How book summaries can help enhance your professional skills
“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” – Mahatma Gandhi
It’s 5 am, and the alarm clock is blaring. Time to get up, get the kids ready, and off to school. Then it’s time to head to work, pick the kids back up, make dinner, play with them, get them to bed, and… I’m exhausted.
In all of that, there’s very little time for me—very little time to do anything I really enjoy, like writing, drawing, or even reading. At least, that’s what I thought for the longest time.
In high school, I would read the SparkNotes versions of books to get by for book reviews or reports. But if I wanted to delve deeply into a book, I always thought I needed to read every word. Turns out, I don’t.
What I found out is that it’s not all about how many books you can read cover to cover (like I always used to do). That’s not the only way to learn, whether for personal reasons or to improve your professional skills.
It’s about just taking a little time wherever you can get it. And that was where reading book summaries came in.
Takes less time
You don’t have hours in a day to devote to reading. At least, if you’re like me, you don’t. Reading the same book for a month or more is not appealing. By then, I’ve forgotten what happened at the beginning, and I only retain a portion of what I wanted to.
With book summaries, I can get the important information from the book in a short amount of time. Generally, I can read a summary in a day, and it’s just like reading the book itself. I don’t get the personal stories and some of the details, but I do get the important stuff quickly.
Get details about what matters
Now, I said you don’t get details when it comes to book summaries. That’s not entirely true. You do get details, but just the important ones. Summaries don’t have a lot of space, so instead of telling you all about the red suit the author wrote about, the summary dedicates details to things like how to word your proposal.
The people who write these summaries read the book word for word. Then they weed out the unimportant things and focus on the details you actually need to get the most out of the book. For me, that’s great because when I read all the details, my mind tends to focus entirely too much on the unimportant ones instead of what I want to remember.
Know what to read next
Summaries are great and can provide a lot of information on their own. But they also help you decide whether a book is worth reading more of. When I read through a summary, I can decide if it’s enough or if it’s so awesome that I want to know more.
That way, I know if I want to devote my limited time to reading the full book. Or maybe it just means I want to focus my summary reading on a specific area (or avoid a certain area).
Save some money
For me, buying new books is a hobby and something I love to do. But I definitely don’t want to spend money on books I won’t like. Reading a summary means I’m saving my money for the books that are really important to me.
If I buy a book and don’t like it, I’m out the money. But with summaries, I’m actually buying a service, not an individual summary. So if I don’t like one, I can switch to a different book summary without losing anything.
Explore new areas
This ties into saving money, but it’s also its own point. Using book summaries lets me explore new topics I might not have considered before. If I’m looking at buying a book that costs $20 or more, I’m very careful about my selection and not likely to branch out from what I’m already fairly sure I’ll like.
However, if I have a service where I can read unlimited summaries, I’m more likely to explore summaries on topics I’ve never considered before. That means I can explore and learn new things, maybe even find new hobbies I will love. It’s a great opportunity to enhance my skills and open my mind.
It’s just plain fun
I love the opportunity to read many different books in a short amount of time. I enjoy picking out a summary and learning a lot in a few minutes a day. I love exploring new topics and ideas and getting to experience new authors.
As a business person, all of these things allow me to improve my professional skills and teach me ways to enhance my abilities at work. But they’re also great for my personal life. Every time I “open” a new book, it feels exciting, like there are so many possibilities, and I can’t wait to see how I can apply them to my life.
