I was encouraged from a young age to READ, when my mother insisted I read twice as many books as my teacher required. And I believe to this day this is a large part of my continuing success.
Since then, I have heard practically the same message from almost every one of my motivational mentors, including Brian Tracy, Zig Ziglar, and Jim Rohn. And in the following video, Tom Peters, discusses his strong belief in the necessity of reading for success.
So, the FIRST KEY TO CONTINUOUS INCREMENTAL IMPROVEMENT: Read every day for 30-60 minutes. And be sure your reading materials motivate you, educate you and inspire you (thus ruling out the newspaper as a daily reading source).
Don’t like reading…feel your skills are a little rusty…then here are a few strategies to improve your reading skill and maximize your time spent reading:
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Always read with a purpose. Before beginning a book, read the front/back covers and flaps, read the table of contents, maybe even read the first and last chapter to decide (a) if the book is really worth your investment of time and (b) exactly what knowledge you want to gain from reading the book.
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Always read with a highlighter or pen. Underline/highlight the phrases that mean the most to you. Then, if it is a book you decide to re-read in the future, you can more easily devour it by re-reading the highlighted parts.
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Finally, you will improve your reading by almost 20% when you slide your fingertips along underneath sentences as you read them. This will help you focus and reduce the number of words that you re-read, therefore greatly increasing the speed at which you read.
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For more on improving your reading skills, try PhotoReading or try this article from the Four Hour Work Week.
What do you think it would do to your VALUE if you read for 30-60 minutes each day in 2011?
