EFFECTIVE READING

One of the important element in  Self-management is building a habit to

continues  learning or be a man who  always thirsty for information and knowledge.

Henry Ford, founder of General Motors says that "Anyone WHO stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone WHO keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young. "

No matter how old we are, if we stop learning it mean we are old, whereas if we always learn can make us stay young. Since the best thing in the world would we get to keep our minds for
still young.

One of the most effective way to learn is by reading. But unfortunately most of us never had time to read. The main reason that we have that we often rush job. We are trapped in routine and work pressure so we do not have the opportunity to sharpen our saws, as told by Stephen Covey in his book
"The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" as follows:

Let's say you meet someone who was in a hurry to cut a trees in the forest.

You ask. "What are you doing?

"did you see?" he replied impatiently. "I'm sawing this tree. "

you say. "You look tired!" . "How long have you been doing that?"

"More than five hours," he replied, "and I'm very tired! It's really a hard working. "

"Well, why don't you  rest for a few minutes and sharpening the saws?"you ask.

" I am sure you will be able to work much faster. "

"I do not have time to sharpen the saw," the man said firmly.
"I'm too busy sawing."

Even according to Covey, sharpening saws  is  the most important habit because it surrounds the other habits on the paradigm of seven effective human habit. This habit for maintaining and improving our biggest assets that we have namely ourselves.

This habit can update The fourth dimension of our nature? "physical, mental, spiritual, and social / emotional.

Reading is one of the way to improve and enhance our effectiveness. Although we have a "limited time", we still need sharpen our saws. The trick is  mastering the way of effective reading to make us more efficient.

But firstly we need to recognize the various types learning style,

a. Visual.
Learning through seeing something. We love to see pictures or diagrams. We
love the show, or watch video demonstrations.

b. Auditory.
Learning through hearing. We like to listen to audio tapes, lectures, discussion, debate and verbal instructions.

c. Kinesthetic.
Learning through physical activity and direct involvement. We like
"Handles", moving, touch and feel / self experience.

All of us, in some ways, utilizing all three of these styles. But most people show trends in one specific styles of learning than the other two styles.

Most of children have  tendency the kinesthetic and auditory, but by the time they mature,
the tendency on visual learning style was more dominant.

Your understanding of your personal learning style will be able to improve the performance and achievement. You will be able to absorb information more quickly and easily. You can identify and appreciate the way the most you like to receive information.

You will be able to communicate much more effectively with others and strengthen your relationships with them.

Three Important Factors Improve Learning Ability

There are three important factors in the mastery of skills to learn:

The first is our mindset and attitude against learning.

We should have the desire and love (passion) against values ​​to continue  learning and develop ourselves.

Learning is not only through formal education  but also in every aspect of life we must constantly develop the attitude of learning. Attitude to reading, listening, want to understand and learn from others is an attitude that needs to be mantained if we want to improve ourselves or our ideas.


The second factor in increasing the skill to learn is our ability to leverage the power of our minds (especially the subconscious mind?) to accelerate the learning process.
The subconscious mind is the awesome power if we can optimize its potential.

We Often forget the gift that the biggest, most beautiful that God-given to us is the ability of our mind. This is what the distinguishes us with another creation.

The easiest thing that we can do to develop the skills to learn is with a lot of reading. Spending at least an hour a day for reading books is a good habit for us to begin  developing ourselves.

There are so many methods to increase the speed of reading and understanding  contents of a book. we need these skills to increase our absorption and velocity in read a book.

The third factor in enhancing the ability of our learning is self-discipline and
persistence.
Without these two things, learning just activities that are dependent on mood and we can not achieve excellence only by studying half-heartedly. It is time we change our habits.

There is a wise that says "Your Habits Determine Your Future earnest”. Get the learning habits, and begin your first step. The process of changing habits largely determined by self-discipline and persistence.

that why after we do that within a certain time period, it is no longer a burden but has become a necessity.  at first it is difficult to do that but after
we always doing consistently its not a big deal anymore just lika  a routine thing we can do.

Basic Skills for Effective Reading.

Before we develop the ability to read effectively, firstly we need mastering some basic skills, namely:

1. Concentration
Most of us assume that the concentration is a hard work and very difficult to do. We have a belief that it is difficult to performed. otherwise if we like something, such as a concert our favorite band's music or movies in theaters, then we will be able to concentrate and enjoy the show that lasted more than two hours.

We was able to concentrate long enough if we do something we enjoy. This is the mindset that we must first develop to learn about concentration.

The second thing is that develop their powers of concentration as well as develop and strengthen the muscles of our body. We need to exercise
regularly and continuously.

One technique for developing concentration power is the technique of contemplation. Contemplation is a technique using our minds like a flashlight (Searchlight) to find new information. To train that, you need practise every day
(At least 5 minutes to a maximum of 10 minutes per workout). The trick begins with a focus on what we want to know. For example, we want to know how to increase your financial intelligence (read Robert Kiyosaki book for example),
then think of the idea in depth and ask yourself
questions like, "What does that mean financial intelligence? What implications on my life? Is it anything I can do? And do it until about 5-10 minutes.

If you are able to survive concentrations of 10 minutes, increase your ability with direct practice 10-20 minutes reading a book. Do it every day
until your endurance concentration increased.

2. Creating Mind Maps (Mind Mapping)

This technique is a way to summarize a theme or subject matter existing in the book.
First, we start by writing the main theme in the middle of the empty page.
Then like a tree with branches and twigs we develop the key themes be a sub theme around it by using such a line connected spokes of a wheel.

Here are the steps or principles in making mind maps in the book
Accelerated Learning for the 21st Century written by Colin Rose and Malcolm J.
Nicholl:

a. Start with a topic in the middle of the page.
b. Use the key words.
c. Make branches
d. Use symbols, colors, words, pictures and  others images.
e. Use as a poster with a clean white base.
f. Create colorful writing or drawing
g. Use light-colored stationery

Create a mind map is an exercise that needs to be done continuously. As well as the technique of contemplation, we need to practice using mind maps to find out information or analyze the problem.
[It could also look at the Cave of Bats, the Concept Map and the Brain]

3. Relaxation
This method was developed by Sandy MacGregor in his book, Piece of Mind. In principle says that the brain or mind more easily absorb and
given the information at the time we relaxed state of mind indicated with low frequency brain waves.

Regarding the relaxation techniques had
discussed in the previous edition. For those of you who are interested in studying
Sandy MacGregor can read a book or books SELF MANAGEMENT: 12
Self-management measures and Marlan essay Aribowo Prijosaksono Mardianto.

Fast Reading Technique
We live in an age where every day we are inundated with new books about topics that we like or are related to our work. Reader
usual would not be able to read all the books that have been published about the topic
related to business or professional field.

While reading itself can be a pleasant experience
well annoying. And we all know that reading the same as enjoy the show a good concert or movie. Reading involves our active participation. All the emotions, desires and interests, we also
must be involved in the process of reading, so read into that fun experience.

With the limited time we have, how we can develop ability to read effectively so with the same period, we can take the core of more books. Except for a book or literary fiction that we want to enjoy interwoven stories, emotions, and a series of words, reading nonfiction books (textbooks) is like reading a letter news.

What we need is information and ideas of the principal authors.

Only a few people who read the newspaper per section or per page. We usually read the first few pages with detailed, then only briefly the others, to looking for interesting topics. We will now
learn to do something similar with a book that will be read.

Before you start reading there are a number of tools that can help us to understand the entire contents of a book:

Book covers:
Usually the most important subject matter of a book printed on the cover.
This information helps the sales of  books and provide perspective about the publisher content of the book. The cover of the book gives us about what we will get on the inside.

Biography author:
This information will tell us about educational background, experience and current activities of the writer who made her could write a his book.

By understanding the information about the author will help us to more easily follow the flow of ideas in the book.

The initial part:
This section consists of the foreword, preface or introductory chapter (prologue).
Usually it is the parts that we need to depth learned, because the essence of the whole idea of ​​the author about the theme of the book is summarized in the beginning of the book. Clearly this section describes the purpose of writing? "
its mission statement. At this point we can decide to read more information or we will only use it for reference.

Table of Contents:
Actually this section is a frame of the book. The author uses each chapter topics as hangers to explain his thoughts on the overall particular topic. How many sections? How many chapters? Please read carefully Contents to see  the topis according to what we seek.

Index:
Thorough index at the back of the book. See if there are key words of interest to you.

We must check all these things before reading his book. This is what called the scanning process, which we see briefly the overall contents of the book will be read. Once I started reading, we can freely skip material that we already know or material that we are not interested.

In certain parts we can explore as there are topics or information should we look deeper and we digest. This process is called a process
skimming.


Here are the things that need to read effectively:

1. After making the scanning process, we can create mind maps (mind
charting) book.

Do not be too detailed, but informative enough to explain the contents of the book in one page of paper. If we need to do reconstruction on the list
content combined with other information from biographies, preface, introduction and the synopsis on the cover of the book.

2. Prepare a highlighter or stationery to mark the information or whatever
wants us to remember.

3. Understand the author's mind.
The sooner we know the topic, purpose, subject matter we read, the better understanding and our memories of it.

4. Avoid reading word for word and sentence by sentence.
Try to catch a group of words with your eyes every time especially for foreign-language books, we do not need translate word for word, because it will inhibit the absorption process information in your brain.

Compare your reading aloud and reading silently. Speed will differ greatly.
Usually I concentrate on the first sentence and last sentence of a paragraph, or my eyes  saw the whole body paragraphs and capturing core message.

5. Summarize the reading.
If there is no summary chapter, make it by yourself after finished reading a chapter.

6. Compare with other writings the same topic that you have ever read.
Remember contemplation techniques. Try to develop questions and links each other as you search for something with a flashlight.

7. For simplicity we use the book as a reference, we can noted the contents of the book in a notebook or paper that we can save and look back on all the time.

Thus the principles and the steps we need to know to improving reading efficiency. But again, the same as the others skills, reading requires flying hours. We need to practice, practice and practice
so that the speed and efficiency of our reading increased from time to time.

Happy reading and enhance your personal assets, most importantly, yours.