Speed Reading And Value Redesign
There are a lot of things we want to change in our life. It was “Reading” for me.
I like to read English books more than Japanese books when it comes to business. But, when I read English books, it’s 3 times as slow as Japanese books. Because English is my 2nd language. I tried some fast reading techniques such as skimming and eye training. It had some effects but not so much. I felt I cannot gain knowledge like others from English books.
Change
One day, I decided to stop trying to read books faster. In other words, I stopped using KPI: “Read more books faster”. The reason is very simple. My motivation for reading is to acquire knowledge. (Yes. I’m not a person to read novels.) Instead, I chose “knowledge” itself as KPI. My new KPI became “Acquire new own knowledge quickly”.
How it works
With the old KPI (“Read more books faster”), I focused how to understand what is described more quickly and how not to read unnecessary part. As a result, I was frustrated when I couldn’t finish the book by the time I expected.
After applying the new KPI (“Acquire new own knowledge quickly”), I stopped trying to understand what the author wants to say. For instance, when a book has huge volume, I considered it like,
- Filled with redundant or unnecessary part
- Filled with a lot of different information
For the 1st case, I can skip or I even can choose not reading the book. For the 2nd case, I value for each part before reading based on my curiosity. And I decide when to read which part and what not to read.
By this change, I can gain more knowledge 3 times faster. Because;
- I can stop reading books which eat my time compared to the value.
- I can skip parts which the author value as I want.
- I can stop reading and restart it as I want.
- I can easily keep author’s positioning/bias in mind.
- I can spare more time to brew own thought
Conclusion
The way to enjoy books depends on a person. The point here is this change redesigned the value of “Reading”. I stopped taking the value which the author wants to provide. Instead, I take the value which I create when I see what the author describe. My value and the author’s value are different.
This value redesign can be applied to a lot of things. In business, we may be able to increase customer satisfaction dramatically by cutting process which stakeholders believe important. We may be able to create different value to the same product by reducing the focus to the value which looks like great value.
Are you redesigning everyday things?
