Dec 24, 2008
Posted by Mohammed Ali in GTD and Productivity | 8 comments
photo credit: talkingplant
I love reading books, and if you’re like me you know the problem is there are too many books and too little time! If you can relate to this, then this post is for you. I overcame this problem by going through several Speed Reading books to develop my reading & comprehension skills.
I’m now able to read a book several times faster, and I’m not exaggerating when I say that I can read a 300 page book in 2 hours. Though most Speed Reading Books focused on Reading Drills, what I found was that by adopting a few basic techniques, one can dramatically & instantly improve their Speed Reading Skills. In this post I’ll be sharing with you these secrets. (A Note: these techniques work best with Non-Fiction books)
Step 1: Know the purpose of reading the book
This is the first and perhaps the most important step to enhance your speed in reading. It is to know the purpose you’re reading the book. Is it pleasure reading, self-improvement or looking for details on a particular subject ? Without knowing why you won’t be able to jump into the pool of information to get what you want.
Ask yourself:
First: In an overall scheme of things how worthwhile is the material that I am reading
Second: What do I want or need to remember, as specifically as possible, from this material that I am about to read?
Step 2 & 3: Get an Overview of the Book & Author (15 minutes)
* Go through the Front Cover, back cover & inside page cover
* Table of Contents (make a note of chapters that seem interesting)
* Amazon Reviews
* Preface
* Introduction
While going through the Amazon reviews, preface & introduction gather some more information about the author and form an opinion of the Author and why has he written the book.
Doing the above should not take more than 15 minutes. By the end of this step, you should be able to explain to someone in a few sentences what the book is about. If you can do this you’ve completed this step successfully.
Step 4: Flip through the entire book (10 minutes)
You’ll be surprised by the wealth of information you’ll come across by just doing this. Flip through every page of the book, spending 0.5 sec to 3 secs a page. You’re not expected to read through the text, but during this exercise, make notice of the following:
* Diagrams
* Sub Headings
* Summary points
* Any exercise
By noticing the above you’ll find your mind automatically absorbing bits of information & connecting the dots between them.
Step 5: Getting into the details (1 hour 20 minutes)
Most readers read books by diving right into the details without doing any background work. But by the time you’ve reached this step, you know:
* Why you’re reading the book?
* What the book is about?
* Who the author is?
* How can this book can help you?
Congratulations, you’re well in control of the book and to navigate through it with ease.
From step 2 you would have highlighted the chapters that interest you the most. Be brave start going through these chapters. Don’t feel guilty by jumping to the end of the chapter, usually the end of the chapter will summarize the whole chapter.
You’ll notice more often that not, there are a only few chapters that you need to go through, to know what you need to remember in Step 1. It’s using the 80/20 rule. 80% of the information you require is found in 20% of the book. 20% of the book is approx 50 pages which not take an average reader more than an hour and a half to read. Make sure you underline the Major themes and ideas of each chapter you read.
Step 6: Mind Map (15 minutes)
Mind-Mapping is a proven method to effecting summarize lots of information in short use of time and space. You can learn about Mind Mapping from this YouTube Video.
With the information you’ve underlined in Step 5, create a Mindmap to connect the central ideas of the book and each chapter it contains. The center of the MindMap can be the name of the book, and each Chapter you’ve read is a branch from the center. From each Chapter connect the lines
How it Works?
Speed reading is not about reading words fast, but it’s more about improving one’s ability to extract the message of the text that is being read. All the techniques above enhance your ability to understand the message of the text, without the need to read through every letter.
Benefits of Speed Reading:
* Absorb new ideas faster
* You’ll be able to make time to read a wider range of material
* Greater career success as your ability to acquire and retain knowledge increases dramatically
* Increased confidence to sifting through thick books to get what you want
Try it out! and share your experiences below.
Dec 22, 2008
Posted by arif in GTD and Productivity | 1 comment
Me and Ali are also contributors to GTD Times, the official GTD Blog of David Allen Company. At GTD Times, we have posted a review of Eat that Frog, by Brian Tracy. A book that has extended Mark Twain’s analogy of doing the toughest task of the day to eating an Ugly & Repulsive Frog. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and gained many insights that I was able to immediately put into practice. This book has been reprinted for India and is available at a reduced price of Rs.150/- at most bookstores.
Below are some of the snippets from the book that would give you more of a gist and also get you moving on your tasks. You can read more excerpts at the end of this GTDTimes blog post by clicking here.
Taking the Frog analogy forward:
If you have to eat a live frog at all, it doesn’t pay to sit and look at it for very long.
When you’ve got two frogs, eat the ugliest one first.
You cannot eat every tadpole and frog in the pond, but you can eat the biggest and ugliest one.
How do you eat your biggest, ugliest frog? The answer is: “One bite at a time.” i.e. you break it down into specific step by step activities and then start on the first one.
You should never be distracted by a tadpole when a big frog is siting there waiting to be eaten.
On the Pareto principle or 80/20 rule:
There is never enough time to do all the tasks, but there’s always time to do the most Important task.
The most valuable tasks you can do each day are often the hardest and most complex. But the payoff and rewards for completing these tasks efficiently can be tremendous. For this reason, you must adamantly refuse to work on tasks in the bottom 80 percent while you still have tasks in the top 20 percent left to be done.
A Question to ask yourself for maximum productivity: “What can I, and only I, do that if done well will make a real difference?” ~ Peter Drucker.
photo credit: TimmyGUNZ
Dec 19, 2008
Posted by Mohammed Ali in GTD and Productivity, Reviews | 0 comments
I recently switched my RSS reader from Netvibes to Google Reader, and I’ve been loving it. Behind the simple interface is a powerful set of features, that makes it a winner.
One of these features is the ability to share news items. The simple way to share an Item in Google Reader is to click on the “Share” link that is found at the end of each post. Once done, this item will automatically be added to the list of Shared Items, that can be seen by your friends.
But what if you want to create several different lists of Shared items. For example, you might want to create:
* One for Colleagues at work
* One for your family
* One for your friends working on a Project
Using the ‘Tags’ feature you can create custom RSS feeds which you can then share with your friends. This is how it can be done:
* Add an appropriate Tag to an item that you would like to share by clicking on the ‘Edit Tags’ option at the end of the item:
* If the Tag does not correspond to any folder, then you will see the tag at the end of your folder list. The next step is to make the items on this tag public, so that an RSS feed is generated.
* Go to Settings > Folders and Tags . Click on the RSS Image to make it Public. You will then be able to “view Public Page” listing all the posts with the Tag. On the right you can grab the RSS feed to share with your friends!
Dec 12, 2008
Posted by arif in Spirituality | 1 comment
photo credit: steve_263
I clearly remember the day, when I was introduced to this book by Ali. He excitedly brought Hadith-e-Muffadal to me and said, Arif, you must read this book. “Thanks Ali,” I replied, “but I’ve got just so much to read and much more to do, that I just don’t have the time to add another book to my reading list.” He thought for a while and then quipped back, “Okay Arif, do this. Hold the book in your hand, open to any page and read any paragraph.” That was a reasonable enough. So I took the book, opened a page randomly, picked a paragraph to read and I began. As soon as I did, I was dumbfounded in awe. My mind had just been shattered to a million pieces. Oh, the vision and perspective with which Imam Jaffer-as-Sadiq viewed the world. That too when? In the year 700 AD! That’s 1,300 years from today. Forget about of Radio, TV or Google back in 700 AD there were hardly any books!
Anyway, The book is divided in to five chapters, briefly which cover:
1. Introduction
The background how Muffadal came to approach the Imam on this topic
2. The Human Being
The ingeniuty of God’s design of the Human Being. Why has man been designed in the way he has been designed? Is there an All Knowing, All Wise, All Merciful Creator? Or is it a result of nature and Evolution? Look for the response to that argument in this section.
3. The Animal Kingdom
The wisdom of God’s design in the Animal Kingdom. My favourite bit in this section is the beginning portion titled The Animal World, where Imam speaks of the wisdom in; the design of the muscular structure of the animals, their skeletal structure, the difference between carnivorous and herbivorous animals etc. By the way, look out for the answer to Darwin’s observation, why is it that man so closely resembles the monkey.
4. The Environment
The balance with which there exist day & night, summer & winter. The wisdom present in the size of the earth, the plentitude of water, the abundanc of air, the lack of fire etc.
5. Natural Disasters
The answer to Question if God is All Merciful and All Powerful, why do we have Natural Disasters? Why is there injustice and evil? Is it just so that we appreciate and value goodness? But then why couldn’t God create us to be good as well as appreciate good at the same time?
The book is not too big, just 60 odd pages, but exhaustive. It’s deep, yet highly readable. It’s truly with great honour and pleasure I present to all my dear blog readers, Hadith-e-Muffadal. You may download the pdf by clicking here.
Here are few (lengthy) excerpts that have touched me deeply.
Creation of Man
We now start with a description of the creation of Man before you to learn a lesson there from. The first step in the creation of Man refers to the state when the embryo in the womb is adjusted, though it is confined within three distinct kinds of coverings and three kinds of darkness. The first being that of the outer wall, the second of the womb and the third of the placenta. This is a time when the embryo can neither manage its nutrition nor ward off any harm from itself.
The menstrual flow is diverted to serve him as nutriment, just as water carries nutriment to the plants. So this process goes on until such time as his constitution is perfected, the skin over his body gets tough enough to withstand the atmosphere -so that it does not receive any harm from the air – and his eyes get capacity to withstand light. When all this is accomplished, its mother gets labour pangs, which severely shake her to uneasiness, culminating in the birth of the infant.
With the birth of the infant, the menstrual flow which served as nutrition in the womb is diverted to the mother’s breasts. Its taste is altered, as well as its colour, and it becomes a nutriment of quite a different kind, which exactly suits the temperament of the infant, as and when it needs the same, compared with the flow of blood.
Simultaneously with its birth, it starts moving and licking its lips with its tongue to indicate its desire for milk. It finds its mothers pair of breasts as luscious reservoirs hanging to provide nutrition for it. He gets its nutrition from milk in this way until such time as his body remains delicate, his organs and bowels soft and weak.
Grains
Consider how agriculture is ordained to thrive. A hundred or so grains spring from a single seed. A single grain from
a single seed would have been logical. Why then such multiplication? Surely to amplify the grain so that the same
may serve as food to last till the next crop besides provision as seed for the farmers.
Consider a monarch intending to populate a town. lie plans to provide such quantities of grain as would suffice the
residents to serve as food till the next crop besides provision for seed. See how this plan is adumbrated in the scheme
of the Almighty Allah, Glory be to Him, that agriculture should lead to such multiplication as to serve both the need
for nutrition as well as that for seeding.
Similar is the case with the trees, vegetation and the date-tree. They generate abundant fruit. You see that there is a
single root, but there are many off-shoots. Why? Surely for the purpose of propagating the progeny from the seeds,
after people have put them to their use. If there had been a single root without the branches shooting off in such
abundance, it would not have been feasible to take off anything from it for sowing or any other business. In the case
of a sudden calamity the original would have perished with no chance for another plant to replace it.
Existence of God
Above all them, are the atheists to be pitied, who demand to see with their physical eyes One Who is inscrutable even to the intellect. This being impossible, they took to flat denial of His Existence. They demanded, why He cannot be encompassed within the intellect? He transcends intellect just as things beyond the visual field cannot be perceived by the eyes.
As an example, if you see a piece of stone flying up in the air, the logical conclusion you draw is that someone has hurled it above. The eye may not have seen it and yet the intellect realises it because of its discerning capacity, in that the piece of stone cannot go up by itself. You see that the eye stopped at a point and could not advance further. Similarly the intellect stops short at its prescribed limit in the matter of the Divine Immanence. It cannot advance further.
