Read 30 books in 30 Days Like Francis Bacon
I know that you’re wondering if the headline for this article is clickbait. And it isn’t. That’s not my style. And now you’re asking yourself, “Can I really read 30 books in 30 days?” And my answer is yes, but. Now you’re utterly confused. The thing is this, I’ve read 30 books in 30 days a few times. And I wish I had the information I’m going to share with you.
I’ve read a book a day for 30 days. And I’ve also read 30 books in 30 days. Can you see the subtle difference? I found reading 30 books in 30 days a lot easier than reading a book a day for 30 days. There were days when I couldn’t read a book because of work commitments. But over the weekend I could easily read four books and get caught up.
Today, I’m a more sophisticated reader. And I’ve learned so much more about effective reading. Over the past two years, I’ve read a few books that taught me how to digest the average nonfiction book in 30 to 60 minutes. This information will allow you to elevate your career, since you’ll have some unexpected time to devote to reading books to build career enhancing skills.
Why Would Anyone Want to Read 30 Books in 30 Days?
- Get an infusion of ideas to implement in your business.
- Build a strong foundation in a subject, so you read various books on the topic to get a broader perspective. And to understand the issues surrounding the topic.
- Get ideas to accelerate your career.
- Understand a problem you’re grappling with.
- Find creative solutions to problems.
- Discover ways to start tackling big world problems.
I’m sure that now you’ve seen the above reasons, you can easily come up with 10 more reasons to read 30 books in 30 days.
If you’d like a process to learn the key skills the World Economic Forum says you need to thrive and you want book recommendations, buy a copy of my book, Read 30 Books in 30 Days Like Francis Bacon. Click the link to buy the book now!
4 Things You Need to Know Before You Read 30 Books in 30 Days
Consider the 80/20 Rule as it relates to reading books. You can read 20 percent of a nonfiction book and understand 80 percent of the text. The trick is to know which 20 percent of the book to read.
According to Francis Bacon, an English Philosopher and more:
“Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few are to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.”
While taking the PhotoReading course I learned that only four to 11 percent of the text on a page is important information. You read that correctly. So, you tell me, why should you be reading the other 89 to 96 percent of the book?
Publishers have word counts. Therefore authors often have to pad their books to satisfy the word count. Have you ever been reading and wondered, “Haven’t I read this before?”
The four things I wrote above are to convince you that most books are not meant to read cover-to-cover. Therefore, there isn’t any reason for you to feel guilty about not reading entire books.
Deciding Which 30 Books to Read in 30 Days
Now that you’ve been forced to work remotely, more than likely you’ve found yourself with some unexpected downtime. Why not use some of that downtime to benefit your career? There are skills that the World Economic Forum says that you need to thrive in 2020 to 2022. But there may be skills to learn that are specific to your role in the company. Or your company may require specific skills if you want to get a promotion.
On the other hand, you may be looking to switch careers after things settle down. Or you may have been laid off and looking to up-skill to give yourself more choices when the job market picks up. Whatever your reason, I can offer you some advice.
If you’re unsure of the books you should be reading in the next 30 days, use the Taki Moore Four Forces to help you decide.
Based on your wants and aspirations, you’d read books that would help you to achieve those goals. If there are skills that you’ve always wanted to learn, now is the perfect time to learn them. Create a list of the skills that you’d like to learn. The next step is to choose the 30 books to read for 30 days. I once read that to master a book, you need to read five of the best books on the topic.
Use this as a guide to decide how many books on a topic you’re going to read. The best way to learn skills is to learn by doing. This means that as you’re reading books to learn new skills, apply what you are learning to a meaningful project.
How to Read 30 Books in 30 Days
It’s a good time to review what you read about the four things you need to know before you attempt to read 30 books in 30 days. The key thing to remember is that you seldom have to read entire nonfiction books because there will be lots of extraneous information. At this point, I imagine you’re wondering how to decide which sections of a book to skip.
If you’d like a more in-depth process than this article provides, please buy a copy of my book, Read 30 Books in 30 Days Like Francis Bacon. Click the link to buy the book now!
Have you read?
5 Common Reading Mistakes You Don’t Realize You’re Making
The Right Way To Learn Skills You Need To Thrive
How to Carve Out the Time to Read More Books
Good Note Taking Techniques When Reading
The starting point is to prepare your mind for reading. This may sound weird, but it’s very important because you want to condition your mind for learning . Do any exercise that connects both sides of the brains. I listen to a binaural beats audio, which works for me.
The next step before you start to read a book, is to take a minute to write down your one-sentence purpose for reading the book. This is important because when you’re reading the book you’ll be able to focus on the chapters and sections that align with your purpose and answer key questions that you’d like the book to answer.
Now it’s time to inspect the book before you actually read it. Here’s what that entails:
Lifetime Learner’s Guide to Reading and Learning
- Read Preface, Foreword, Introduction and Book Description.
- Review the Table of Contents.
- Place a check mark beside the chapters and sections that need further exploration.
- Look at the images and charts in the book. A picture is indeed worth 1000 words.
- Scan the Index. The terms with the most references tell you what the author thinks are important.
- Read the sections needing further exploration.
At this point, decide if what you’ve done so far is enough. Have you firmly grasped what the book is about? Do you understand the main idea and secondary ideas? Can you list what the key ideas are and why you think they’re important?
For many nonfiction books this is all you’ll need to do. You’d have read the important bits in the book. However, never rush inspecting a book. Spend as much time as is necessary to make sure that you understand the text. Do this even if it takes you more than an hour.
And as you’re reading the sections that need further exploration, make sure you take note of the important information. This is helpful in the learning process when you review your notes. It’s also in reviewing your notes that you can connect the dots.
How to Analyze and Synthesize Informational Text from The Books You Read
You’re not reading 30 books in 30 days just for the sake of doing it. I’ve done it and looking back it was a wasted opportunity. You’re reading 30 books in 30 days with the intent to learn. And it’s your decision what you want to learn. Therefore, to get the most from your reading time investment, you need a way to connect the ideas from the books you read during the 30 days.
After you’ve read five books, it’s the perfect time to connect the ideas from the five books. A great model to use is the Haystack Method from Non Obvious Megatrends. And you continue using this process to connect the ideas from the different books.
Have you read?
How to Synthesize Information from the Books You Read
The Components of the Haystack Method for Synthesizing Information
- Gathering: The information you find in the 30 books you read.
- Aggregating: Ideas from the 30 books you read
- Elevating: Combine ideas to make them bigger
- Naming: Name ideas so people quickly understand what you’re trying to communicate
- Proving: Do the ideas have “teeth.” How can you demonstrate that the ideas are important?
Please read the related article since I won’t be repeating the information here.
Final Thoughts: Read 30 Books in 30 Days: Use the Unexpected Downtime to Benefit Your Career
Reading 30 books in 30 days can be as easy or as hard as you want it to be. Using the process outlined here is the easy way. The process works for nonfiction books.
How Avil Can Help You!
If you do not want to gamify your reading, I invite you to Join the Performance Accelerator Plan that walks you through the process of learning key skills and more. You’ll be reading books to build skills and develop intercultural awareness. Get more reading and learning tips here.
In December 2020, 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.
If someone clicks on a link and buys something from Amazon, the company will pay me a small commission.
The post Read 30 Books in 30 Days: Use the Unexpected Downtime to Benefit Your Career appeared first on The Invisible Mentor.
This post first appeared on The Invisible Mentor - Bite-sized Learning For People On The Go, please read the originial post: here
