Read
Or Die
How
can people complain to me they're not getting ahead and then
also tell me they're not reading very much?
If
you're not reading
regularly, significantly, virtually every day for at least an hour,
your development is lagging. Professionals
interested in their own
self-development read voraciously.
Start
or re-start now.
One
of my best friends in my entire life is Michael Swenson. At our
conferences, Michael often shares one of his favorite quotes: to
know and not to do is not to know.
It always reminds me of, the
man who can read but doesn't is no better off than the man
who can't.
I
know - you're too busy. But get this: in 2008, the
President of the United States read 40 books. He's
busier than you are!
Business
professionals have to
keep up with more than television headlines. To say nothing of the fact
that television is the arch-enemy of readers, anyway.
A
refresher:
- Daily
newspaper: you've got
to read a newspaper - or an online equivalent -
every day. Your local (Major cities) paper is fine, in most cases.
You're lucky if you live in New York or London or Berlin or
Hong Kong. If you can get WSJ or FT, that can MORE than suffice. We
love the Journal, but we also crave more when we're in Europe.
-
Business Press: You don't
necessarily need a supplement if
you read the Journal or FT. But if you don't get those, read
Fortune. Don't bother with Forbes or Business Week, for
different reasons. I have started getting Bloomberg Markets, but doubt
I can recommend it for wide appeal.
- Professional
Books: You need to always be
reading at least one professional development book. It could be
Drucker, it could be the latest fad, it could be a biography if you
like. (For some reason, biographies just don't teach
... but if you learn that way, by all means do.)
Here's an idea: our book list.
- Fiction: Has
someone ever joked about some guy named Godot while you were waiting
for someone, and you didn't get it? Do you know who Sherman
McCoy was? If you know who Gordon Gekko is/was, but not McCoy,
you're a step behind. And seriously, Harry Potter is
literature, though he's not as colorful as Travis McGee.
READ.
Podcast
Awards
Now Open
The
nomination phase for the
People's Choice Podcast Awards is now open - please nominate us at http://podcastawards.com/.
We
have
been privileged to receive your votes in previous years, and hope that
you will nominate and vote for us this year. The awards are one way
that we are able to reach more managers and individual contributors.
Our mission is to change careers, and in order to do that we need to
reach as many as possible. We appreciate your help in doing that.
Here's
how the awards work. The nomination process is one time only. You will
need to go to http://podcastawards.com/ and submit Manager Tools or
Career Tools in the Business and People's Choice categories. There's
lots of other categories in which you can nominate your other favorite
podcasts while you're there.
You'll
need the URLS which are:
http://www.manager-tools.com/podcasts/manager-tools
http://www.manager-tools.com/podcasts/career-tools
Some
of
you may be asked to validate your nominations - that's part of the
random security process for the awards.
When
voting opens, you'll be able to vote every day for our casts. We really
appreciate all the positive feedback you give us through the year, and
thank you for voting for us.
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