Being inspired by Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren book, How to Read a Book. I have (or in the process of) composed my list of top ten books that will inspire me for a lifetime.
- The Holy Bible (KJV version)
- Think and Grow Rich (Napoleon Hill)
- Positive Thinking Everyday (Norman Vincent Peale)
- Daily Motivations for African-American Success (Dennis Kimbro)
- Proper Names… (Win Worley)
- The Strangest Secret (Earl Nightingale)
- The University of Success (Og Mandino)
- How to Eat to Live (Elijah Muhammad)
- Rich Dad Poor Dad (Robert Kiyosaki)
- My Own Personal Journals (RM)
Below is taken from the Readingraphics 08/31/2020 Email:
Do you know that there’s one thing top leaders and business tycoons like Bill Gates, Elon Musk and Oprah Winfrey have in common? Each of them adopt the “5-hour rule”, i.e. they set aside at least 5 hours each week for these 3 things: read, reflect, experiment.
1. READ
Billionaire, David Rubenstein, reads 6 books a week.
Oprah Winfrey says, “Books were my pass to personal freedom.”
Arthur Blank, co-founder of Home Depot, reads 2 hours a day.
Billionaire, Dan Gilbert, reads 1-2 hours a day.
You get the picture… they’re constantly absorbing new knowledge and broadening their perspectives. But, that is not all. They also do 2 other things:
2. REFLECT
LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner sets aside 2 hours of thinking time per day.
Billionaire, Ray Dalio, logs his mistakes into a system that’s accessible to all his employees, and schedules time with his team to find the root cause.
AOL CEO Tim Armstrong asks his senior team to dedicate 4 hrs a week for thinking.
Billionaire entrepreneur Sara Blakely journals extensively, and logs down all the “disasters” that have led her to bigger gifts.
Yes, they take time out to think deeply about what they’ve learnt. And finally, they take action to validate their learning, through rapid experimentation.
3. EXPERIMENT
America’s founding father, Benjamin Franklin, set aside time throughout his life doing experiments, masterminding with like-minded individuals, and tracking his virtues.
Google was known for setting aside 20% of their employees’ work time for innovation, leading to the birth of big ideas like Gmail, AdSense and Google Talk. [We say “was” because they’ve scrapped it for “focused innovation” in 2013, but that’s a story for another time].
Genius Thomas Edison would systematically test each and every possible solution to his innovations until he finds his breakthrough.
Leonardo da Vinci, one of the most brilliant minds in history, spends his entire life questioning and experimenting to find answers to his questions. In fact, learning, thinking and experimentation are integral parts of the 7 “Da Vincian principles” behind his genius
RobertMcWilliams.com 