I got so much from reading. Books have been transforming my understanding and still reshape regularly the way I see the world. I am blown away by the impact that knowledge can have on me. I have been fortunate to catch the reading bug early in my life. I know as well that it can be so difficult for some us my friends and family to make time for reading and I always wanted to do something about it.
Some time ago, I started an Instagram hashtag #neverendingbooklist. This was the beginning of a project that I carry on the back of my mind for the longest time: I want to trim, simplify and sort the wisdom I gather from my readings and make it available to my family and close friends. I realized that simply sharing pictures of somehow unactractive non-fiction books has little impact on my reading-sceptical friends. Then is not serving the purpose. Sure it provides me with kudos from the reading community and gives some reading suggestions, but I am trying to be more impactul.
Another personal expereince is that reading is only the first (and sometime the easiest) step to gather knowledge. Pages by themselves do not bring much to me, what makes however an impact are the actions I take, leveraging on that knowledge. I have been sad many time to observe what I now call an implementation gap in my own practice. It stroke me at several occasion as I re-read my all time favorite How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. None of the recommendations are groundbreaking. Yet, I tried a little experimentation. As Carnegie goes through the so called Principles, I wrote down directly on the book, the situations in which I broke such Principle. Not only I ended interrupting my reading every other minute, there was not enough room on the pages to write down my failures. I ended up frustrated and stopped the experience. I could not explain what had gone wrong: I read the book religiously several time before, I made the effort to highlight the concept, and I considered myself able to understand most of the book content. I remembered I came across similar observations in some materials from Tim Ferris, Tony Robbins and Derek Sivers: I was guilty of failure of implementation. Fast forward, I decided to rethink my approach to non-fiction books and to focus on the downstream actions I could take to make the most of this new knowledge. I write on the back of the front-cover of the book, actionable principles derived from this new wisdom. I can not say it is a perfect process but I made since then considerable progress in my implementation. That is why I will make implementation the cornerstone of the #neverendingbooklist.
The #neverendingbooklist method. I decided to focus primarily on non-fiction books. I will summarize and contextualize the books in less than 300 words. I will highlight 3 learning points and propose actionable implementation of these goals. Finally, I will try to maintain an ordered list of the most impactful books I read.
There is an additional goal to this project. I hope to shed light on the unarguable impact that reading can have on anyone’s life and hope to promote actions in favor or literacy for children and access to impactful books for young adults. I am still assessing at this stage to exact format that this goal will take. If you have any idea or if you are already involved in such a project please reach out.
Please share this project around you! Every little helps!
#keepreading
Personal Optimum 