The Role of Reading and Knowledge in Personal Development
My thoughts keep occasionally swirling back to this topic. A number of reasons:
1. I’m always interested in further developing my knowledge
2. I’m always seeking the most effective way of doing things, including (1) above
3. I’m always challenging myself on how I’m currently approaching things.
I’m trying to put the deliberate practice into my own self development.
In the series of talks that I’ve been doing at Madgex for the ideas and learnings programme, I’ve had a purpose or focus for my learning. The research and knowledge gathering that I’ve done has been done against an operational need.
There seemed to be a view that it was possible to get too big for reading that has gnawed at me since I wrote the post. I’m still hoping that I misinterpreted the article I read.
All of these things together have lead me to wonder two things:
1. Do the consumers of information always need an ‘operative or operational purpose’ to maximise the effectiveness of their consumption and subsequent usage. Knowledge in advance of need being an inefficient use of time?
2. Does the nature of both academic and mainstream publishing mean that to have a chance of being published there has to be a niche focus or positioning? That the lack of breadth to subject matter is a direct result of a bias for differentiation? (with due reference to a conversation with C. Turner for prompting this thought)
The impact that this has on learning and personal development is interesting. Does the effort that we have to put into assimilating the pockets of information aid learning by increasing engagement through the value add of linkage?
To be frank, I think I might be off on one ;-)
Just Seven Things 