Easy Career Growth Tip: Read

Productivity 501 talks about the benefits of reading. They go at it from a general "improve yourself" standpoint, but I believe it can also benefit your career in many of the same ways writing can. The site offers the following tips for making the most of doing so:

• Read books.
• Set aside a specific time for reading.
• Read outside your field. 
• Keep a book list.
• Buy used.
• Don’t be afraid to give up. 
• Take notes.
• Read for the interaction–not speed.

Here are my thoughts on these and other reading-related suggestions:

1. I don't think you have to read only books. Magazines, web articles, and blogs have their place as well and can help you cover a wide variety of topics in a short amount of time.

2. I like to read lots of stuff outside my field. It makes life much more interesting IMO. And you won't believe how often an idea from a non-related subject actually applies to my work/career -- it's a regular occurrence.

3. I don't buy used, I rent. The library allows me to check out so many books that I'd never otherwise buy and/or even try to read. If I like them, great. If not, I simply return them with no cost.

4. I take notes in books I look over, but these are mostly personal finance books that publishers send me. I write the notes on the inside of the front so they always remain with the book.

5. I actually disagree with the last point. I read for speed, skimming many books/portions of books, then read the parts that interest me at a much slower pace.

6. I'd add "go audio" to this list. But listening to audiobooks, I take otherwise non-productive time -- in the car, while cutting the grass, on the treadmill, etc. -- and turn them into learning times. Add podcasts to this list and I can cover a lot of material by listening.

Reading on a regular basis on a variety of subjects has been one of the best outside-of-work things I've done to help grow my career, not to mention making my life much more interesting.

How about you? I assume there are a lot of readers on this site -- true?

Comments

[Stacie]

It amazes me that people don't do this very simple thing to better themselves. I have a ton of junk rolling around in my head and often find people come to me for answers because I'm the type of person that "might have read something about that."

Sometimes I am, sometimes I'm not.

[mysticaltyger]

I agree with what you're saying here. In fact, the book "The Difference" by Jean Chatzky noted that people she defined as "rich" and "financially comfortable" (the category just below rich) tend to read books and magazines a lot more than people defined as "living paycheck to paycheck" and people "going further in debt".

It's a great book. Even better than "Millionaire Next Door".

[Jeremy]

I read non-stop. I buy some books but use the library almost every other day. If I like a book enough, I'll begin to scour ebay for it and buy it for a good deal with one arises.

Lately, I have read Ramit's book, all of Gladwell's books, and some education books for some Grad. classes. On the bookshelf behind me are hundreds of books... The only fiction on the shelf (unless you could Feynman as fiction - his stuff is MUST READ) is every Grisham book. I can't get enough of him.

I also enjoy pretty much anything from Covey or Maxwell on leadership.

[Concojones]

1. I love a good blog article, because it's short yet packed with ideas. The thing with many books is that the few gems are burried in tons of ... text. My latest frustration was Thomas Friedman's bestseller "The World Is Flat" (600 pages). Even skimming the book couldn't keep me interested, so I looked up a summary online to help me select the parts that seemed worth a quick glance. Of course there are also awesome books packed with gems.

4. In the case of a book packed with ideas, I'll have a lot of notes, a summary you could say. After a day or two I'll "summarize the summary" into something I can quickly revisit, and I get a new flash of relevation in the process that makes it completely worth it. The initial notes (unavoidably) follow the order of ideas presented by the author. What I do is completely disassemble/overhaul those, to get to the bare essentials.

[FMF]

mysticaltyger --

I asked the publisher for a review copy of that book but have received no response from them. :-(