A key ingredient to success is having the ability to consistently expand your knowledge and skills through reading. While it is true that many successful millionaires and billionaires dropped out of school early in life, most have continued the pursuit of knowledge and education in order to improve themselves. Tony Robbins, a world-famous success coach coined the term “CANI”, which stands for Constant-And-Never-Ending-Improvement. Robbins emphasizes the importance of reading and improving ourselves if we want to be successful in our lives. From his book “Money: Master The Game” Robbins says… “As a young man, I decided I was going to read a book a day. I didn’t quite read a book a day, but over seven years, I did read more than 700 books…”
The Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway and one of the richest men in the world spends 5 to 6 hours a day reading.
The former CEO of Microsoft and one of the richest men in the world said that he reads about 50 books a year.
Mark Cuban, a billionaire and the owner of Dallas Mavericks spends about 3 hours reading every day and he attributed his early career success in life to reading.
Oprah is widely known for being an advocate for reading and she strongly recommends her talk-show viewers to adopt the habit of reading. Oprah often refers to reading as her “path to freedom” due to the tough start in her career.
Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook and a billionaire with a net worth of more than $70 billion is a strong believer in reading. Mark believes that if you want to improve the quality of your life, you must commit to personal growth and development.
Like many other successful billionaires, Elon Musk devoted a huge chunk of his time to reading when he was young. When he was in grade school, he read about ten hours a day.
After realizing how many successful “reading advocates” there are, I decided to take a stab at an aggressive reading strategy in 2015, in the midst of transitioning from an active real estate investor to a passive real estate investor. I made a New Year’s Resolution in 2015 to read 52 books in one year (one book a week). But I knew I would fail if I tried to read books in the traditional fashion… one page at a time, front cover to back cover. So I decided to take a couple speed reading courses and I learned a powerful reading technique from a mentor of mine. Below is a technique that allowed me to read 52 books in one year. I continue to use this strategy today when I read non-fiction “How-To” or “Self-Improvement” books.
Step 1 – Set aside (3) 15 minute or 20 minute intervals for reading each day (ie morning, afternoon, evening) and set a timer if needed.
Step 2 – Decide ahead of time what your goal is for reading the book. What are you seeking to learn from the book and how will that help you in your life or career?
Step 3 – Use a bookmark or sticky notes to save important pages or sections, use a pen to circle or underline key tips or ideas.
Step 4 – Read the front cover first, then the inside jacket, and then the foreword/introduction and first chapter.
Step 5 – Then read the last chapter in the book. Next, circle back to the table of contents and select the most relevant chapters for your goals and only read those. The goal of using this technique is to extract a few key ideas, concepts, or takeaways that you can implement in your life. Statistically, most people only retain about 10% of what they read. This reading technique allows you to retain information quicker, more efficiently and offers you the ability to go back later and skip directly to the most relevant information by using bookmarks, notes and annotations. I hope this technique helps you expand your knowledge and skill sets and I’m sorry you were never taught this in school. To Your Success Travis Watts