“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” — Dr. Seuss

I promised my readers to share ways to read faster.   I originally posted this on my work blog, but now I’m sharing it here with a wider audience.

One key note up front – I read for pleasure slowly, but when I read to learn or for work, I read very quickly.  I only use these techniques when I’m reading non-fiction, to learn, or as part of the job.

I’ve learned to read faster out of necessity.  I get a lot of email, and I don’t like to spend time in my email.  I do a lot of research while creating prescriptive guidance, and reading comes with the turf.  I regularly spend $200 – $300 a month on books as well.  If there’s one thing I’ve learned at Microsoft, it’s that extreme scenarios lead to the fastest growth, and necessity is often the mother of invention.

The Quick Answer to Reading Faster
Before we start, if you want the short answer to reading faster, simply use sticky notes.  As you read through pages, ask yourself, “How can I use this?” and turn the information into a one-liner insight or action, write it in the sticky note and stick it on the page.  You can turn a several hundred page book into a short-set of actionable sticky notes.  I wish somebody told me this years ago.

With the quick answer out of the way, let’s dive deeper and elaborate.  My approach is extremely effective, but It’s not magic.  It’s simply a matter of know-how and learning little distinctions over time, that all add up.  I’ll share the key bottlenecks, the core process, then follow up with some additional tips.

3 Steps to Reading Faster
These steps are optimized for reading paperbacks or printed books, but you can adjust the process to emails, articles, or whatever.  Here is a summary of the steps:

• Step 1. Build a mental model of the material.
• Step 2. Read to answer your questions.
• Step 3. Use sticky notes to capture and consolidate insights and actions.

Step 1. Build a mental model of the material.
Before you start reading the material, you need to size it up.  By making a quick mental model or map of the material, you will make it easier to learn the information or read through it faster.  It’s always faster when you have a map, even if it’s just a simple, high-level idea.  The point is to simply frame it out.
To do this, skim the book (or email, or article) end to end.  This is your dry run.  Your goal is to familiarize yourself with the lay of the land (chapter names, key headings, key concepts).  Think of this as mapping the terrain.

A good outcome of this step is that you know how the information is mostly structured.  For example, if it’s a fat book, I flip from the back to the front to see if it’s the type of author that leads to all the best information in the back.  I want to get a sense of the density of value as well.  Does the author take one point and stretch it out for miles, or do they keep pivoting off the same point, or do they pack in a lot of points of information along the way.  This helps me pace, know what to skip, and where to drill deep.

Step 2. Read to answer your questions.
In this step, you identify questions and you use them to drive your reading.  This makes your reading actionable, relevant, and engaging.  Questions help you focus and they tell you when you’re done.  You’re done when you’ve answered your questions.

Drive from a a baseline set of questions.  Information is useful when it solves a problems, answers a question, or helps you perform a task.  The short-cut through any information is to jump to the question, and use the question as a lens for the information.  For example, is this email action or FYI?  If it’s action, then “who does what when?” … and if necessary, “why”?  Tip – You can quickly generate useful questions by skimming the back of the book or the inside cover, and from the chapter heading and paragraph headings.  This is also how you can quickly figure out whether the information is even relevant for you.

Step 3. Use sticky notes to capture and consolidate insights and actions.
I already gave this away, but this is gold.   Sticky notes are your friend.  As you answer your questions, turn them into insight or action and write a one-liner note down onto your sticky note and stick it on the page, so it sticks out beyond the page.  This way, when you put your book back on the shelf, you can quickly flip back through and pick up wherever you left off, or go back and refresh your mind on the key insights.  You can also type up your one-liner notes if you want to boil down your insights or lessons learned.

What’s important here is that you are creating little ticklers for your mind.  Simply jotting down notes can help remind you what’s important.   If it’s electronic information, such as email, or an article, or an e-Book, you can still jot the notes down on your sticky note, but you obviously won’t stick them to your screen.

Key Bottlenecks to Reading Faster
Here are the key bottlenecks to reading faster:

• Comprehension. Reading faster doesn’t help if you don’t comprehend what you’re reading.  Your reading speed will always be gated by your comprehension.  The good news is that your comprehension is likely already faster than your current reading speed, and you can speed up your comprehension.  A quick way to speed up your comprehension is to focus on building mental models, and asking better questions as you go.  Once you have a mental model for something, it’s easy to incrementally render your knowledge.  When there’s nothing to hang the information off of, then you have to work harder to make sense of it or understand it.
• Eye speed.   Don’t let your eyes limit you.  Unless you train your eyes to move faster, it’s likely that they slow you down.   I learned this when I had to dramatically increase my speed with email.  It’s not just scanning, it’s actually teaching your eyes to up the pace.    I used EyeQ, by Infinite Minds, to increase my eye speed.  I was amazed by just how much faster my eyes could move through some quick training.  Once I got used to moving my eyes faster and learned what that felt like, I didn’t rely on the training anymore.  I mostly used it to get over a hump and get to a new level.
• Subvocalization.  Sounding out your words with your larynx, even inside your head, slows you down.  If you want to read faster, don’t subvocalize (as much.)  Just like your eyes, your voice can slow you down.  This video on how to read faster explains the process and how to reduce or eliminate it, to dramatically speed up your reading speed.
• Mindset.    If your mind says “slow”, then your eyes won’t go.  Think sprint or series of sprints versus marathon.   To read faster, you need to both want to read faster, and your mindset needs to match.  It’s also about being fully engaged.  This reduces distractions, increases focus, and improves comprehension.  The simplest way to put this is be an active reader versus a passive reader.  Flipping the switch makes all the difference.
• Distractions or tangents.   Whether it’s a shiny object or an interesting rabbit hole, or just your own wandering thoughts, there are lots of ways to get distracted while you read.  There is a quick fix.  You can change your focus by changing the question.  I’ll share some key questions you can use within the process.  One quick way to stay on track is ask, “What’s the point?” or “What’s the insight?” or “What’s the action?”

Additional Considerations

• Don’t slow down for speed bumps.  If there’s stuff you want to drill into more, just write it on a sticky and then revisit.  This way you don’t slow down for speed bumps and then you can give your speed bumps more focused time.  Sometimes moving past a speed bump will help you understand it once you have more of the book under your belt.
• Make multiple passes.   If you’re getting stuck on something, move on, then circle back.  Sometimes things are way easier to absorb on the second or third time through.  Of course, if other information depends on this as a building block, then make sure you get the foundation in place.  The key here is to make sure you don’t stop for every roadblock.
• If you get tired or you’re not engaged, stop.  if I get tired or distracted, I just stop.  Otherwise, I read a bunch of pages but miss all the points.  It’s better to just take a break and come back when I’m ready.  Sometimes even just a 5 minute break is enough.
• Switch gears before you start.  Switch out of passive mode up front, and start out as an active reader from the start.  Setting the stage here makes everything else easier.
• Point the way.  Don’t make your eyes work too hard to figure out where they left off, each time you blink.  Use your index finger to point the way as you skim through.
• Set a limit in time or quantity.   It’s hard to keep a fast pace indefinitely.  It’s easier to sprint if you can see the end in mind.  You can set simple limits either in terms of time, such as read in a burst for 20 minutes.  You can set limits in terms of quantity, such as read a chapter or 20 pages, etc.  The point here is that rather than read until you’re done, chunk it up into easy mini-milestones so you can stay engaged and keep your pace, and allow for breaks.

If you have a tip or trick for reading faster, I’d like to hear it.  I’m especially interested in speeding up comprehension.  I think I’ve pushed my main bottleneck to my comprehension speed.

HBR (Harvard Business Review) is one of my favorite sources of insight.  HBR basically helps you learn how leaders are shaping the practice of business, while drawing from stories, case studies, authors, and research.

I’m a fan of the magazine, Harvard Business Review Magazine, but I also draw a lot from the HBR blogs as well.  I think it’s an easy way to learn executive thinking skills and stay on top of the latest patterns and practices for management and leadership effectiveness.

Browse HBR Blogs by Focus / Feature

• Best Practices
• Frontline Leadership
• Research
• Synthesis
• The Conversation
• Video
• Your Health at Work

Browse HBR Blogs by Authors
Here is a quick way to browse the HBR blogs by author:

A Sampling of Some of My Favorite HRB Blog Posts

Here is a sampling of some of my favorite HBR blog posts:

1. Add an Hour to Your Day,  by Ron Ashkenas – “But we all know that those hidden hours exist, buried in unnecessary meetings, inefficient work processes, interruptions, false starts, PowerPoint perfection, misplaced files, and a host of other time-wasters.”
2. Be an Effective Gatekeeper (or, How to Keep Out the Riff-Raff), by Jodi Glickman - State immediately why you are making the introduction. Will the connection help you or the other person or both? Who is the “receiver” of value here and why? Do you think both parties will like each other, want to work together, or are interested in a similar cause that will benefit by virtue of the two of them connecting?
3. Extreme Negotiations, by by Jeff Weiss, Aram Donigian, and Jonathan Hughes – “Over the past six years or so, we’ve studied how they resolve conflict and influence others in situations where the levels of risk and uncertainty are off the charts. We find that the most skilled among them rely on five highly effective strategies.”
4. How to Become a Thought Leader in Six Steps, Dorie Clark  – “Identify the awards that matter in your industry, monitor the deadlines, and make it happen. Often, there are fewer nominations than you might think, and you can win by “default..”
5. How to Handle Surprise Criticism, by Peter Bregman – “To take in surprise criticism more productively, we need a game plan. As you listen to the criticism and your adrenaline starts to flow, pause, take a deep breath, and …”
6. How to Interject in a Meeting, by Jodi Glickman  – “Having a few useful phrases at hand can go a long way towards giving you the confidence and tools you need to be able to interject your thoughts and opinions effectively in group situations and meetings.”
7. It’s Not the Time You Spend but the Result You Produce, by by Robert C. Pozen and Justin Fox,  -  “While many lawyers stayed at the office late, I soon realized that charging clients by the number of hours worked did not make sense for me. In my view, it’s not the amount of time you spend on helping a client; it’s the result you’ve produced for your client.”
8. Not enough Time? Try Doing Nothing, by Peter Bregman – “The solution, though, is simple. All we have to do is nothing. But here’s the trick: it’s important to do it regularly, at least a few minutes a day.”
9. Six Keys to Being Excellent at Anything, by Tony Schwartz – “…lays out a guide, grounded in the science of high performance, to systematically building your capacity physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.”
10. Strategy Can Do Better, by Umair Haque – “A steadfast, holistic, uncompromising commitment to beauty, instead of lowest-common-denominator design-by-committee? That’s probably what creating a razor sharp advantage in an arid world of bland, insipid — and sometimes just plain unsightly and unlovable — commodities piling up by the supertankerful is going to take.”
11. The Anatomy of a Movement, by David Armano – “The difference between something that’s just viral and a movement is that a movement’s chatter has to be sustainable beyond initial, passing curiosity.”
12. The One Question All Innovators Need to Ask, by Michael Schrage – “Innovators always want their offspring to be faster, better, and/or cheaper. Successful innovators constantly push novelty to create new value. But the innovators who reap the most rewarding results understand the importance of asking:  What does this innovation want you to become?”

My Related Posts

• Sites I follow for Insight and Inspiration

Photo by kevindooley.

“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.” — Albert Einstein

Jotting down one-liner thoughts is a simple way to turn insight into action.  I come across “ah-has” all the time, and I take the extra step to write them down in a sticky way.   For example, while strolling through the blogosphere I came across a nice little pearl of wisdom on The Cranky Middle Manager Show:

“We impact our own mood through the people we meet and the input (books, blogs and stuff) that we read.”

I wrote it down in a simpler way and added a point about focus:  We impact our mood through people and input — and what we focus on.

The act of writing it down forces me to think about it a little more, and it makes it easy for me to scan as a reminder at a later point.  I can flip through my insights for the day, the week, the month or whatever.

Creating a Thought Catcher
My process is simple.  I write down the current date, and list any ah-has.  My only criteria is that it’s an interesting thought that I might want to remember.  It can be my own or trigged by something I come across.  If it’s some I come across, then I add the link back to the source so I can easily go back to it.  Here are some examples from today:

2010-05-18

• Logging your “ah-has.”
• Co-create the future – pair up on a compelling outcome.
• Spend more time where it counts, then time takes care of itself.
• Do it and write about it – the hallmark of prescriptive guidance.
• Statistically significant doesn’t matter — relevancy does.  If one pattern or piece of advice fits you, that’s better than a bunch of statistically significant conclusions that don’t.
• Is your career a matter of luck or cause and effect? (The Cranky Middle Manager Show)
• We impact our mood through people and input — and what we focus on. (The Cranky Middle Manager Show)
• What do you want to be known for — good enough or excellence? (Larry Hendrick)
• Do the best of somebody BETTER! (Mary Schmidt)
• Brutal competition, barbaric bloody battles for market share, an under-staffed and ill-prepared team, limited resources, challenged margins. (Linked to Leadership)
• Find a reason to act — you can always find a reason NOT to. (Life Beyond Code)
• Make it or break it in the prep or lack thereof. (Drew’s Marketing Minute)
• A single message. (Drew’s Marketing Minute)
• What, so what, and now what? (Applied Imagination)

Each of these one-liners is a trigger that reminds me of a little piece of wisdom or insight.  The ones without links are the random thoughts that pop in my head.  Writing them down frees up my mind.

While I don’t keep a quota, I can easily see the ebb and flow of my mind over time.

Photo by Adam Baker.

"I learn teaching from teachers. I learn golf from golfers. I learn winning from coaches." — Harvey Penick

What you get from coaching is largely up to you.  Whether it’s a teacher, a mentor, a sports coach, or a coach at work, making the most of a coach is a skill that you get better at with practice.  If you can master your ability to leverage the coaches in your life, you can accelerate your success, drop bad habits like a hot potato, grow new skills and abilities, and make the most of what you’ve got.

Make the Most of Your Coach
I’ve been lucky to have some incredible mentors and coaches from wrestling coaches that taught me to "never give up" and "don’t be a mental midget" to Microsoft executives who taught me to see the chessboard from other angles.  I made the most of my coaches by staying curious, testing their suggestions, listening to their feedback, using them as as sounding board, communicating openly and honestly, and working through the tough stuff.  Nobody said change is easy, but when change helps unleash your best, it’s worth it.

Coaches come in all varieties and different styles.  What do Yoda, Mr. Miyagi, and Rocky’s coach all have in common?  They set the stage for growth by asking the tough questions, challenging, motivating, and coaching where it counts, and providing timely, relevant, and actionable feedback.  What did Luke, Danielson, and Rocky all have in common?  They all worked hard at changing themselves and they made the most of their coaches.

10 Ways to Make the Most of Your Coach
Here are 10 ways that you can make the most of your coach:

1. Decide to make the most of your coach.  Your attitude goes a long way in enabling or limiting what you get from your coach.  There’s an old saying that when the student is ready, the master appears.  Making the most of your coach means starts with deciding to make the most of them.  You can start by asking, "What do I want to accomplish?" and "How do I make the most of their experience, insight, or feedback?"
2. You change yourself.  Your coach doesn’t change you.  Your coach is not a crutch — they’re a potential change agent, but change is up to you.  There’s an old saying, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink."  An effective coach will ask you questions and provide feedback that help lead you to your ah-ha moments, but it’s ultimately you’re the one who changes you.  If you want fast results, remember that it’s faster to change yourself, than change others.
3. Expect change to feel awkward or even hurt a bit.  It’s like working out for the first time and that’s what growth feels like. Work through your humps and know that practice will get easier over time.  What’s important is that you don’t get hung up on how it feels awkward, and instead, focus on doing the things you know you need to do, to get the results you want to achieve.
4. Accountability is still with the people with the job.  The coach can help you navigate risks and add another head to your problems, but they aren’t the worker bee.
5. A coach doesn’t change who makes the decisions.  A coach is an influencer. You still own your decisions. One way to think of this is a RACI chart (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed.)  Your coach is Consulted or Informed.  On a team, it’s the team members who are still accountable for the work getting done and responsible for doing it.
6. Feedback is a gift.  Treat it as such.  You can choose what to do with it.  An effective coach holds a mirror to you or to the team.  You have basically three ways to respond: 1) You can just take it all in at face value without any filters, 2) You can put it into context and consider it, or 3) You can ignore it.  If you’re not getting the feedback you need, ask for it.  If it’s not specific enough, then clarify.  For example, I like feedback to be specific actions I can take or thoughts I can think for specific events.  This helps me immediately act on it and start testing it out.
7. People down from your command chain are your responsibility. If you’re in a management role or leadership position, you have to set the stage for effective coaching.  If your coach recommends you change X, but your reports like X, then you have to look at all their feedback but you have to support coaching decisions at your higher level and tell your reports to ‘go with it’ and have objective evaluation later.  The reverse is also true — you may feel pushback, but you should voice it and not “hide” behind your reports’ opinions.
8. Don’t let style issues get in the way.   Style issues are things like communication approaches.  For example, some people like direct communication, while others might prefer more tact.  Some people are more audio while others are more visual.  Some people prefer face-to-face, while others prefer email.  The best way to work past these is to focus on the goals, call out style differences, and find a way to communicate that works for everyone involved.  Being flexible in your style can help you avoid limiting yourself, and finding ways to bridge styles can exponentially improve communication.
9. Don’t let your coach set you outside your values.  Style differences are one thing, but your personal and organizational values serve as effective boundaries.  Give your coach feedback if you think they are proposing things out of line.  Find out what they want to achieve with the recommendation that you don’t like and see if you can design a different path together that is closer to your beliefs.
10. Stay focused on goals.  It’s easy to get lost along the way or focus on improvement for the sake of improvement.  I find it’s more compelling to have a goal in mind that you can test your results against and checkpoint progress along the way.  This helps with motivation and it helps with more actionable feedback.  It also helps you ask your coach more specific questions, which keeps them engaged in the process.  While you stay focused on results, enjoy the process along the way.  The process is your growth and goals are simply a way to pick a path and measure.

Weekly Things to Do
Here are some weekly things to do to make the most of your coach:

• Ask for feedback  and give feedback.  Make getting feedback a habit.  Give your coach feedback on their feedback to help them improve their effectiveness with you.
• Introspect about reactions.   Introspection is simply looking inward and reflecting on your conscious inner thoughts.  It’s thinking about your thinking.  This is where you can catch yourself in patterns that you want to change, or where you can find and challenge your resistance.  Remember that what you resists persists, and getting a better look at where you’re blocked can help you get unstuck.
• Use your coach as “a fly on the wall.” Have your coach observe you in action.  For example, take your coach to meetings as a “fly on the wall” and ask them for feedback and opinions afterwards.
• Suspend your disbelief.  Let your coach design plays and try them out; and have a way of coming back and evaluating how well it worked.
• Don’t let your insecurities thrive.  Keep in mind that critique is a tool for growth.  Don’t let your insecurities or concerns brew under the surface.
• Be open and transparent.  The more you share, the more your coach can help.  Be transparent about fears, hopes, etc. so that your coach can help you make the best of them.

Make the most of your teachable moments.  Whether you have a formal coach or not, coaches and mentors are all around you everyday.  Learn all you can, from everyone you can, and make the most of what you’ve got.

Many thanks to Eduardo Jezierski for sharing his insights, perspective, and lessons learned with me for using coaches effectively.

“Kid, you’ll move mountains!  Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting. So…get on your way!” – Dr. Seuss

When I was a kid, Dr. Seuss was a constant source of inspiration for me.  His stories filled my head with endless possibilities.

Between Great Day for Up and The Cat in the Hat, I was pretty much prepared for making the most of any day.  I think his real masterpiece though was Oh! the Places You’ll Go!   This is the book that convinced me I could move mountains and that life is what you make of it.

21 Lessons Learned from Dr. Seuss
There are so many great lessons from Dr. Seuss.  Each of his book is such a treasure trove of ideas and actions for a better life.  What I did here is boil down a set of 21 lessons that highlight his key themes across his works and quotes:

1. Be a thinker of great things.  Dr. Seuss teaches us, “Oh, the things you can think up if only you try!”
2. Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it.  Sometimes you just don’t know what you’ve got until after it’s gone.  In Bartholomew and the Ooblek, King Didd got what he wished for, but the sticky Ooblek goo was worse than the fog, snow, sunshine, and rain that it replaced.  The King quickly wanted his old weather back and he learned to appreciate it.
3. Be your best you.   In the words of Dr. Seuss, “There is no one alive who is Youer than You.”  Make the most of what you’ve got.   In Yertle the Turtle, we see “feather envy” and it’s a gentle reminder to be careful what you wish for and appreciate what you’ve got.
4. Bend your world in wonderful ways.  Nobody bends it like the Cat in the Hat.   From the metaphors you use, to the thinks that you think, you can shape your world that’s right in front of you.
5. Don’t put yourself in a box.  You’re only limited by your own imagination.   The Cat in the Hat teaches us how to let our imaginations run wild.
6. Don’t waste your time worrying who’s better than who.  In Yertle the Turtle, Dr. Seuss teaches us that “You have better things to do than argue who’s better than who.”
7. Dream it and do it.  You can move mountains when you put your mind to it.  Direct your life like a blockbuster and make things happen.
8. Edutainment wins over boring and ho-hum.  With whacky words, wondrous worlds, and fantastical characters, Dr. Seuss taught us the edutainment is how you change a child’s life.  Reading is only boring if you make it so.
9. Kindle your curiosity.  Keep your mind open and your eyes peeled.  Stay curious and follow your growth.
10. Life happens in moments at a time.  Don’t miss out on life by tuning out the little things along the way.
11. Own your fun.   There’s more to do than play in the rain.  When you’re bored, you’re boring.   The Cat in the Hat teaches us to be the maker of our own fun.  Make each day your own special blend of whatever it is that best floats your boat.
12. Play at your day.  You can play at your day, in every way.
13. Persistence pays off.  Be relentless in your pursuit of things.  In Green Eggs and Ham, it was through persistence that Sam-I-Am finally got the unnamed character to try the green eggs and ham.  In real life, Dr. Seuss’s first children’s book, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, was rejected 27 times before being published by Vanguard Press.
14. Treat people fairly and squarely.  In The Sneetches and Other Stories, Dr. Seuss shows us that we can’t judge people by their lot in life or whether they have a star on their belly.  In Yertle the Turtle, it’s a reminder not to climb over people on your way to the top, because they’re same people you’ll see on your way back down.
15. Try it … you just might like it.  In Green Eggs and Ham, when the unnamed character was surprised to find out that he actually likes green eggs and ham once he tried them.  You just never know until you try.
16. Saying you’re sorry can help make things right.   In Bartholomew and the Oobleck, when the king finally said the magic words, “I’m sorry,” and “it’s all my fault,” he helped make things right again.
17. See the bright side of things.  It’s a great day for up, when you can see the sunny side of things.  Sure sometimes you’ll have to work at it, but positivity is a skill.  Do it daily.
18. Setbacks happen.  Deal with them and move on.   Make trouble think twice about messing with you.
19. Some people are much more unlucky than you.  When you’re down in the dumps and things get real bad, remind yourself that somewhere, somehow, someway … somebody is much “more unlucky than you.”
20. Success is a journey and we all have our own paths.  Make your journey count.  Don’t let fear stop you.  Don’t let conventional wisdom stop you.  Lead the life you want to live, and when there’s no path, make one.
21. Your voice counts.  In Horton Hears a Who, Dr. Seuss shows us how one little voice can tip the scale … after all, “A person’s a person, no matter how small.”

Top 10 Dr. Seuss Quotes
Dr. Seuss has so many quotable quotes, from enjoying your day to being more you.  He has such a way with words.  Even when he reminds us of something we already know, he has a way of saying it that makes an old song sound new.  Here is a sprinkling of some of my favorite quotes:

1. Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.
2. Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.
3. Only you can control your future.
4. So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads.
5. The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.
6. Today is gone. Today was fun. Tomorrow is another one.
7. Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.
8. Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.
9. You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself, any direction you choose.
10. You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.

It’s inspirational gold.  There is nobody youer than you, and the more that you learn the more places you’ll go.  Bravo.

Dr. Seuss Quotes
If you’re not familiar with Dr. Seuss’s quotes, then you’re in for a treat.  It’s easy to read his words, and he’s a master of saying a lot with so little.

A nice simple way to leverage his quotes is to pick one or two of your favorites.  Sometimes the right quote is just what we need to hear and it can be the perfect catalyst that we need in our life.  Enjoy!

Aloneness

• All alone! Whether you like it or not, alone is something you’ll be quite a lot.
• I’m afraid sometimes you’ll play lonely games too, games you can’t win because you’ll play against you.
• You can get help from teachers, but you are going to have to learn a lot by yourself, sitting alone in a room.

Be Yourself

• If you’d never been born, then you might be an Isn’t! An Isn’t has no fun at all. No, he disn’t.
• You are you. Now, isn’t that pleasant?
• You’re in pretty good shape for the shape you are in.

Everybody Deserves a Shot

• A person’s a person, no matter how small.
• I know, up on top you are seeing great sights, but down here at the bottom we, too, should have rights.

Fun

• Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, It’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, And that enables you to laugh at life’s realities.
• From there to here, and here to there, funny things are everywhere.
• I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells.
• If you never did you should. These things are fun and fun is good.
• It is fun to have fun, but you have to know how.
• We are all a little weird and life’s a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.

General

• Be awesome! Be a book nut!
• Christmas doesn’t come from a store, maybe Christmas perhaps means a little bit more …
• I do not like green eggs and ham I do not like them Sam I am.
• I meant what I said, and I said what I meant. Because an elephant’s faithful, 100 percent.
• I’m glad we had the times together just to laugh and sing a song, seems like we just got started and then before you know it, the times we had together were gone.
• Oh, the things you can find if you don’t stay behind!
• Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.
• So be sure when you step, Step with care and great tact. And remember that life’s A Great Balancing Act.
• They say I’m old-fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast!
• Words and pictures are yin and yang. Married, they produce a progeny more interesting than either parent.

Life Happens

• I’m sorry to say so but, sadly it’s true that bang-ups and hang-ups can happen to you.
• Things may happen and often do to people as brainy and footsy as you.

Make Things Happen

• I have heard there are troubles of more than one kind. Some come from ahead and some come from behind. But I’ve bought a big bat. I’m all ready you see. Now my troubles are going to have troubles with me!
• There’s no limit to how much you’ll know, depending how far beyond zebra you go.
• Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting. So… get on your way.
• Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.

Positivity

• And will you succeed? Yes indeed, yes indeed! Ninety-eight and three-quarters percent guaranteed!
• If you keep your eyes open enough, oh the stuff you will learn. Oh the most wonderful stuff.
• It’s opener, out there, in the wide, open air.
• Just tell yourself, Duckie, you’re really quite lucky.
• You’ll miss the best things if you keep your eyes shut.

Thinking

• Think and wonder, wonder and think.
• Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the things you can think up if only you try!

Dr. Seuss Books
One of the best ways to get to know Dr. Seuss is through his books.  Here is a round up of his books::

What has Dr. Seuss taught you about life?

"Life is a big canvas, throw all the paint on it you can." — Danny Kaye

The Web is a fountain of knowledge, especially if you know where to drink from.  This post is a quick tour of some of the main sites I use that make me think.

Top 10 Inspirational Sites

Here are 10 sites that make me think and inspire new ideas:

1. ChangeThis – ChangeThis is focused on spreading important ideas and changing minds. (  ChangeThis | RSS)
2. Charlie Rose – Charlie Rose engages America’s best thinkers, writers, politicians, athletes, entertainers, business leaders, scientists and other newsmakers in one-on-one interviews and roundtable discussions.  (Charlie Rose | RSS )
3. Cincom’s Expert Access – Expert Access partners with some truly brilliant and forward-thinking business leaders to participate in its “Ask the Expert” program, including Al Ries, Bo Burlingham, Steven Pressfield, Sam Horn, Skip Press, and Stephanie Palmer. (Cincom Expert Access | RSS)
4. Freakonomics – Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt, authors of Freakonomics, keep the conversation going from their best-selling book that explore the hidden side of everything. Freakomoics applies economic theory to diverse subjects not usually covered by "traditional" economists. (Freaknomoics | RSS)
5. Gates Notes – Gates Notes is where Bill Gates shares his thoughts, his learning and his travels. (Gates Notes | RSS )
6. MIT Open Courseware – Free lecture notes, exams, and videos from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). (MIT Open Courseware | RSS )
7. NPR (Tell Me More) – The NPR talk show Tell Me More brings fresh voices and perspectives to public radio from the opinions of global newsmakers to listeners’ personal experiences of life-changing travel…the wisdom of renowned thinkers, activists and spiritual leaders…and intimate dispatches of daily life around the world from NPR News correspondents on the ground. ( NPR (Tell Me More) | RSS )
8. PBS (Idea Lab) – Idea Lab is a group weblog by innovators who are reinventing community news for the Digital Age. Each author won a grant in the Knight News Challenge to help fund a startup idea or to blog on a topic related to reshaping community news. The authors will use Idea Lab to explain their projects, share intelligence and interact with the new-media community online. ( PBS (Idea Lab) | RSS )
9. Psychology Today – Commentary, Research and News that cover all aspects of Human Behavior, from the workings of the brain, to relationships and the larger cultural forces that influence our decisions( Psychology Today | RSS http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/index.rss
10. Ted Talks – TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design.  Their mission is spreading ideas.  They believe in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately, the world, so they built a clearinghouse for free knowledge and inspiration from the world’s most inspired thinkers, and also a community of curious souls to engage with ideas and each other. (Ted Talks | RSS )

Sample Inspirational Ted Talks

Here is a quick sampling of some of the interesting talks and life changing ideas:

• Bill Gates on Mosquitoes, Malaria, and Education (Video) -  Bill Gates hopes to solve some of the world’s biggest problems using a new kind of philanthropy.
• Charlie Rose Brain Series Episode 1 (Video) – The Great Mysteries of the Human Brain: consciousness, free will, perception, cognition, emotion and memory with a roundtable of brain researchers.
• Dan Buettner: How to live to be 100+ (Video)  -  To find the path to long life and health, Dan Buettner and team study the world’s "Blue Zones," communities whose elders live with vim and vigor to record-setting age. At TEDxTC, he shares the 9 common diet and lifestyle habits that keep them spry past age 100.

What are your favorite sources of insight and inspiration on the Web?

My Related Posts

• 25 Inspirational Movies
• Inspirational Quotes
• Motivation Quotes

I collect success.  From stories of heroes to gems of insight, I gather and organize principles, patterns, and practices for success.  It’s like a living playbook for life with short-cuts, success patterns, and proven practices.  It supplies me with insight and action that I can use for just about every situation.  Whether it’s motivation or strategies or tactics, it’s my unfair advantage and how I get the edge in life.  It’s truly how I “stand on the shoulders of giants.”

Keys to an Effective Success KB
Here are some of the keys to success when it comes to building a personal “Success KB”:

• Think in Nuggets.  Think in terms of “nuggets” or “gems of insight.”   Collect a nugget at a time and chunk things down.
• Keep it Scannable. Think in terms of “tickler lists of insight.”  Keep ti scannable and write in one-liners where you can.  Make it easy to quickly flip, sort, or search through your KB.
• Factor reference from Action.  If you have a bunch of blah, blah, blah, simply add three take aways or key actionable insight to the top.   Ideally, keep your actionable methods and techniques, separate from good concepts and stories, which are really reference information.  This will help you turn insight into action.
• Keep it Simple. This is a must.  It’s crucial to have a simple way to store and retrieve things.   Otherwise, the little bit of friction adds up and it dies a slow death of a 1000 paper cuts.

I happen to use Evernote for my KB now, but I’ve also used pen and paper, Wikis, text files on my hard drive … etc.   Whatever you use, simply make sure that it works for you and it’s simple.

What Goes Into a Personal Success KB
I think the real key to building an effective “Success KB” is knowing what to put into it.  Here are some of the things I collect:

1. Ah-Has – jot down the little ah-has you find or when you connect the dots.  For example, one of my ah-has I wrote down is “legacy is a by-product of giving your best where you have your best to give.”
2. Book Nuggets – summarize the best insights from the best books.  For example, here’s my book nugget Argue Your Way to Optimism from the book, Learned Optimism.
3. Lessons Learned – make a tickler list of your key lessons from mentors or experiences.  You can even draw from movies.  For example, here are my Lessons Learned from Peaceful Warrior.
4. Mental Models – write down lenses you can use for looking at life.  For example, add the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator to your tool-belt to help you understand yourself and others or the Johari Window to help you know and share yourself more effectively.
5. Patterns – note down patterns you see, including your own success patterns, and name them so you can remember them.
6. People – collect stories of success and lessons learned.  One way is to summarize lessons learned from your heroes.  For example, here is my lessons learned from Stephen Covey.
7. Principles – note down timeless principles.  For example, Covey provides a nice set of principles to start your collection with.
8. Questions – write down the best questions you find help you in any situation.  For example, some of my favorite questions are, “Is it working?” … “Who else shares this problem that I can learn from?” … “What do you need to be successful?” … “What do you want to experience?” … “What’s my next best move?” … “How can I use this?”  As you can see, questions are my game changer.
9. Quotes – write down words of wisdom and the best quotes you hear from friends, books, people, movies, songs … etc.  The right words said the right way can change your life.   For example, here are some of my quotes collections.
10. Success Stories — summarize success stories.  You come across success stories everyday, whether they are your own, or on the news, or somebody you know.
11. Techniques – write down techniques, ways or methods for doing things.   This is your colleciton of “know-how.”

Ultimately you end up with a consolidated set of distinctions and reference examples to draw from.  The sum is way more than the parts.

Start Small
I started small.  A few years back, I got into the habit of dumping quick little insights.  If I took training, I would make sure I had three key take aways.  When I met with my mentors, I got into the habit of taking brief notes.  If I read a book, I summarized the most important, actionable things.  If I heard a great quote, I jotted it down.  If I saw a movie, I walked away with three key take aways.  Next thing you know, turning insight into action became second-nature.

Remember that the goal isn’t to take the place of experience.  It’s to supplement it and help you stack the deck in your favor.  Often what you don’t know can hurt you, and in many scenarios, there is no need to start from scratch.

Photo by totalAldo.

“The problem of information overload, therefore, may not be the quantity of it but our inability to know what to do with it.” – Danniel Tammet

One of the most important skills I mastered early on at Microsoft, is information management.  My ability to organize information directly impacts my success.  For me, information management is the key to daily productivity from researching to learning faster to keeping my email inbox empty.

When I first joined Microsoft, I found myself spending four or more hours on administration and email.  Then one day I decided … enough is enough.  From that point on, I refused to spend more than 30 minutes a day between email and administration overhead.  That day marked the start of my pursuit to find the best ways to handle and organize information.  While my motivation helped, it’s actually finding and creating effective techniques that really made the difference.

Here are ten of my favorite ways to manage information:

1. Factor reference from action.   Carve out action items, To Dos, and tasks from your incoming streams of information.  if it’s not an action, it’s reference.  I first learned this practice when I was dealing with information overload as a support engineer.  I ended up cementing the idea while working on our Microsoft Knowledge Base.  The Knowledge Base is a vast collection of information, where each article tends to be optimized around either action or reference.
2. Create lists.  Make a new To Do list each day and use it to organize your key action items for the day.  Create checklists for your common routines.
3. Create collections.  Put things into collections or think in terms of collections.  Consolidate your notes into a single collection that you access quickly, such as in a personal notebook, a Word document or etc.  Consolidate your thoughts or ideas into a single collection.  Consolidate reference examples of your heroes or stories you can use for inspiration.  Consolidate your “ah-has” into a single collection.  Note that by single collection, I don’t mean you have it all in a single document, although you can.  Instead, I’m thinking of collections of items, much like a photo album music collection.  By stashing things of a similar type, such as “idea” or “note” … etc., you can determine the best way to arrange that collection.  Maybe it’s a simple A -Z list or maybe you arrange it by time.  For example, when I keep a journal of my insights, and each time I get an “ah ha”, I write it down under the current date.  This way I can easily flip back through days and see my insights in chronological order.  While I could arrange them A – Z, I like having my most recent ideas or inspirations bubbled to the top, since chances are I’m finding ways to act on them.
4. Put things where you look for them.  Where ever you look for it, that’s where it should be.  If you keep looking for something in a certain place, either just put it there when you find it or add some sort of pointer to the actual location.   While you might logically think something belongs in a certain place, the real test is where you intuitively look for it.
5. Keep things flat.  Out of sight, out of mind holds true for information.  Avoid nesting information.  Keep it flat and simple where you can.  Think in terms of iTunes or a playlist.  A well organized playlist is easy to jump to what you need.
6. Organize long lists or folders using A-Z.    When you have long lists or big collections, then listing things A-Z tends to be a simple way to store things and to look things up fast.   Once a list gets long, A-Z or a numbered list is the way to go.
7. Archive old things.   When information is no longer useful for you, consider archiving it to get it out of your way.  This usually means having a separate location.  I’m a pack rat and I have a hard time letting things go, so I tend to archive instead.  It let’s me get things out of the way, and then eventually get rid of them if I need to.  Archiving has really helped me get a ton of information out of my way, since I know I can easily rehydrate it if I need to.
8. Bubble up key things to the top.  When you have a lot of information, rather than worry about organizing all of it, bubble up things to the top.  You can effectively have a quick, simple list or key things up top, followed by more information.  Keep the things up front simple.  This way you get the benefits of both exhaustive or complete, as well as simple.  Whenever you have a large body of information, just add a simple entry point or key take aways or summary up front.
9. Know whether you’re optimizing for storing or retrieving.  Distinguish whether you are storing something because you will need to look it up or refer to it a lot, or if you are simply storing it because you might need it in the future.  For information that I need to look up a lot, I create a view or I make it easy to get to the information fast.  For example, I might use a sticky note since I can quickly put it wherever I need to.  For a lot of information, you simply need a quick way to store it.  What you don’t want to do is have to work to hard, each time you need to file a piece of information.  This I is where having a place for things, using lists, and organizing information in a meaningful way comes in handy.  For most of my reference information, I organize it either by A-Z or by time.  This way I don’t have to think too hard.  I don’t create a bunch of folders for my email.  Instead, I just store it all flat so it’s easy to search or browse or sort.  For example, if I need to find an email from somebody, I simply sort my email by their name.  Just by asking the question whether you’re optimizing for fast filing or for fast lookup will get you improving your information management in the right direction.
10. Create views.  Create views for the information that you need to frequently access.  For example, you might put sticky notes of information that consolidate just the key things.  As an analogy, think of your music store versus your playlists.  You store might be a large collection organized A-Z, but your playlists are views that are more focused or have themes.  You can apply this metaphor to any of your information collections.

Well, there you have it.  Those are my top 10 favorite techniques for organizing information.  I’ve had the privilege of learning and modeling from many great colleagues and mentors.  The beauty is, I get to practice my information management skills every day while hacking my way through the information jungle.  These skills save me a ton of time whether I’m reading books, taking notes, learning something new, or just about any time I’m dealing with information.  It’s deliberate practice with immediate results.

Two More Ways to Improve Your Information Management
As a bonus, I’m including two additional techniques that significantly changed my game:

1. Periodically sweep things.   No matter how well you organize things, you’ll need to periodically sweep.  Sweeping simply means cleaning things up after the fact.  Periodically, allocating a block of time to go back through and clean up some of your messes.   Things will always get out of disorder over time.  Time also changes what’s important.  When you revisit things, after the fact, you also gain the benefit of hind sight.  Make the time now and then to make a pass through your collections.  Get rid of what you don’t need.  Archive things that you don’t currently need.  Restructure your information to support your usage scenarios.  This is one of those vital practices that really makes the difference if you actually do it.
2. Reduce friction.   Whenever you find that you’re working too hard to either find, organize, or use your information, pay attention to the friction.  Work to reduce the friction.   This might mean getting more information out of your way.  It might mean bubbling more things up to where you can find them quickly.  The key is to make it easy to use your information, and don’t let it become a burden.

How do we “know” something? … I think you’ll like this as a simple model to help answer the question – how do you know something to be true?  There are 3 main ways:
1.    Experiential (empirical)
2.    Cognitive (Rational)
3.    Constructed (Creational)

With experiential, you know something because you’ve “experienced” it – basically through your five senses (site, hearing, touch, smell, and taste.)  With cognitive, you know something because you’ve thought your way through it, argued it, or rationalized it.  With constructed, you know something because you created it – and it may be subjective instead of objective and it may be based on convention or perception.

Because of my day job of finding and sharing best practices, I depend heavily on “experiential.”  By testing and reproducing success patterns, it helps me separate fact from fiction, good theories from good results, and turn insight into action.  Experiential has been my most reliable source of knowledge – I can test it and reproduce it.  I find that my cognitive and constructed tend to be more malleable, and sometimes less dependable.

As you continue to learn throughout your life, you can challenge yourself – do you know this because you’re “experienced’ it, simply argued your way through it, or constructed it.

For more information, check out Epistemology – the theory of knowledge (Wikipedia.)

Photo by accent on eclectic.

Some books and authors change how we think.

I was catching up with an old friend and I was distilling some of my favorite books into one-liners to show the contributions of various authors.  He suggested I share them as a post, so here it is …

1. In Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking Malcolm Gladwell  teaches us that thin slices of data tell us a lot.
2. In Dealing with People You Can’t Stand: How to Bring Out the Best in People at Their Worst Dr. Rick Brinkman and Dr. Rick Kirschner teach us that difficult behaviors stem from 4 intents: get the task done, get it right, get along with people, or get appreciation.
3. In Go Put Your Strengths to Work: 6 Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Performance Marcus Buckingham  teaches us to give our best, where we have our best to give.
4. In Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life Martin E. P. Seligman  teaches us that optimism is not about thinking positive.  It’s simply not thinking negative and avoiding explaining bad events as permanent, personal, and pervasive.
5. In Overachievement: The New Science of Working Less to Accomplish More John Eliot  teaches us to use stress to be our best.
6. In Raving Fans: A Revolutionary Approach To Customer Service Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles teach us to create a vision of perfection, centered on the customer.
7. In Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions ,  Gary Klein  teaches us to fill our heads with patterns and experience to make better decisions.
8. In Stumbling on Happiness Dan Gilbert  teaches us we can’t predict our happiness.  We can make our own happiness and it’s just as real (synthetic happiness.)
9. In The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You John C. Maxwell  teaches us that leadership is influence.
10. In The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding: How to Build a Product or Service Into a World-Class Brand Al Ries and Laura Ries  teach us that to dominate a category, narrow our focus.
11. In The 8th Habit Personal Workbook: Strategies to Take You from Effectiveness to Greatness ,  Stephen Covey  teaches us to find our voice, and help others find theirs.
12. In The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable Nassim Taleb  teaches us that If you miss the train, don’t chase it.  Catch the next one. Missing a train is only painful if you run after it.
13. In The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick) Seth Godin  teaches us to quit the right things and pick the right dips to lean into.
14. In The Likeability Factor: How to Boost Your L-Factor and Achieve Your Life’s DreamsTim Sanders teaches us that likability is a skill.
15. In The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles Steven Pressfield  teaches us that resistance is the enemy within.

What book changed how you think?

Photo by Capture Queen.