How to read a book

Lately I have been feeling a bit challenged in…yes…finishing books I start reading. This problem is particularly acute when it comes to works of non-fiction or works of fiction that don’t have a lot of pictures.

While browsing for what ironically (and disappointingly) turned out to be a curated reading list of non-fiction books, I found this gem: A paper by Paul N. Edwards at School of Information in University of Michigan called How to Read a Book.  A little snippet from the 9 page article:

“So unless you’re stuck in prison with nothing else to do, NEVER read a non‐fiction book or article from beginning to end. Instead, when you’re reading for information, you should ALWAYS jump ahead, skip around, and use every available strategy to discover, then to understand, and finally to remember what the writer has to say. This is how you’ll get the most out of a book in the smallest amount of time.”

I am going to read this article and see if I can change my behavior and read more non-fiction books.

I am keeping my fingers crossed.

Skills and Competencies

My current assignment at work has made me think and work more in the Development area of Learning & Development. One of the concepts I wanted to gain more clarity about was Skills and Competencies. I have often struggled with differentiating between these. This post on the Success Factors Research Blog really helped clarify and provide a frame of reference.

“Skills can be learned, certificates can be earned, etc. Competencies take much longer to develop. For example, a skill might be profient in C++ (a programming language), but a competency might be high capacity for problem solving. Problem solving is important for programming in any language, and can be applied to many other challenges in the workplace.”