Your knowledge is only as powerful as your willingness to implement it (tweet this)
If you’re anything like me then you’re on a constant quest to learn more. You’re in search of that next inspirational blog post or book that can alter your outlook and take your personal or professional life to the next level.
However, anything you read is next to useless if you don’t put its teachings into action. That is the key step that most people tend to neglect. It is easy to read something truly inspirational, but if you don’t consciously seek to distil the wisdom and then apply it to your own life, the whole experience will have been for nought.
With the above in mind, in this post I want to reveal the process I have adopted to extract the maximum possible value from a book or blog post in an efficient manner. It can make a monumental difference and take you no more time (perhaps even less) than it would to read a book in the traditional manner.
Step 1: Skim, Booknote and Underline
The first thing you need to know about any book or blog post is that a lot of the content is superfluous for the purposes of taking action on what you read.
Take the first three paragraphs above as an example. It serves as a ‘hook’ — a device that describes what the post will be covering and draws you into reading on. However, it offers no practical advice — it is nothing more than an introduction. This blog post is 1,137 words in total and you now know that you can already disregard 175 of those words for the purposes of taking action on what you read. Understanding that you do not need a huge proportion of the content to take action is very freeing.
So rather than reading a book or blog post, take to skimming it. I’m not saying that you should not focus on the content — on the contrary, you should be totally focused on the task at hand. But you should be skimming with a view to extracting only the actionable nuggets of information that will really help you. Whenever you find anything, underline it with a pencil, fold the corner of the page over and move on. You should use a pencil rather than a pen or highlighter because you don’t want to worry about the nib drying out as you read through the book.
In reality (and this is especially the case with books) you can often discard a huge proportion of the content. I generally find that I underline around 10-20% of the actual content in a typical book — the rest is either entirely superfluous or merely serves to introduce or reiterate something I have already underlined.
To give you an idea of what I mean, here’s what I would underline from this post so far:
- The first thing you need to know about any book or blog post is that a lot of the content is superfluous for the purposes of taking action on what you read.
- So rather than reading a book or blog post, take to skimming it.
- Whenever you find anything, underline it with a pencil, fold the corner of the page over and move on.
The blog post up to this point has been 469 words of which I would have underlined just 64. Or in other words, I would have underlined less than 14% of the content and discarded the rest, and yet I would have extracted the key actionable passages.
Step 2: Make Notes
This step will allow you to essentially throw away the book or blog post and start distilling your underlining into a highly concentrated collection of actionable notes. I recommend that you use Evernote to store your notes — I have a ‘Notes’ notebook for this purpose.
The first thing you should do is go back through the book and take notes pertaining to those passages you have underlined. You shouldn’t just copy what you have underlined verbatim — the key is to compress the passage into its smallest possible form.
Take the following as an example:
So rather than reading a book or blog post, take to skimming it.
Becomes…
Don’t read content — skim instead.
13 words becomes 5. All of the superfluous information is stripped away, leaving just the actionable core. This will make an enormous difference when it comes to taking action on your notes.
If you are taking notes from a book then I recommend you make note of page numbers by each passage in case you get a little overzealous with your note-taking and need to go back to check the context of something you have written.
Please don’t attempt to shortcut this process by copying and pasting. By reading the underlined passages and compressing them into actionable nuggets you are getting a second pass at the content and are crystallising the concepts in your head — it is not a process you should look to short circuit.
Step 3: Take Action
By this point you should have a relatively short collection of concentrated notes. You can expect the word count to be in the region of 2-6% of the original content of books (the number will be higher for blog posts as they are far shorter than books and tend to be less wordy). Furthermore, the entire process to this point will have probably taken you less time than studiously reading the book through without taking any notes.
The final (and most important) step is to actually take action on what you have read and written. If you do not convert your notes into actionable steps then you will extract little value from the process. By this point you should be very familiar with the key actionable points contained within the notes you have taken — all you need to do is write down what your next action steps are and then actually take action.
We all have different ways of setting tasks and reminders so I do not intend to go into specifics here. The key thing to bear in mind is that you must have a reliable system into which you can place action reminders relating to the notes you have taken. If you do not have such a system then now is the time to create one (it can be as simple as a handwritten to do list).
I cannot understate the importance of this step — if you actually want to convert what you have read into a personal beneficial outcome then you must take action. Reading words is a passive activity; it is what you do with your newfound knowledge that makes all the difference.
So what are you waiting for? It’s time to take action — grab a book and get started!
Notes from this Post
To give you an idea of how the above process works I have broken it down below. First we have the key passages underlined:
- The first thing you need to know about any book or blog post is that a lot of the content is superfluous for the purposes of taking action on what you read.
- So rather than reading a book or blog post, take to skimming it.
- Whenever you find anything, underline it with a pencil, fold the corner of the page over and move on.
- I recommend that you use Evernote to store your notes — I have a “Notes” notebook for this purpose.
- The first thing you will want to do is go back through the book and take notes pertaining to your underlining. You shouldn’t just copy what you have underlined verbatim — the key is to compress the passage into its smallest possible form.
- If you are taking notes from a book then I recommend you make note of page numbers within your notes
- By this point you should be very familiar with the key actionable points contained within the notes you have taken — all you need to do is write down what your next action steps are and then actually take action.
16.35% of total words
And now the concentrated notes:
- Most content in books and blog posts is superfluous
- Don’t read content — skim instead
- Underline key passages with a pencil and bookmark the page
- Create a “Notes” folder in Evernote to store notes
- Take concentrated notes on underlined passages (include page number)
- Write down action steps and start taking action
4.49% of total words
And finally, the action steps:
- Follow note-taking process for the next book I read
- Take action on notes
- Analyse value of process and decide whether or not to implement on all reading
Darnell Jackson says
Good one Tom,
It’s like that quote from the Matrix.
Eventually people realize there is a difference between KNOWING the path and WALKING the path.
Nothing has made a bigger difference for me than putting my ideas to action. It’s easy to talk it’s much harder to do.
However.
Once you DO it’s much easier to TALK about what’ you’ve done.
This is what I’ve found makes writing articles 10 times easier.
Tom Ewer says
I’ve also found that talking about what you’re going to do can give you clearer purpose…as long as you actually do it!
Rob says
What happened in Colorado? You haven’t stopped since, I’m supposed to be working and here you are posting again.
I skim read it and came up with: Do what Tom does!
Now slow down I’m still trying to put in to practice what I gleamed from 5 minutes of me time.
Rob
Tom Ewer says
I had a lot of ideas 😉
Lynda Stewart says
These are some great ideas. I just checked out Evernote and I am in love. Thanks for sharing!!
Tom Ewer says
No problem 🙂
Anca says
Great post, Tom! Love the way you synthesized your post in three simple action items.
I find it really instrumental since I sometimes get so caught up in the details that I get overwhelmed.
Thanks! 🙂
Tom Ewer says
My pleasure Anca 🙂
Moses Kerub says
Tom this is great! very original article I must say.
I was thinking about this stuff for some time, and found it hard to finally decide on the process. This seems like a great one, I will try it for sure.
I wonder though, when writing this post did you work backwards? I mean you started with the bullet list (any of them) and slowly filled the “fluff”?
(of course I know it’s not fluff, it’s necessary for the flow but still..)
Moses Kerub says
forgot to add,
The only thing that bothers me with this plan is folding the book papers… I can live with subtle pencil underlines in it, but to fold it in purpose? it hurts!
Tom Ewer says
You’ve got to get over that Moses! A book is made to be underlined, written on and bookmarked. It’s not a piece of art!
Tom Ewer says
Hey Moses,
Nope — the bullets came afterwards. It wouldn’t have been a genuine example otherwise 🙂
Cheers,
Tom
Deacon Bradley says
Love this idea Tom! I read a lot of stuff and you’re right, it’s not worth much if you don’t take action based on it. I love how you illustrated this point with the blog post – very meta! Oh, and I’m a HUGE evernote fan. I’ve got a tag called “book-notes” where I keep all of my notes from books. It’s amazing how little snippets and ideas from great books can bring back big complex ideas quickly. Really useful for review and implementation!
Tom Ewer says
I agree Deacon. I used to keep clips of blog posts etc but now make a point of converting anything I deem valuable into notes that I then decide next actions on.
Jacob@CashCowCouple says
I read a lot so sometimes this is an issue for me. Concentrated notes will be helpful and I’ll have to check out Evernote for sure. Thanks for the great post Tom!
Tom Ewer says
No problem Jacob!
Marko Saric says
I like your system and use something pretty similar in my research. I really love the way you presented it in your blog post though, it’s a great way to teach your readers! Thanks.
Tom Ewer says
No problem Marko!
Lisa says
Great article Tom! I talk with too many people that spend the majority of their time learning but never implementing into MMA (money making activities).
You gave some awesome tips here! I like to take a “learn and do” approach for any training/learning. It’s important to recognize those key actionable steps in anything you learn. Without taking action, a person is in the same position as someone who never bothered to learn at all.
Thanks again –
Lisa
Tom Ewer says
My pleasure Lisa! I agree with you although would actually take it one step further. A lot of people don’t even learn — they just read. You barely ever take something in by reading it just once, and yet that all most of us do.
Jawad Khan says
Great post Tom! This article reminded me of my English professor when I first started university. She used yell at us for reading every word in articles or passages she gave us. Instead, as you mentioned in your post, she always stressed on skimming through the content.
But I guess this has to both ways. Writers who intentionally structure their content for skimming are always easier to read. Personally, I always prefer reading blogs that break up their content into segments and make it easier for the readers to derive action items.
Keep up the good work.
Tom Ewer says
Agreed Jawad — it’s something I try to do with my blog posts.
Tim Woods says
Great post. It’s something that is obvious, but needs reinforcing again and again.
Tom Ewer says
Thanks Tim 🙂
Ana Hoffman says
Definitely one of a kind post, Tom; you were right.
The reason Traffic Generation Café took off was that I was able to take watered-down fluffed-up concepts and turn it into readable actionable content, so I definitely know what you mean.
That’s the reason I don’t like videos as much: too much fluff, and hard to “skim”.
Tom Ewer says
I couldn’t agree with you more — I often find videos quite frustrating in that it takes more time than it would reading to digest the same information. Thanks for stopping by Ana!
Sharon Wildwind says
I’ve set up two files to track what I read this year. One is a 3-column table: date, source (on-line or other) and notes. If I can condense the material into about 200 words or less, I put those notes only in this table. I start with who, what, Internet address, date. Then notes. Then my personal call to action.
If there’s a lot of good stuff, or charts, Infograms, etc. I create a word processing document, which I call Business Long. I’ll add the who, what, Internet address, and date in my table, with the note “More notes in Business Long.”
So far, it’s working great.
Tom Ewer says
Hey, if the system works for you then that’s fantastic Sharon!
Benny says
Great post Tom. I’m using Evernote a lot more in 2013 as a way to organize what I come across, but never thought about doing it for snippets of blog posts. Will give it a shot!
Tom Ewer says
Thanks Benny!
Iain says
Thanks for the great idea.
I am not sure why I didn’t think of active reading before. It is something that my uni profs encouraged us to do, so it makes sense that it would work now as well.
Tom Ewer says
No problem Iain!
jamie says
Another ultra practical blog post Tom.
I spent almost a year reading blogs and studying IM courses and I’d say that information overload and addiction was the clincher in my giving up before I even started.
I reckon if we actioned even 10% of what we read we’d be well on the road to success.
I just recently started using evernote – mainly as a clipping tool for useful blog posts as references which are relevant to my areas of interest.
I think it is also worth mentioning that a way to further streamline efficiency is to prioritize what we read as well. Seek out the relevant posts and information – take your note taking advice on them and take action. This is what makes the difference between “knowing the path and walking the path” as Darnel pointed out earlier.
This blog is an inspiration man – I’ve been reading on and off for almost a year and it’s refreshing to witness someone evolve and ascend from making a few bucks to several thousand per month and share his successes and strategies. You’ve worked hard for it and your openness is appreciated.
Looking forward to the next post – and to reading up on all I’ve missed the past few months.
Jamie
Tom Ewer says
Hi Jamie,
I totally agree with you in terms of prioritizing what you read, great point. Thanks for your support!
Cheers,
Tom
Lisa says
“compressing them into actionable nuggets you are getting a second pass at the content and are crystallising the concepts in your head — it is not a process you should look to short circuit.”
Bril.
Thanks Tom!
Tom Ewer says
No problem Lisa!
James says
This reminds me of my revision technique for school exams… I would write out all of my notes, then write a condensed version, and then compress that into a list of two columns with a question/prompt on the left and a single sentence answer on the right.
Tom Ewer says
If I’d ever revised at school I might have done something similar 😉
Randy Carlisle says
Tom – Great Post! It’s always a challenge to jot down important ideas that flash into my mind, before I forget them. But once I have them, I can browse through the list of ideas and decide on which idea I’m going to implement.
Tom Ewer says
Thanks Randy 🙂
Timo Kiander says
Tom,
Good stuff, I agree with your points.
There is another great benefit to reading books: You can also make great guest posts that way.
I read a book, take the key concepts and then write a guest post about them. Even better, I try to find a way to apply the knowledge in some specific area, so the content becomes more concrete.
I wrote about this process sometime ago, check it out:
http://basicblogtips.com/learn-a-new-concept.html
Cheers,
Timo
Tom Ewer says
Great minds think alike Timo: http://mywifequitherjob.com/3-things-that-rework-can-teach-you-about-running-an-online-store/ 😉
Jon Pedlow says
Sorry Tom
I missed what you were saying as I was skimming the page 🙂
No, joking aside, great post!!! Have shared you blog with a few others.
Great work as always
Tom Ewer says
Thank you Jon!
Alan | Life's Too Good says
Hi Tom, I’m with you 100% and it;s great advice, but I also want to add this is good advice for when you want to be efficient.
Surely we should also make time to deliberately not be efficient, to read things the way they were written and enjoy taking our time about it – even when they are repetitive. For example, I really enjoyed reading The Lean Startup – it falls nicely into the category you describe above that it could be a great candidate for note taking but 1) I wanted to enjoy the book, 2) the book was enjoyable (to me – JIT has always been an interest of mine long before it got it’s swanky new handle) and 3) the concepts presented were strong enough to be memorable anyway, without taking notes.
So yes, I really enjoyed reading your post above (and I admit, I didn’t read all of it – I skimmed it), but I also think we must remember there also has to be a place for slowing down sometimes and taking time – even in business.
I say this because I am a walking contradiction myself – I have plenty of clients who I help with efficiency but at the same time I have plenty of clients spinning plates and on paper being very efficient but what they actually need to do is slow down!
but great tips nonetheless – & for when we do want or need to be efficient, I 2nd (or 3rd actually) Ana’s comment above, vids are great for engaging but not so good for skimming
Alan | Life's Too Good says
2 = 2) the book was enjoyable so I would read it quickly anyway for that reason
Tom Ewer says
When I want to enjoy a book I read fiction 😉
Seriously though, you do have a point. This post represents the pinnacle of efficiency — if you want to take it down a notch or two then by all means do so.
Fumiko says
Interesting blog!!! Yes, definitely it’s more important to take an action than just reading. And it’s good idea a to summarize the content to save time to read!!