Brian Tracy recommends Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman and Anders Ericsson's work on focused practice. He notes 80% of adults haven't read a book in five years, and argues that reading regularly is how you stay competitive and develop leadership skills.
People are always asking me about the books that I've been reading.
And I read not only a lot.
Of books, but I read a lot.
Of book excerpts and summaries.
And not only that, I read reviews.
Of books that contain the very best ideas.
So for example, some of my favorite books recently have been Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. What Daniel Kahneman, who's a Nobel Prize winning author on this subject, says that.
You use fast thinking for your daily.
Activities, but you need to use slow thinking when you're making big decisions that have long term consequences. He says, and it's a great thought, is that many people make long term decisions with fast thinking and invariably make mistakes.
Another book that I'm reading is by.
Philip Cotter on marketing and and competitive advantage. And what Cotter says is that for a company to be successful or a product, it must offer a unique value added. It must offer something that no other product or service offers to that specific customer. Now, when you take this idea of competitive advantage, you have to apply it to your own life as well. For you to be really successful and.
Highly paid, you have to have a unique added value. You have to have a competitive advantage.
And one of the questions that we.
Ask in almost every seminar is what one skill, if you are absolutely excellent at it, would help you the most to increase your income? What one skill, if you did it consistently at a high level, would help you the most? And whatever it is, set it as a goal and make a plan and.
Work on it every day.
What they have found in the work.
By Anders Ericsson at the University of Florida, that your ability to focus in and learn a single skill one at a time is the key to climbing up the ladder of success and high income. A good question I would ask you.
Is what have you read recently?
Do you know that 80% of adults.
Have not been in a bookstore or.
Read a book in the last five years and that the rule is that readers are leaders?
There's a wonderful line that I learned when I was young.
It says, reading is to the mind as exercise is to the body. You see, reading requires the full concentration of your mind.
If you're actually reading, you cannot think.
About anything else or do anything else. And it's almost like doing mental calisthenics. It makes you smarter, it activates more of your brain, it expands your perspective. You see different possibilities and opportunities when.
You make a commitment to read on a regular basis.
So I'll give you a very powerful piece of advice. And this piece of advice can make you rich, happy, successful and thin. And it is. Leave things off. Stop being hooked up to technology all day. Turn everything off and sit down quietly.
Leave off the television, the radio, the.
Computer, the smartphone, and just quietly feed your mind with rich mental protein with.
Ideas that can help you to do.
Your work better, to think better, to make better decisions. Remember, leaders are readers, and readers become leaders.
