How to read a business book
January 27, 2005 by admin
Filed under best of, books, reading, tips and tricks
I’ll be honest here, this isn’t just for reading business books. What I’m going to cover ought to suffice for pretty much any physical text from which you wish to squeeze maximum value. This isn’t a how-to on studying though…there are plenty of those around. I’ll be focusing strictly on that space that falls between studying for tests and reading for pleasure. One last note: much of the inspiration for this post comes from Tim Sanders’ Love Is The Killer App, an odd but invigorating little book that Rosa recommended to me.
Why read?
This is the bottom line, right? If you’re serious about your career, your industry and even your contacts, you can’t afford to not read regularly. After all, somebody is reading all those books that are coming out each month, and it’s probably the competition for your next client or new gig. At the very least, the information you’re exposed to by regular reading provides great material for icebreakers and small talk. At the very best, it’s a meeting of minds when you run into someone who has been thinking like you and who cites similar influences.
Beyond all that, reading is the trailhead to "personal mastery." Personal mastery just means that you have a clear sense of calling, of self and of vocation. Reading widely helps get the ball rolling. Pay attention to what really gets your heart pumping and what puts you to sleep, and continue down the ‘heart pumping’ road. Reading alone won’t give you personal mastery–you have to actually do stuff, not just read and think about it. But reading will give you the clues about where to start and what to do.
What should you read?
With so many business-oriented titles coming out each month, how do you choose what to read? There’s always Amazon, of course. Amazon has some great features, including their purchase circles section, which lets you browse who’s reading what.
The purchase circles thing is a great idea, but when you browse companies (where you’d expect to find the most business-oriented material), you usually come up short. Amazon also lets you browse other people’s wishlists, which are often a great place to start. Once you’ve clickeda few interesting titles, Amazon will start making recommendations for you which work pretty well, most of the time. On the whole, Amazon has a lot to offer, but it takes some work to dig up the most relevant business titles.
02/11/2005 UPDATE: Fast Company has a great selection of suggested reading here. Hat tip to FC Now)
Fortunately for us business readers, there’s 800CEOREAD. 800CEOREAD has been around a while and it shows. They’ve got a deep passion for business books and the recommendations you find there are probably the best place to start. Browse your industry sections as well as the bestseller sections on their website. Be sure to visit the 800CEOREAD(er) page, their blog, the book excerpts blog, and the recommendations section.
Between these two resources, and the references you come across during the course of a day, you ought to have no trouble finding quality reading. Once last great resource is the Business Blog Book Tour that Todd has put together. It’s kinda seasonal, but a great way to get deeper exposure to new books.
Sanders notes that he’s got a short list of key words that he looks for when scanning a book title, subtitle or jacket text. These keywords are relevant to his industry and he keeps them in mind whenever he’s browsing. We’d do well to find our own keywords and keep an eye out for them.
Make a place in your space
This is simple, but important. Establish
places to read that are comfortable and have the appropriate accoutrements. You’ll need your book, of course, but you’ll also want ample lighting and a stable writing surface. You’ll want your writing tools close at hand. It doesn’t really matter where your space is, or how many spaces you have. You just need to identify them, or at least identify what they are. Maybe you’ve got a long train commute–perfect found time for reading! Maybe you have a nice chair in the living room–just the place to sneak away for a quick reading session. Speaking of sessions, Sanders advises keeping reading sessions to about 30 minutes. I don’t really hit the wall after 30 minutes and you might not either. Regardless, pay attention to when you start losing attention. At that point, put the book away and do something else for a change.
Tagging and clipping
This is really the heart of reading a business book. Tim Sanders actually calls this "cliffing", after Cliffs Notes, but I prefer clipping so we’ll go with that. The deal here is to become an active reader, as opposed to a passive reader. Passive readers just read the book…kinda like we’ve all done with so many books. Active readers read, but they also engage the book by marking it up, annotating and summarizing. In order to become an active reader, you’ll need to get over any reservations you have about writing in your books. Sanders advocates always getting hardbacks. There’s a lot of wisdom in that advice. Hardbacks last longer, they’re easier to mark up…they just feel better. Regardless of whether you get hardbacks or paperbacks, mark ‘em up.
Let’s take a look at what the end result is, so you have an idea where you’re going here. When you’re finished reading your book, you’ll have various passages underlined (tagged) throughout the book. Each tag may or may not have notes in the margin next to it, but each tag will definitely have an entry in your "index" at the back of the book. These entries are the "clippings" for each of the tags. You’ll have used the blank pages at the
back of the book to make a note of the page number and the main idea behind each bit you tagged. At the front of the book, on the blank pages, you will have a brief outline of the whole book. When all is said and done, you’ll have a document that you can refer to time and time again, and quickly find relevant passages when needed by using the outline and the index.
That’s the big idea. Now you’ll need to come up with your own system of annotations, symbols and markup. I learned briefhand in high school, and still use it sporadically. There are plenty of shorthand-like systems out there if you’re interested.
Tips, Tricks and Tools
There are some final pointers I wanted to mention. First, and most impressive, is Jon Udell’s excellent library lookup bookmarklet. I have one customized for our university library, so whenever I’m on a webpage with an ISBN, I can click the bookmarklet to check on the availability. You can set up your own for your local public or university library. If you’re real smart with regular expresions, you can probably make it jump through hoops too.
I don’t really like highlighters (but I haven’t tried drylighters yet) and I prefer using just one 
pen–the Fisher Space Pen. It’s small enough for a pocket and it writes really, really well. I’ve also had great success with Rotrings since they are basically bombproof (I’ve
actually dropped a Rotring pencil in my driveway on accident and rolled
over it several times with a Jeep before realizing it was down
there–only incurred the most superficial of scratches.). I like
their mechanical pencils, but I really hate their ballpoint refills.
However, I have heard that their rollerballs will accept G2 refills
without a problem, so that could also be a great pen for your quiver. Additional suggestions for good, cheap pens can be found over at Phil Agre’s (dated, but still interesting) roundup of cheap pens.
If you’re craving more good sources for reading material, be sure to pay attention to your relevant industry trade magazines. Also, pay attention to what other bloggers are reading–many have their Amazon wishlists in a sidebar. Next, be sure to keep an eye on the Technorati book page. It tracks what’s being mentioned on blogs. AllConsuming is similar, but has better history, more features and a bit of interactivity. Finally, the bookwatch at OnFocus.com does a trick similar to Technorati’s.
Love this Bren! And I love love love the visuals!
New purpose for Managing with Aloha … tummy warmer during naptime … just hope the book wasn’t what put you to sleep!
Speaking as an author, I get no greater compliment than seeing my book marked up well, tagged and clipped to the heart’s content.
However not only have you made my day, there are some great tips in your post. I second, third, and fourth the motion - reading makes your brain sing!
The Bren-master does it again…
Thanks for the great mention of our blog and the http://www.800ceoREADer.com.
For a guy that reads a tad more than average, you nailed the recommendations.
Regarding the graphic of you catching some sleep, on many a Sunday afternoon you will find me in “my” chair with a cat on my stomach resting and enjoying a weekend. The book is generally on the cat as we both sleep.
Great service.
Fantastic Bren!
After this post, I think I need to go read some more “How to Read an Excellent Blog Post”.
Greatness.
Todd
One never knows where a good book recommendation will come from. I think I’ve mentioned this in the blogosphere (can’t member - too many blogs) before, but, I really started my business book barnstorming career with a recommendation in Muscle and Fitness for Covey’s Seven Habits.
This topic IS my passion. How much? Sanders’ book was like a junkie’s fix for me, verifying stuff I did for years (minus the hugging) I’ve got all the business book buying, reading, marking-up, dog-earring, hi-lighting, dictionary-access, etc., going on. My problem is in the actual doing stuff category…
Two other sources of great book recommends are Harvard Business Review and FC.
Matter of fact, I just corresponded with Jena McGregor of FC on her article “So Call us Hijackers,” in Feb’s issue. It was about the book Brand Hijack and how it is or is not being promoted. Book promo is a fascinating cousin to our current topic.
Superb topic Bren!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Great post. I love Tim Sanders and recommend “Love Is A Killer App” to a lot of people.
Thanks for posting this. I agree that reading great business books is essential if you are to stay ahead in this fast paced ever-changing world. In fact I just picked up tonight the new Malcolm Gladwell book called “blink” (he also wrote the book “The Tipping Point”)
Great post! I picked up Tom Sander’ book about 2/3 years back and I really liked it! Though I still find it difficult to dirty my books! Tom also has a yahoo groups on the same name which he updates once in a while.
Best,
Raj
I’ve recently been creating digital summaries of books using IBM’s ViaVoice voice recognition product. I mark the important parts of a book while reading it the first couple of times. Then, I voice those key passages into ViaVoice, which saves text in a Word document.
In addition to having a collection of searchable book summaries, it’s easy to pull a quote later for use in an article.
I have been marking up my books for a while now. I use a Pentel 8 color pencil that I found in a religious bookstore (that way I can color code), and a mechanical pencil to write notes, also lined Post-its for longer comments that don’t fit in the margin.
I transcribe my notes and some passages to a file on my computer for easier storage and retrieval. That way I can do search and get lots of ideas in a hurry sometimes.
I like your comments on marking up books. Louis Pauwels,the former editor of Figaro magazine (France)and author of the cult favorite “The Morning of the Magicians”,also advocated writing and making extensive notes in books (your own). His idea was that we tend to treat books too much like “precious objects”. As aspiring writers we should be willing to “dethrone” these objects and take an active rather than passive role towards them.
Any ideas on how to read a blog?
this is a wonderful article on how to read a business book. i liked the content available on this site. It is really educative and gives simple answers to ambiguous questions……..keep up the good work.
On a similar note, I find the time it takes to read the books to be ever increasing (so many books coming out every week). I recently found a great service that puts together a rather comprehensive summary of business books every week. Check it out at summaries.com
Gert post.