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Brain Food Fridays, Number 45: Week Two to Learn Key Skills to Thrive in 2025
Dear Reader,
If you followed my recommendations last week, you should have read a book on active learning and learning strategies. For next week, the focus is on analytical thinking and innovation. This is interesting, because I read an article a few days ago, on futuristic thinking.
Most professionals don’t know how to curate the trends that are coming. If you were able to do that, it would impact the choices you made in work and life. I think that learning analytical thinking and innovation would go a long way in your career.
- Active learning and learning strategies.
- Analytical thinking and innovation.
- Complex problem-solving.
- Creativity, originality, and initiative.
- Reasoning, problem-solving and ideation.
- Critical thinking and analysis.
- Leadership and social influence.
- Resilience, stress tolerance, and flexibility.
- Technology use, monitoring, and control.
- Technology design and programming.
You can choose the book you’d like to read to learn the skill I’ve chosen for you to learn this week. I recommend that you read Non-Obvious Megatrends: How to See What Others Miss and Predict the Future by Rohit Bhargava. I recommend this book a lot because it’s an excellent one. In the book, the author presents his Haystack Method, which helps you to analyze informational text, as well as learn about how to predict the future. This could lead to innovation.
Here’s my book summary of Non-Obvious Megatrends, which will help you to read the book faster. Please don’t use the book summary as a substitute for reading a book. It should complement the book.
[Non-Obvious Megatrends: How to See What Others Miss and Predict the Future by Rohit Bhargava]
You may decide to read another book. Any book you choose to read, make sure that you preview it first. The following video I created last week will help you.
Video to Help You Get the Most from Books
I created a short video to demonstrate how to preview a book before you read it. It’s not professionally done, but it has what you need to read more effectively. I brought up a book on my iPad and quickly grabbed some books from the bookshelf.
The important sections in a book align with your purpose for reading. Other important information would be any that aids your understanding of the text. Read as much of the book as you need to. No more. No less. Think of the 80/20 Principle – read 20 percent of the book to understand 80 percent of the text. When you preview a book first, you know which 20 percent to focus on.
One of the ways to read books faster, is to read a good summary of the book first. This gives you the helicopter view of the book you want to read. But it also gives you a place to hang the information when you read the book. I subscribe to readitfor.me, click the button to subscribe (Affiliate link).
What’s Keeping Me Busy
I’m still working on the membership site. I’m starting off with the first course, Creativity, Innovation, and the Art of Getting Ideas, but it’s taking longer than expected. I asked my niece to review the lessons in the course. She had a lot to say and had some great feedback to offer. Here’s a mentoring moment. When you work on a project, you’re too close to it, so you develop some blind spots. I took some things for granted because I know the information, so I’m making the recommended changes.
The course will consist of books that I’ve read on the topic, and the insights I’ve gained over the years. I’m trying to follow a logical process for the course. That means, I start off with helping the reader to get ideas, making them into bigger and better ideas, and finally applying the ideas. The interesting thing is that my niece said that even though the summary section of my Bookish Notes was important, the first section she read was Avil Beckford’s Musings. She thought it was a great value added. I was thinking that people would be more interested in the Summary section.
In my Musings, you find my analysis and get my years of experience reading and analyzing books. At the end of each unit, I let the participants know it’s decision time. Does she have enough information from what I’ve presented or does she need to read the book. The Bookish Notes I’m creating are not meant to replace the books they’re based off. But I provide sufficient information that you can experiment with the creativity and idea models.
It’s slow going so far because I’m making sure that what I create can help subscribers. As I’ve mentioned two weeks ago, The World Economic Forum says creativity, ideation, innovation, problem-solving, critical thinking, and analysis will serve you well in your business and career over the next five years. I want to help people to develop those skills by applying them in real world situations.
What I’m Reading
- What Is Your What by Steve Olsher
- The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity by Lynda Gratton and, Andrew Scott
I finished reading both books and what a great experience. What Is Your What? helps you to get clarity around your gifts, how you plan to offer them, and your audience. The book is packed with lots of exercises. I set my timer for two hours because I needed to get clear on my gifts. The point I’m telling you is to let you know to spend as much time on a book to get what you need from it. My purpose for reading What Is Your What? was to finally decide on what makes me unique.
The sentence I came up with is to “Empower women small business owners to leverage the ideas from the books they read to solve the problems they face every day.”
Even though The 100-Year book has some good information, I found it draining to read because of so much information. However, we need to pay attention to what the book is saying. Life expectancy is increasing. If you lived to be 100 years, how would that change your livelihood? Would you live a life of poverty because of a longer retirement, or could you be proactive and plan for it? That’s worth thinking about, isn’t it?
Blog Post of the Week: Relevant to Learning the Key Skills to Thrive in 2025
9 Steps to Get the Most Out of Reading Books (infographic) . In this article, I list the steps you can take to get the most out of the book you’ll be reading to learn analytical thinking and innovation. I hope you find it useful.
The Invisible Mentor Resources and Merchandise
On the Resources page of my website, I list a number of tools that I use. You’ll find e-zines to subscribe to, to get notified of free and heavily discounted books. I’ve saved a ton of money doing this. You’ll find book recommendations, other bookish tools and resources. On this same page, you’ll find some of my company merchandise. I appreciate your patronage.
New Service
For a couple of years, professionals have been asking me if I offered coaching or mentoring on effective reading and learning strategies. I created a service where I offer two hours of my time. I’ll teach you reading and learning strategies. Additonally we’ll talk about your learning goals. At the end of our time togther, you’ll have a Personal Learning Development Plan. I have one of these on my wall to remind me of my learning goals. Book Mentor: 2 Hours Coaching Time.
Until next time!
Avil Beckford, Founder, The Invisible Mentor