How to make the most of your reading

By JULIE MIDDLETON

If you are not reading you should not be leading. It equips you for independent creative thinking, and keeping ahead of the pack means keeping on top of professional book and journal reading.

* Read widely - including the sorts of things you normally would not. Set aside time for reading - say, 10 or 20 minutes. Make use of time on buses or trains.

Grab a handful of interesting-looking but unfamiliar magazines from the library.

Use a dictionary to check words whose meanings you can't work out from the context.

In his latest book, Make Success Your Friend, Public Trust chief executive Tim Sole recommends that people should "read, read well, read widely".

"That is, read some newspapers - not always the same ones; some magazines - not all the same type; and lots of different kinds of books," he says. "Read classics such as Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, biographies, and a selection of today's bestsellers."

* Talk widely. And listen.

* Be curious. Vocabulary arises from experiences. Broaden your world.

A person with a poor vocabulary, says rapid reading teacher Jacque Aldridge, is unlikely to be a logical and cohesive thinker, and others will lower their standards for you unconsciously.

* Know the structure of words - prefixes, roots and suffixes. It will help you grasp meanings. There are about 100 common prefixes, such as "pre" itself, which comes from the Latin "prae", which means "before".

The root, the basic essence of a word, often comes from Latin and Greek. A suffix sits at the end.

* Set yourself goals, such as learning a new word every week (write it down). Here's a starter: tachydidactic. It means being taught rapidly or teaching quickly.

And teachers will tell you that periodic reviewing is essential to retaining the new words.

* Think about a speed reading course, which aims to improve speed and comprehension at the same time.

Tim Sole again: "I attended a rapid reading course, as it was then called, in 1972. It took six weeks at three hours a week plus a small amount of homework.

"At the beginning of my course my reading speed was 520 words a minute, and at the end - with better comprehension - it was 1150 words a minute. We are taught to read at school, but not how to read effectively and efficiently."

* Adopt reading strategies that work for you. The useful book Just About Everything a Manager Needs to Know by Neil Flanagan and Jarvis Finger (Plum Press, plumpress@xtra.co.nz, $54.95) recommends reading with a purpose. Scan a book before spending time on it - jackets, contents, author's credentials and the like.

Size up these aspects, and decide whether you need to spend time on it. Make notes of things you need to remember or reflect on; skim over or skip irrelevant parts. Use the table of contents to narrow your focus to the most relevant parts, or you may be distracted by advertisements and other peripherals.

* Help those around you increase their reading. Engendering a respect for the written word is a positive office move.

Encourage staff to write for trade journals or in-house magazines; set up a centrally located staff library so everyone can keep up to date on business trends.

Delegate reading to others for feedback. And most important, don't feel guilty about reading - that's short-term thinking. According to Norman Cahners, writing in IBM's Think magazine, good readers are "detectives, explorers, scientists, critics and editors ... all active, seeking roles. Reading is a kind of treasure hunt".