Have you ever heard someone say (or maybe you have said or thought it yourself):
“That book changed my life.”
While I do believe reading is important, I believe that statement is, by definition, false.
A book cannot change your life (or my life).
Only you can make that change.
There are many books that have had an impact on my life. They have served as a stimulus for a change in my thinking or behavior. But let’s be clear – the book didn’t change my life. The book was the stimulus for change.
This, of course, doesn’t reduce the importance books, nor is it meant to dissuade you from reading. Rather, it’s meant to put the reading of books in the proper place in your personal or professional development process. Reading can help you become a better leader for your team.
And again, it is you, not the book, who make the change in your life. So, how can you use the ideas and lessons from a book to make a difference in your life and work? Here are five ways to do that.
Read With Purpose
Any speed reading or reading acceleration program will teach you to pre-scan a book before beginning it. Look over the book by reading the table of contents and scanning the chapters, sub-headings, and sidebars first. You get a sense of the book and its purpose and messages, as well as the layout, before you begin.
While this will help speed you up, it also helps you answer a very important question:
“What do I want to get from this book?”
Spend a few minutes after your initial scan thinking about your goals and fondest wishes for the book. I highly recommend using a journal. Write down the key questions you want answered and what you want to learn from your reading experience.
Books can surprise you with knowledge or ideas you didn’t expect (one of my great joys in reading). But establishing a clear purpose at the start helps you maximize what you can glean from a book. Don't just sit back and wait for the big “aha moments.”
Read With a Pen
In school, you probably read with a highlighter to mark key passages you thought might be on the test. While this advice may seem like a “back to school” comment, it really isn’t. Get the most from your reading - go ahead and highlight those ideas that you can use. However, it’s important to highlight to capture the things that will make a difference for you.
A highlighter is great, and I suggest a pen or pencil, as well. Lose the belief that you can’t write in a book. Litter the margins with questions, thoughts, and connections. You can also make notes or expand on ideas in a journal, if you use one.
Most importantly, your notes should be about actions you can take connected to your purpose for reading the book.
Read Through the Filter of Your Goals
Even with a great pre-scan, you won’t know exactly what is in the book or what it will teach you. So as you read, keep thinking about questions like:
- How can I use this?
- How does this relate to my personal and organizational goals?
- What is the big message for me here?
Asking questions like this as you read allows you to synthesize the writer’s thinking for your purposes, rather than just accepting or letting their prose wash over your brain. When you read through the filter of your goals, you begin to actively use the book for your purposes.
Read to Translate
As you read consciously, look for the action steps. Some authors help you with this by outlining at the close of a section or chapter what you can do. This is a very helpful component of a book, but is still incomplete. No author (unless it’s you) knows your situation or goals perfectly. Therefore, it is up to you to determine exactly what you can do with the ideas.
Reading to translate is about determining what actions you will take as a result of what you have read.
Transform Your Ideas into Action
The previous four ideas are important strategies to help you improve the value you get from a book. But it is this final item that will make the real difference.
This is the logical extension of the last point, but with an important difference. For the ideas, strategies, and breakthroughs from any book to make a difference, you aren’t finished after the last page. Your most important task is just beginning!
Take all your notes and ideas and capture them - in your journal, a notebook, or a computer file. This review process is important to help you lock in the knowledge you gained from the book. And, this step is about more than knowledge, it is about action. As you take your key learning points from the book, putting them down in your own words, start creating the short list of actions you want to take.
Here is where the first step of “Reading with a Purpose” is important. Hopefully, you’ve received many great ideas from the book. Now, you must prioritize the best, most important, most valuable actions to take as they relate to your goals.
Yes, you may have gotten many other cool suggestions. And perhaps one or more of them warrant your immediate attention. But you must start in relationship to your goals. Otherwise, you will get overwhelmed by the number and quality of all the ideas and ultimately do nothing. (By the way, that is what most of us do, and is one of the reasons I wrote this).
If all of this seems like work, it is.
The bottom line: If you want a book be the impetus for change, you must do more than read it. You must use it as a tool to fuel your personal growth and development. This means you must engage in an active process of learning.
Of course there will be times you “just want to read,” and that is absolutely fine. Just don’t expect that type reading to lead to significant change, growth, or development.
Books can be a powerful source of learning and growth. They are after all the knowledge and wisdom of an expert distilled into the written word. And, when you want to take full advantage of that knowledge and wisdom, you must do more than read. You must engage, think, and take action.
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