Mentors Magazine: Issue 3

MENTORS MAGAZINE | EDITION 3 | 65

ity books. In recent years I have read con-

siderably more books. The biggest thing

that I have learned is that I should have

read a lot more in the early years of being

an entrepreneur and all the way through to

now; and I will do into the future. There

are so many things that I could have done

differently and better and possibly avoided

some of the mistakes along the way.

Obviously reading doesn’t totally

substitute doing and we

will inevitably still make

mistakes along the way. If

you are a wantrapreneur

don’t spend too long read-

ing books it is advisable to

start as soon as you can

then read as you go every

day.

You may be thinking that you don’t have

the time to be reading everyday but I

would say the reason you don’t have

enough time to read every day is because

you don’t read. When we say ‘no’ to what-

ever it is that is making us too busy, we say

‘yes’ to reading and learning potentially

better ways of running our business and

life. So rather than looking at reading as

something that we are saying ‘yes’ to, think

of it as saying ‘no’ to a way of running our

business and life in a way that does not al-

low us time to do other important things

that will produce big future benefits.

Reading needs to be something that be-

comes a habit that we do every day like a

ritual that fits into our daily routine. To en-

sure that we read every day we should set

aside a block of time for reading, for exam-

ple 30 minutes a day. Obviously, the

amount of time can be less or more than

this but we need to commit to enough

time to make our reading substantial

enough to be worthwhile. During this time,

we need to find a quiet

place where we are not go-

ing to be interrupted or dis-

tracted ideally without tel-

evision, computers,

phones, etcetera. Either

first thing in the morning or

last thing at night is a good

time for many people to

read. As Jim Rohn said “What is easy to do

is easy not to do” so it is important to have

a daily routine so that we keep reading

consistently.

As we read books, we should also docu-

ment our reading by keeping notes or

writing cliff notes or a summary or creating

a mind map or combinations of these. By

doing this we then have something that

allows us to easily refer back to important

points. We can also read through our notes

to quickly reinforce our recollection of the

concepts learned in the book.

The reading books should be pleasant and

Reading needs

to be something

that becomes a

habit that we do

every day...