Tag Archives: reading



Opportunities are a vacuum for ideas, you just need to connect the two

April 11th, 2010

Just to revisit let’s look at Will Smith’s two things to be successful:

Running & Reading.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEMEBBwO6J8

They do go hand in hand. Reading gives you knew ideas and running gives you an opportunity to digest them.

So why is it one person reads books takes away tremendous value and nada for others.

The reason I ask is I know plenty of intelligent people who read ‘the books’ yet they don’t appear to be that much improved by it.

The reason is opportunity, they don’t have the opportunity or the ability to make an opportunity to execute the ideas they’ve gleamed.

No opportunity = no risk = no success = no learning.

So why would we expect them to get the most out of it?


Asking the right questions; lessons learnt from reading a book

October 14th, 2009

Reading a book is an interesting experience, why do you start? Why do you continue? Why do you finish? Why do you tell others about it?

The answers to these surprisingly basic questions will probably yield more than you first realise.

Why do you start?

  • The back cover sold you on it
  • You heard great things about it
  • You had spare time of which you decided to read

Why do you continue, once you read one page why do you keep turning? Page after page?

  • Incomplete story, want to know the end
  • There is a lead in to the next page (how often do you stop reading at the end of a chapter vs the middle?)
  • It is little effort to do so

Why do you finish?

  • You wanted to get the full story
  • It was easy once you’d started
  • Satisfaction gained from finishing

Why do you tell others about it?

  • Story aka experience was so good want to share
  • They saw you with physical object, easy to share ie can loan my book
  • Talking point of which you are confident enough to talk on
  • If your friends like it they will think favourably of you (status)

Amazing what you can learn just by second guessing something you already do or most importantly by asking the right questions.


Running & Reading

April 2nd, 2009

Watch this quick clip of Will Smith receiving his award at the Childrens Choice 2005.

Makes sense now that he is one of the most successful male actors of our time… in summary:

1) Any problem you have had someone has already experienced it & solved it before (potentially in a different context but same framework).
2) Running (or any exercise) forces you to push yourself and squash the quitting voice inside you.



What are you doing all the way down here? You could:
- View my about page
- Or for first timers the New Here? page
- Or maybe email this to a friend
- Or subscribe to get blog updates