The 3 R’s-> Read, Rest, Repeat
Could also be Read, Read, Read…
I was always wondering how you can archive more, how you can improve and get the best of yourself. Well, let’s be honest you cannot always be like a cheerleader, instead, sometimes you feel like a small snail going to slow in this world, right? and that’s fine! Why we should always be up and don’t allow ourselves to be sad? to take time to process things in life?
Backing to the idea of how to improve and how to achieve things in life ( and here doesn't matter if we are talking about professional skills in your profession or in terms of personal and daily skills ). One great thing I found out is really helpful, even on those sad moments → READING.
And why reading? Well, you already know ( because you are reading this, right?) reading increases our capability to process things, increase a lot our knowledge about a topic, and sometimes make arise to the surface those questions from deep inside us, those we didn’t know where there.
And what to read? EVERTYHING. For old book lovers, like me, the best reading is from a real book, if it is an old book ( oh yes! that smell you can fell and the sensation of years, and years) better, the sensation of having that book on your hands is amazing. But readers don’t attach to one format, personally I found out that sometimes short readings, articles, tutorials are great too ( digital format here).
I found out ( with the time, of course) that reading is not only benefits for the skill you want or maybe you need to improve, is also a way in which you can keep you brain working, and frequently you will discover things that in other way were really far away from you.
Let’s mention some example and you can figure yourself the picture here:
Let’s supposed you need to improve your reading skill in English (assuming here that you are not an English native speaker), what a faster way that reading daily? In that case, probably you will need to have a dictionary at hand ( I strongly recommend: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/ ). You are wondering to this point → what should I read? Well let me tell you, from my own experience don’t just read official things from English books, usually, those ones are very boring and they are not the original texts. So my advice here is to read everything from an English newspaper to articles related to your profession, to articles for a variety of topics, those you can find it here in Medium or any other online site. Navigate on the net or just let yourself be carried away by the breeze on the internet!
One thing which makes the difference is to not stick with just one type of text, let say not only read newspapers for news on your country or neighborhood, keep your mind open and read also those things that you maybe not like too much, because you can find there interesting and fun facts.
The more you read, the more variety you choose, the more your mind will be open to new and diverse stuff, and more important the more you will learn, that I guaranty you. Because another thing that reading gives us, apart from learning something, in particular, is the possibility to connect the dots. It happens very often to me that I keep information that I read somewhere and in front of a situation I’m able to relate it and probably make analogies. We are connecting dots without even know it.
Let’s go with another example: I’m a QA engineer, so we all assumed I will read technical stuff, like new tools for testing, or maybe a tutorial to learn new things, or whatever we can relate to software engineer or programming. Ok, that is pretty much what I usually read, but also I'm a huge fan of science fiction ( Till the point I have my favorite ever → Issac Asimov) so usually, I’m also reading science fiction, to be honest I started a new book ( REAL book ) a few days ago. But I don't just keep myself in the comfort zone, only the things I know and I enjoy reading. I started again ( I have to admit the situation about the COVID-19 make me do it again) the newspapers. But apart from that, I like to venture into new things ( I’m a very curious person) and read things that I’ve never read before, or even things that I don’t have a clue what they are about. Recently I found a free course of IA https://academy.infinite.red/p/ai-demystified-free-5-day-mini-course and I’m learning new things!
My advice here is READ, read a lot, read things that you like for sure, but also read things that make you wonder, that makes you ask, that may relax you, that make you laugh, read things that you never imagine you would read, but READ!
Read you next time!!
