How to effectively use tools such as mind mapping to read 150 books in a year?

Hello, friends of the Worry-Solving Grocery Store, I am Teng Xiaoman, the guest guest of this issue of Mantou FM. Friends who are familiar with me will say that I am a knowledge and tool control freak. I myself am indeed using various tools to help improve my efficiency in work and life. Today I am very fortunate to share the topic of reading with you. It is now June 2016. I wonder how much of the reading plan you have planned at the beginning of the year has been completed? Today I will share with you why we should read, how to read a book thoroughly and how important high-quality reading is.

My friends call me a knowledge geek and a female academic master because I read about 150 books every year. Friends often ask me, can you remember everything you read in so many books? I would smile and say, yes, I have my own special method of reading, which I would like to recommend to everyone today. First of all, when I read, I will use tools such as mind maps to help me read.

I have divided reading into ten steps, and I will explain them to you one by one below. First of all, because I am a human resources consultant and trainer, I have many trainer friends, management experts, etc. They will recommend some book lists to me. I will choose the parts that I am interested in from the book lists they have already read, so that the quality of my book lists is relatively high.

Secondly, I have a lot of friends who are publishers. They will send me the latest, best, and highest-quality books published by their publishing houses for me to read, so the quality of the book list is also very high. Of course, everyone has their own way of obtaining book lists and finding the one that suits them.

First of all, when I get the book list, I will first check the Douban rating of the book.

If the rating of this book is below 7.0, I will not read it;

If the rating of this book is 7.0 to 7.5 , it proves that it is readable, but I may choose to read the electronic version;

In the second case, the score of this book is between 7.5 and 8.0 . If the score is above 7.5, it proves that it is worth buying and you can pay for it. If the score of this book is above 8.0, then you can spend a fixed time to read it carefully. You can't just flip through it on the toilet or on the bus. You need to read it in a more focused environment.

If the score of this book is above 8.5 , it means that this book is suitable for reading repeatedly this year: your different work experience and life experience every year will make you have completely different feelings when reading this book. For example, Mr. Stephen Covey has a book called "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People". I read this book almost every year, and I will have different ideas every time I read it. The first step is to look at the Douban rating to decide how to read the book.

Secondly, I will look at Douban's catalog and book reviews. The catalog helps me understand the general structure of the book and whether the book meets my needs. For example, there is a book called "Positioning". What is it about? You can look at the table of contents. There is also a book called "The Back of the Napkin". If you don't look at the table of contents, wouldn't it be difficult to guess? Is it a book teaching painting? No, so take a look at the table of contents of this book. I will probably just glance over the book review to see what the author feels about the book. This is a part of emotional cognition.

The third step is that I will find the mind map of this book. Mind mapping is a tool that I and some friends who also talk about mind mapping are committed to promoting. So some relatively mature books, such as "Pyramid Thinking" and "The Poor Charlie's Almanack", which I read every year, you can find a large number of mind maps on the Internet for your reference.

What is the purpose of this step? It allows you to see whether the content presented in this mind map is consistent with your understanding of the book. The difference between it and the table of contents is that it is more of a presentation of knowledge points rather than a framework, so you can absorb a lot of information in a short time . I am the same. If a book scores below 7.5, or below 7.0, but someone recommends it to me and I don’t have time to read it from beginning to end, I will choose to look at the mind map of the book to know what it is talking about.

The fourth step is to go back and look at my reading notes for this book. There is a function called reading notes on Douban, which is super useful. What is this part? There are some books. For example, more than 90% of the books of Zhanlu Culture are translated from foreign languages. Maybe the original text of the book is very well written, but the translation is very obscure. It is quite painful if there is no pleasure in reading it. For example, I have read a book called "Decision-making in Difficult Situations" before. That book was so painful for me to read. Although it was recommended by a very good teacher, its translation was really not pleasant. So I would take a look at the reading notes of this book, which are also excerpts from the original text of this book, to see if the author's writing style is in line with my reading habits.

Step 5. Let me share with you a small tool that I use very frequently in my life - the fluorescent signature. After I buy a book, I will first go to the supermarket to buy a fluorescent label, one of those small transparent labels with nine colors. You can stick it on the book without covering the words on the book. We use its color. I personally have a little method called the rainbow method: the colors of the rainbow are red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue and purple. I use the order of this color to mark the importance of this information to me.

For example, those marked in red are the most important, the highest priority, and the most urgent. Those marked in purple are the least important, the least priority, and the least urgent. You just need to know them. So if you work with me, you will find that almost all of my documents, whether it is Word documents, Excel documents, Gantt charts, mind maps, etc., use rainbows to mark the importance of information. Once you buy a book and a fluorescent label, you can start reading. When you see any knowledge point that is valuable to you during the reading process, you can rate the information in your mind and put a fluorescent label on it.

After I started reading, after finishing each chapter, I would write a summary of the chapter on a piece of paper and put it in the book. The fluorescent labels and the summary of each chapter help me to quickly draw a mind map of the book after I have finished reading the whole book. If you finish reading a book, especially a book with more than 300,000 words, and then draw a mind map after finishing it, you will have forgotten a lot of information. Therefore, using fluorescent labels and chapter summaries can help you draw a mind map more conveniently.

The seventh step is to draw your own mind map. After I finish reading the book, labeling it, and writing a summary, I will use a mind map to fully present and retell the contents of the book. Of course, why do we have to do this? Knowledge management is divided into two processes: input and output. When you read, it is an input process, and when you draw a mind map, it is an output process because the brain has to reprocess and re-present the information. Complete the input + output and form a complete cycle, then this knowledge will be fully absorbed by you.

The eighth part is to write book reviews. As a consultant and trainer, publishers often send new books for us to read, write book reviews, and draw mind maps as part of their marketing promotion . I am very happy to do this because it is also a process of output and an essential step for me.

The third step of output is also something that I personally value very much, which is sharing. Every time I meet with my friends, I will chat about how they are doing recently, what movies they have watched, what good books they have read... I will tell them that a book I read recently is called "Eleven Rings". This book is great. A star NBA coach uses Buddhist methods to manage his team and to realize individual leadership in his team, etc.

Then when you chat with friends, some interesting situations will arise. For example, when you are talking, you realize that you have forgotten something. There will be this embarrassing situation: I have seen it but I forgot how to say it. I don't know what you would do, but if it were me, I would go home and immediately look for the mind map of this book. I would probably remember which page and section it is in, or I would probably know what color it was when I drew the mind map, so it would be easy and convenient to find which part of the mind map it is in. Then I can use the fluorescent label to quickly find the location of this information in the book. If you finish reading a book and you don’t make any marks or put a fluorescent label on it, it will be useless and it will take a lot of time to find the information again. But I have a mind map and small labels that can help me locate it quickly. It usually takes no more than 2 minutes from forgetting a message to finding it again, which is very convenient.

There is another situation that I also like very much. When I talked about this book with a friend, he didn't quite agree with me and held an opposite point of view. I was very happy, and then we would discuss and debate this point of view repeatedly. For example, when I said that "Eleven Rings" mentioned a certain point of view, my friend said that I disagreed. I said that the same point of view was also mentioned in another book, saying something like this and that. So this is also an output process, and I think this process is the most important part, which is the process of integrating a new book and some new knowledge points with your original knowledge system. You will involuntarily quote extensively in order to integrate it with your original knowledge system and string them together.

So sharing and discussing with friends is a very important step for us. Let me remind you again that you must complete the two steps from input to output to form a cycle. Don't just have input without output, otherwise the quality of your reading will be greatly reduced.

The tenth step is to review. I will finish reading the book in the above order, but after a period of time, or when I encounter difficulties and need to find a knowledge point, I will review the book again, at least I will review that chapter, and then integrate it again. So have you noticed that the integration part is very important?

Finally, I will give you a few tips. For example, I have a friend who is not very good at reading. He may spend three or four months reading a book and still not finish it. He will ask you how you read it. At this time, I will propose the occasions and time periods for reading. For example, on the bus or subway, I would read some short, concise financial articles and financial reviews, which are probably only a few hundred words long, with prominent arguments, and I can scan them quickly.

But for example, for some books on spirituality or practice, I will use a full hour every morning after I wake up and a full hour before I go to bed to immerse myself in reading. If you can read a spiritual book on the subway and get into it, then you are really amazing. I can’t do that myself. Therefore, reading is a matter of time and place. You have to choose the right book at the right time to help yourself integrate into that situation.

Finally, I would like to recommend two books to you. One is called “How to Read a Book”, written by an American; the other is “Treat Time as a Friend” by Mr. Li Xiaolai. I have repeatedly recommended these two books on many occasions.

If you are interested in today’s content, you can find these two books and read them. I hope they will be helpful to you. This is the end of my sharing today. I hope it can help everyone. I wish you all a good mood. I am Teng Xiaoman.

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