Leader Tip: Retaining what you read

With a world of so much content, it can be challenging to retain what we absorb, and we can quickly become a victim of the forgetting curve.

How do I do this?

5 important ways:

📘 Focus on one subject, this isn’t “self help”, more a sub-focus. So I focused on Leadership. Spend 3-6 months reading material on your chosen subject, a book a month. You will be surprised once you have built the core knowledge and concepts, it’s easier to retain information once you have that foundation.

✏️ Make notes - when I read a book, I highlight all the key points and then go back after and write up all the keynotes into a Google doc and read over again - powerful.

👀 Visualise - as you read the content, visualise yourself or someone else in the environment. Building mental pictures are probably one of the best ways to remember things.

💻 Teach - presenting what you have learnt in some slides or doing a talk on the subject to your team will cement the information you are learning.

👦🏻 Apply - once you understand an area and you can explain why it’s important, apply the newly found technique to your own work. If you don’t apply what you have learnt you are not going to develop new skills or habits.

Keep leading.