“So sir, if the book is not in one’s line of interest, how do you (and why should you) retain what you have read since one may not need it?”
The question quoted above came from a professional colleague, Kehinde Olugbemi. I couldn’t help but involuntarily echo the last two words: “Need it?”
I humbly submit that you need all the knowledge you can acquire now and in the future. There is no end to learning or knowledge acquisition. As usual, I will use my personal experience to answer the question. I learned early enough, while cultivating my reading habit, to broaden my line of interests, and not to limit it to my career path only. In fact, the wider you read quality literatures, the better informed you become. That was why I said upfront, in Part 1 of this three-part series, that a solid reading habit, a lifestyle of reading is beyond that heart-pounding, headache-inducing, and at times, the cramming-freak reading to pass examinations.
After you would have broadened your interests, there would still be other interests outside your interests. If you find good literatures outside your interests, please read to improve your knowledge in such areas. No knowledge is lost. If you do not need it today, you may have to draw from it tomorrow; just like drawing a sword (remember the Sword of the Spirit?) to save a life. However, if the book is entirely not in sync with your line of interests, please drop it. Abandon it after your initial browsing. More about browsing later. Such a book would be difficult to read, both for pleasure and for knowledge acquisition.
”I humbly submit that you need all the knowledge you can acquire now and in the future. There is no end to learning or knowledge acquisition.”
I got many feedbacks from the previous parts of this essay. They just kept dropping on my platforms. I will like to quickly attend to a feedback I got during the week. It has to do with the impression by a reader that, perhaps, all my books come from Amazon and bookshops abroad. Excuse me sir or ma (like my Resident Pastor would say), dat one na lie o (nothing can be farther from the truth). We have favourite bookshops in Lagos plus an army of mobile book vendors knocking on our door weekly, if not daily.
A few years ago, one of our book vendors emptied almost his entire stock on us because he was being harassed at his makeshift shed on the Marina by the Local Government guys. As a matter of fact, one of the best books I have read, Steve Farrar’s Finishing Strong: Going the Distance for Your Family was bought at Lantana on Victoria Island, Lagos, on a beautiful Father’s Day, some years ago. By my estimation, this book is arguably on the same pedestal with Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and his third habit full book sequel, First Things First.
My wife and I just strolled into the bookshop on that fateful day just to look around. Then, lo and behold, this lovely gem of a book popped at our face from the shelf. I took a quick glance at the short introduction on the back of the book, and browse through a couple of pages, and I made up my mind it was worth reading. I didn’t regret that purchase. Having been blessed by the book, I keep going back to it both for my corporate business teaching and spiritual ministrations. We later got the Kindle edition for easier access and carriage.
Someone accosted me in church the other day apparently having read my article. He said he has lost his appetite for reading and that how can he revive it. By the way, it was our revival and renewal week in church. I then asked why and how? Why have you lost your appetite for reading? How can you cultivate the healthy habit of reading? You may have a thousand and one excuses; you may want to blame everyone else but yourself. One of the commonest excuses I hear these days is: “there is no time”. Yet, these ‘no-timers’ spend so much time on social media platforms doing sweet nonsense and being bugged down by the virus ‘#JustForwardAnything’. The truth is, you will have time for what you create time for. I also hear another baby boomer/Gen X-induced excuse like “in the olden days (bros, how old are you and how old is your olden?!), conducive public libraries were all over Lagos (the country). You could be there all day and come back late in the night; some of us even met our future partners in the library. Now, all those are no more.”
My dear friend, no excuse would do. We can join hands in our businesses, or as NGOs to resuscitate these libraries and make them attractive again. As a testimony, there is one library close to me here in Lagos that was dead but thank God, it has just been raised to life again through the benevolence of a leading new generation bank. Kudos, guys. More power to your elbow. I’ll also be so thrilled seeing professional institutes like CIPM, ICAN and NIM upgrading their libraries, making it more flexible, conducive and accessible for professionals to come and enjoy reading.
Let us conclude this piece on a note of the ‘how’ of enjoyable reading. Though I do not yet have a perfect thesis titled “How To Read A Book 101”, I read Phyllis A. Miller’s Managing Your Reading some years back and it has helped me greatly in planning my reading. I will love to share a few proven nuggets as suggestions to help when next you pick a book to read, or maybe you should just start on page one and… No, not so fast.
‘One of the commonest excuses I hear these days is: “there is no time”. Yet, these ‘no-timers’ spend so much time on social media platforms doing sweet nonsense and being bugged down by the virus ‘#JustForwardAnything’.’
The first step is probably to analyse a non-fiction (and even a fiction for that matter) quickly to see if it fits your reading need or interest. Then, look for a way to get the best from it, for the time spent reading – thumb through the book, look at the paper colour – I’m particularly fascinated by the newsprint-colour pages, the print fonts and size, the length of the chapters, the graphics, etc. Check the table of contents, this gives you or fails to give you a quick view of the author’s topics and ideas’ outlines. Do a quick read about the author either on the sleeve or at the back of the book. This gives you an indication of how reliable the author is and how dependable and trustworthy the source. Check the copyright date. We live in an era of quick outdatedness, you may need to reject some ideas from the book or disregard outdated statistics. Next, check the commendation or the praise comments for some major points of the book. Identify key concept, words indicating leading ideas in the book especially in the table of contents. Finally, read a chapter which seems most to capture your attention. You can now go back to page one, and…
‘Readers are leaders and authentic leaders are readers!’
As for me, I have found all the above very useful and the result is what I have just shared with you. Just to add that, I get my readings from various sources like hard cover books, good old paperbacks, Harvard Business Review blogs, outright ‘Googling’, etc. As for any relevant books, we first get the Kindle edition (www.amazon.com) – a not too expensive option or get the executive summary (www.summary.com) – a more expensive venture but worth every kobo spent. Once we enjoy the book, and we need it for further reading, we may then ask our book vendors to get it for us, or order it online, or visit any of the good bookshops around.
Now, you may want to ask: how do I get to read volumes? Like I shared with you last week, it is by the grace of God and a cultivated habit of not going for any appointment without a book or a book summary or my Kindle. God has really helped me not to go late for my appointments, rather I arrive long before my time. With this and the waiting time, I have some good minutes at my disposal to read. Also when I’m not driving, I use commuting in the Lagos traffic to read or at times to doze off. I also wake up in the night to read.
My elder brother Tunde taught me that circa 1975. I enjoy reading good books productively. I encourage you to cultivate a reading habit now. If you already have, please do not lose it. It is rewarding. One of these days, we would be talking about productive and fast reading, but first let us start reading. Readers are leaders and authentic leaders are readers!
As I was concluding this piece, a feedback came in from a professional colleague and a grandma I respect so much. She sent it through WhatsApp and I quote: “I have a planner which I never use. I was fascinated to see how the 24-Hours (Personal Accountability Chart) planner has helped you. Can I be coached in this aspect?” Wow!
On the coaching request ma’am, I’m genuinely humbled by your proposal, and I say: Yes! It’s possible and I’ll be so glad to be there with you. It’s a journey of a thousand steps. Let’s take the first step right now just to assure you that the 24-Hours Personal Accountability Chart works. We have used it productively in The P.E.A.R. Training, a BezaleelConsulting’s home grown workshop on personal effectiveness and attitudinal restructuring. Restructuring? Ha! This word again. A word that has now been engrained in the Nigerian political lexicon and the jury is still out on its full meaning and connotations.
However, it is not new to us in BezaleelConsulting. In fact, it dates as far back as 2001 when, after reading and dissecting Keith Harrell’s Attitude is Everything: 10 Life-Changing Steps to Turning Attitude into Action, our faculty birthed the P .E.A.R programme. Some of our blue chip clients have benefited tremendously from this programme under various modular formats either as a stand-alone module, or part of other learning and talent development initiatives. This programme is all about personal effectiveness and corporate performance. We also use the 24-Hours Accountability Matrix extensively in our Responsibility & Accountability retreats.
Let me also give a shout out to a colleague, Kunle Adefila, who responded to my postcard lamentation of last week by using a laugh-out-loud hilarious emoticon with the message: “postcard sir! The current generation doesn’t even know what that is. Wonderful memories… Thanks…” Thank you too, my brother, for reading.
Prologue: Please allow me to celebrate with our son, Boluwarin, who, this week, popped the question to his heartthrob, Tara, and got a resounding Yes! Just as Tunde Lawanson posted later, this guy is officially off the market, ladies. What do we say to these children of ours? Congratulations to you both. May the good Lord keep keeping you in Jesus name. Amen.
Acknowledgement/Sources of Resources for this article:
- Clip arts from the Internet to drive home the points.
- A compendium of over 25 years of manuscripts of my thesis and lecture series in Talent Management and People Matters (unpublished yet).
- BezaleelConsulting Group Library bezaleelconsultingrw.com
- Phyllis A. Miller: Managing Your Reading. Reading Development Resources, 1987
