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Today’s episode asks are YOU 1 of 32?
There are so many distractions in our lives and only 24 hours in a day.
What are you doing with your time?
With some increased focus on development YOU can boost your job performance and possibly your career path.
You could accelerate toward that next promotion, possibly bump up your next pay raise, or become a team lead.
Tune in to see if you are 1 out of 32 people.
I’ll bet you are!
P.S. Grab our free download of Resume Tune-Up Tips – Mistake proof your resume by learning and correcting today’s most common format and content errors.
Chapters
[00:14] Who reads books anymore?
[01:58] Does speed reading work?
[04:15] Dave Ramsey and reading challenge
[07:17] I change how I use my 24 hours
[08:17] Vagueness leads to not achieving goals
[09:13] Do you speed read?
[10:28] Download your free Resume Tune-Up Tips!
[10:44] Bonus download free Online Resume Submission Pro Tips
Referenced Content
Author: Carol Ann Wright, Book: Reading the Wright Way (on Amazon)
Dave Ramsey, Money & Life Coach (Financial Peace)
Support the Show.
speaker 0: 0:00
are you one of 32? Welcome to career growth made easy with Craig. And so I'm your host before we find out if you were one of 30 to listen to this. According to mental floss dot com, they referenced a study that one in three high school graduates will never read another book the rest of their lives. The number gets worse, with 42% of college graduates very likely to not read another book the rest of their lives. There is some good news, though. According to another survey, one out of two people buy a book that's recommended to them. Half of those read it. Half of those study it Onley half of those apply it, and finally, half of that or one out of 32 people implement or live it on a daily basis. That's a shocking 3.1%. My money is on you that you're one of the 3.1% you are one in 32 people. The fact that you found this podcast and are listening along means a lot to me. It doesn't matter where you consume your content or how you consume it. It could be in the form of an e book. An audio book, podcast, blawg, hardcover or soft cover book. Go to a seminar attended class, et cetera. In today's world, we have access 24 hours a day, seven days a week to info the win and the where we consume that info can be anything from traveling to or from school or work over lunch or a break. Maybe during exercise. There's probably endless opportunities. Now I'd like to rewind a little bit and give you some more background on my history. If you've listened to our earlier episodes, you know about my career growth journey. It started out with an unexpected job loss. Well, around that time, I had become interested in reading again and good thing too, right well. To improve my reading efficiency, I took a course called Reading The Right Way. I remember specifically the title because the author's name right W. R I G H. T was in the title. The course promised to improve my speed reading If I would follow along. I think I spent two or three hours a week for maybe a PPE to three weeks on a self study program and wow, the course worked, at least for me. It tripled my reading speed. Now I can hear you out there saying, Sure, Craig, you might have tripled your reading speed. But what about your memory? What about your attention to facts and details? Well, let me tell you how the course went. We would first read several passages to document our current reading speed at the time, and then we would answer a couple questions on the content that we read up to to see how well we understood the information and absorbed it. We were then to read different passages, and we would answer questionnaires at the end, depending on how far we read along in a fixed amount of time. I'm very proud to say that after taking the speed reading course and tripling my reading speed that I consistently scored 100% on the fact recollection and memory retention. I have been using that skill set for the last 10 years or so, and it's been very helpful and paid off when I need to crank through some books or get through some content in a hurry fast fording a little bit, probably around five years ago or so I was searching for new ways to consume info, and I came across online audiobooks, podcasts. I guess you could say maybe I was, Ah, slow starter and came into awareness of this stuff late in life. I knew about E books, I guess, for over 10 years, like the Kindle. But I just didn't get much thought to that and really didn't get into reading or listening for that matter, to educational informational content. Until that time of my transformation, however, it happened, I came across the Dave Ramsey show. I think I found it on the radio one time and really liked the information he was sharing. And so I decided to dig up on the Web and see what else I could find research this content and found out he had his radio shows. Eventually, podcasts recorded an archived on his website. I didn't realize it at the time, but I had gone back to the first available episode and essentially started binge listening to it as I was, you know, taking breaks, exercising, traveling to and from work. I was bins listening to all his shows, all the while taking in good information and education on money and life to build strong, healthy habits. During one show, Day specifically talked about the fact that there are so many ways to consume content, kind of like I did earlier. But he went on to say one specific thing that really caught my ear, he said, And if I recall correctly, it's getting to be that if you read just about 15 or 20 books on a particular subject, you're just about become an expert on that topic. Challenge. Yes, that was a cow bell. So I'm off to the library to check out some books on self improvement, growth job and career performance, read through the covers and maybe read some intros to see if it sounded good to me. If that worked, I reserve the book and check it out all too often. What would happen is that I would start reading the book and I would lose interest. Maybe the author style change during the book or there were co authors, and I just didn't really feel like I was sync up to it, and I became disinterested well, trying to plow forward. That was difficult for me, especially if I couldn't consistently finish a book. Right When I did find a quote, quote compatible book, the speed reading kicked in and the notes were flying. Honestly, I probably took several months, if not a year or more, to find my nish and studying high performance growth because I was taking so many notes, it benefited me. Toe own the books rather than to rent them from the library, as I like to highlight them. And if I had a particular reference that I wanted to dig up and read more on, it would be a lot easier to have the book to go back to that exact page. Hey, so back to the challenge. I started out with a target goal of about one book a month. I thought, Hey, pretty ambitious, right? Well, sometimes I hit my goal, and sometimes I didn't looking back. Some of my problems were that I didn't have consistency in my reading habits. I wasn't putting myself first. Then there were my complaints or my excuses about not having enough time. We talked about in an earlier episode that changing habits can be hard and that the body tries to resist it because it stays with what it knows and what's familiar to it. Well, I went ahead and started to make two key changes. First, there's only 24 hours in the day, but it makes a difference what you do with those hours. I found out that if you get up one hour earlier each day and use a little discipline, you have one extra hour day to do whatever you please. Second, I decided that once I found a book I liked after reading the cover and the intro, If I open it up and started the first chapter, I was all in. I was committed to finish that book regardless, wisely using that extra hour a day. I spent that time on me for me, one of my few selfish things I do jokingly. So, as the reading challenge continued, I was able to knock out approximately one book per month. That's cover to cover, like I said, and that's with full notes and highlighting. I thought, Wow, that's pretty darn good. I bet you I can improve this. Maybe I should step it up to 2 to 3 books a month. Well, that worked sometimes, but more often than not. I would miss the three books, and occasionally I would hit two. I've found out that because I didn't have a specific number in mind, but just a knave. Ridge number 2 to 3 books. It was difficult to hit that target. All that sounded fine. But I need a specific number of specific goal to hit. That was concrete. I decided to step my approach up even further. Yes, one book. Ah, Week. Well, that was difficult. But most weeks I hit it and I'm proud to say, after several years, I'm on target with that now, honestly, I did take a pause for last several months. While I've been extremely focused on this business, getting it launched, the website, the podcasts, just a lot of business related information. So I know I'm going to return to my book reading, and I'm really excited to put my speed reading back in gear. If you have any experience with speed reading and you'd like to share that with us, please do so at info at Craig and sell dot com. We're happy to discuss the successes with you and the challenges you faced while you're going along. You're speed reading journey. If I did mention it earlier, I'll make sure that there's a reference to the course that I took. I understand it's dated. It's probably about 10 or 11 years old. At this point, however, it might work for you, too. Otherwise, if some of you have used newer courses out there or there's newer techniques or maybe more efficient techniques, let me know that, too. This was a little shorter episode and hopefully had got you thinking out there. Just about a couple things. Number one. Do I put myself first number two. Am I spending my time wisely? Number three. Do our resist change even though I know it's leading me down a new path for growth. Finally, I have a question for you. Are you one of the 32? I bet you are. Don't forget to check out the show. Notes. Subscribe to our podcast career Growth made easy with Craig and so and download some of our freebies. We have some really great stuff out there. I think it was back in Episode two. You should listen to the full episode because it's got great content, but there's also a really great resume tune up tip guide in there with a free linked to that. And if you find the special bonus inside that download, there's something else that helps you out with online resume submissions. There's a filtered system out there called A T s or applicant tracking systems. You should learn about that. Don't get your resume disqualified even if you're good applicant for position. When you don't know the ins and outs of applying and sending a resume through an online application system, all this information is out there for free to help you please share a podcast with a family member, friend or coworker. Like I say, you never know what they're going through, what struggles they're facing. And maybe this career growth information might be what they just need to get kick started. Get over that hump they're facing. This has been Craig and sell, reminding you that we turn problems into potential and issues into opportunities. Don't forget to subscribe. We'll talk to you next time. Blessings
