How to Keep up with Reading Books!

I read about 200-300 books each year!

?How do I do that with my heavy client load and all my other obligations? I figured out an efficient way to understand what a particular book is about by first looking at who the author is—that helps greatly to stay away from noise—and then what the topic is that they want to cover. If that falls within the contours of my professional and personal interest, I find an efficient way to get to the pith of the book in a variety of ways:

?I’m a Blinkist fan. They have thousands of titles that are covered in a condensed form, most taking between 10-15 mins. to breeze through their key ideas. I sometimes I go through one book in about 5-7 mins. I also highlight key passages with their yellow marker for later.

?When I visit a bookstore, I pick a book that is currently in the news and read its jacket and introduction/preface to get the pith of the book and then go through its table of contents in about one minute or so. Unless it is fiction any book that interests me has about 80% of its content that supports the main idea of the book. So, you can get the main idea in about 10-20% of the time it takes the read the entire book. Often, these books have graphic frameworks and models that are prominently featured in their pages. Perusing those can allow you to quickly get to a book’s idea.

?I diligently read many curated book summaries that are expertly posted by those in my LI network, whom I’ve calibrated as worthy. I often comment on their work to encourage them.

?When I come across a worthy book, I go to Amazon’s book department and read all reviews (five stars, all the way to one star) to get a perspective of how other readers have presented their take on that book.

?Books that have made a mark are often written about in the Wikipedia. This is a good source to understand what such a book is all about. This is how I read about novels and fiction. ?

?I often download on my Kindle a book that interests me and breeze through it by glancing at each page and sometimes highlighting what jumps out. Kindle has many features that allow you to mark a book in interesting ways, including new words that you can search for their meaning and then put them in one place as list for you to build your vocabulary.

Some TV shows have 2-3 mins. of book segments, where they showcase a worthy book. If that spot interests me I check out the book on Amazon and read its reviews. YouTube also has many book spots that are 3-7 mins. in length. Some of those YT posts are worthy for a quick take on a book.

?When I respect an author and they have produced a good book, I buy its hard copy to honor their work.

?It is quite rare when someone puts in a great effort to summarize a book by listing its main contributions in each of its chapters. When I come across such a critique and review, I often read that carefully.

?One such review I recently came across was so well written that I decided to share it in this blog.

?PS: Peter Drucker is my hero and the person who coined the now famous phrase, Knowledge Worker. During his life of 94 years, he published 39 books, which have been translated into 36 languages (he died in 2005).

?Enjoy!

?This review on Amazon by Max More (October 10, 2003) is a good way to understand Peter Drucker and how he thought we need to manage our challenges in the 21st Century. This is a good summary of the book: Management Challenges of the 21st Century by the master of management, Peter Drucker, and his foresightful and prescient thinking:

“Peter Drucker has a beautiful mind, forever fresh and overflowing with innovative thoughts. This book, published just as the master of management began his tenth decade of life, shows him at his perpetual best. The text carries with it the sweeping knowledge, deep experience, and astute analysis that a reader might expect from Drucker at this point in his life. But you will find no timid conservatism, no holding on to safe ground here. Drucker has made a lifelong habit of leading the way in business thought and this book confirms that he just can't help himself.

“In contrast to the typical business book, which is 200 pages too long, every chapter and every page of Management Challenges for the 21st Century relentlessly tweaks the noses of bad assumptions while focusing our attention on the future. Drucker pulls together diverse trends and forces to map out the truly new management challenges. His first chapter, "Management's New Paradigms" argues that organizations (or what ManyWorlds calls "business architecture") will have to become part of the executive's toolbox, yet we continue to operate on outdated assumptions about the role and domain of management.

“Fortunately, much recent management thinking explicitly challenges one assumption pulled apart by Drucker: The idea that the inside of the organization is the domain of management. This assumption, says Drucker, 'explains the otherwise totally incomprehensible distinction between management and entrepreneurship.' These are two aspects of the same task. Management without entrepreneurship (and vice versa) cannot survive in a world where every organization must be 'designed for change as the norm and to create change rather than react to it.'

“Although Drucker is intent on uprooting old certainties and focusing organizations on constant change, he does not leave the reader without a compass. In the second chapter, 'Strategy-The New Certainties', Drucker says that strategy allows an organization to be "purposefully opportunistic" and explains five certainties around we can shape our strategy. While other writers have addressed a couple of these, too little attention has been paid to some of the inevitabilities analyzed here, including the collapsing birthrate, shifts in the distribution of disposable income, and the growing incongruence between economic globalization and political splintering.

“The book's third chapter, 'The Change Leader', gives Drucker's unique perspective on the need for 21st organizations to be change leaders. "One cannot manage change. One can only be ahead of it." Change leaders have four qualities. They create policies to make the future which means not only continual improvement but organized abandonment - a practice still almost unknown in practice. Contrary to typical company reactions, change leaders will starve problems and feed opportunities. For Drucker this means, in part, having a policy of systematic innovation and - in tune with recent calls for new budgetary practices - having two separate budgets to ensure that the future-creating budget is not stopped off in difficult times.

“Strong as the first chapters are, I found the other chapters of this book even more incisive. The reader may come away with the sense that many of Drucker's points are obvious but will realize that they only became obvious after hearing them. In his chapter on 'Information Challenges', Drucker gives his own, historically-rich, controversial, and provocative take on our current information revolution - the fourth such revolution, he says).

“The man who coined the term "knowledge worker" has no shortage of fresh thoughts in the chapter on 'Knowledge-Worker Productivity,' and has profoundly important things to say in the final chapter on "Managing Oneself." Management Challenges for the 21st Century is, of course, essential reading for aspiring manager-entrepreneurs in these confusing times. As for aspiring business writers, I can only say: Read it and weep!”

Now that you know these tricks, try incorporating them into your routine and see how you can “read” a stack of books and internalize their message better than if you actually read each of these books in their original form!

Happy reading!