking brain.
There is a direct relationship between the number of words that you know
the meanings for, and how well you think. There is a direct relationship
between the size of your vocabulary and the amount you earn. There is a
direct relationship between your understanding of the differences in meaning
between similar words, and how smart you are.
You can increase both the quality of your thinking and the quantity of your
income by disciplining yourself to read intensely on a regular basis. Just as
you become fitter physically when you engage in physical exercise, you
become more fit mentally when you use your brain to read material that
increases your knowledge and skills.
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Cancel Useless Subscriptions
Cancel useless subscriptions. Over the years, I have received solicitations to
subscribe to every type of magazine, newspaper, newsletter and journal. If it
seems to be of interest to my life and work, I always take out a trial
subscription and read the publication when it arrives. Over the years, I have
accumulated as many as 50 to 60 weekly, bi-weekly and monthly
subscriptions of all kinds.
At a certain point, you have to stand back and ask, “Does this publication
help me to achieve my goals?” Does it help me to achieve my goals better
than other publications that I receive in the same area?
Remember, you simply do not have time to read everything that comes to
you in the course of a day, week or month. If a publication is not helping
you achieve your goals, or is not serving some other important part of your
life, cancel the subscription.
16. Eliminate Your Stacks
One of the problems that you face today is called “stackaphobia.” This
occurs when you receive an unending stream of reading material that you
don’t want to part with. You begin to create stacks in your office and at
home. Sometimes, you consider it a sign of progress when you begin a new
stack because the existing stack is too high. You often spend a good deal of
time rearranging your office or home so that you can accommodate ever-
higher stacks of material.
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Once a year, I apply an important rule to my stacks. I ask the question, “Is
this more than six months old?” In other words, has it been here for more
than six months, without me reading it? The rule is this, “If you haven’t read
it within six months, it’s junk!”
To keep your mind clear and operating at maximum efficiency, you must
develop the habit of going through your stacks and throwing things away.
My rule is, “When in doubt, throw it out!” If you haven’t read it in six
months, you will probably never read it. Whatever it contains is probably
obsolete. Think of business or financial magazines commenting on business
conditions or industries. Sometimes, all the information in those publications
is obsolete within a month. Throw it away.
Don’t Worry About Missing Something
Here is another point. If the article is on a subject of importance, someone
else will rewrite the article in a different way at a later time in a different
publication. Don’t worry about missing an important idea. The more
important the idea is, the more likely it is that it will come back to you from
a different source. Throw it out.
Always ask, “If I did not have this information, and I needed it, could I get it
somewhere else?” The fact is that, almost any information you need is
available with a few clicks on the Internet. You can go into the archives of
the major business magazines and retrieve articles that were written several
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years ago, print them out and have them at your fingertips in a few seconds.
When in doubt, throw it out.
17. Listen to Audio Programs in Your Car
Develop the habit of listening to audio programs in your car when you drive
from place to place. Audio listening has been called, “the greatest
breakthrough in education since the printing press.” With audio listening you
can become one of the best-educated people in America. You do this by
simply turning driving time into “learning time.”
The average car owner in America drives between 12,000 and 25,000 miles
each year, according to the American Automobile Association. This
translates into 500-1000 hours per year that you spend behind the wheel of
your car. This is the equivalent of 12 and a half to 25 forty-hour weeks, or
three to six months of 40-hour weeks. This is equal to between one and two
full time university semesters.
Attend Automobile University Full Time
According to a study at the University of Southern California, you can get
most of the educational benefits of full-time university attendance, just by
listening to educational audio programs as you drive around during the day.
Imagine if your boss came to you and said, “I am going to give you three to
six months off each year to engage in personal and professional development
activities.” Imagine if your boss was willing to pay you to take three to six
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months off each year so you could learn to become more effective and
efficient in what you do, and be paid more money.
You can acquire the same benefits almost full time learning just by listening
to audio programs in your car as you drive from place to place.
The rule is this: never allow your automobile to be moving without
educational audio programs playing. You cannot afford not to be listening to
audio programs. Turn your car into a university on wheels. Turn your car
into a mobile classroom.
Knowledge and Ideas Condensed and Compressed
The information contained in audio learning programs can be enormous. The
average program contains the best ideas of 30-50 books. The author of the
audio program has probably invested hundreds, if not thousands of hours
studying, reading, researching and teaching the material contained in the
cassettes or CD’s. You can “hire” this expert for pennies a day. You can
have him drive around with you, stopping and starting at your leisure,
sharing the best ideas he or she has learned over the years,
To learn the equivalent of the information contained in a good audio
program, you would have to purchase 30-50 books and read them. This
would cost you $500 - $1000 and take 300-500 hours of study. And even
then, you would not have the ideas and information organized as helpfully as
you can find in an audio program.
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Increase Your Income from the First Day
Over the years, I have produced dozens of audio learning programs, many of
them have been translated into as many as 20 languages and have now been
used successful by millions of people. After speaking in 24 countries, and
meeting countless people whose lives have been changed by audio listening,
I have never met a single person, in more than 20 years, who has not seen
their income increase dramatically from the day they began listening to
audio programs in their car. No exceptions.
In my experience, audio listening becomes addictive. When you begin
listening to an audio program in your car, you are struck by the number of
great ideas that you can learn so easily and enjoyably. Because of the Law of
Attraction, you will almost invariably find an opportunity to use or benefit
from these ideas shortly after you learn them. You almost immediately see
results and improvements in your life. This motivates you to listen more
consistently. As a result, you get even better results. Your performance
