Recommendation: Tony Buzan

I never finished one of this guy’s books. But you bet I always hit myself when I think of the fact that I didn’t. Because if I did, I’d probably have been 10 times more effective at time management, would not waste unnecessary time studying in 5 hours what I could in 1, and so on.
I read half of two of his books more thoroughly: Use Your Head, and The Speed Reading Book. I skimmed Use Your Memory.
Tony Buzan is the inventor of the Mind Maps technique (or at least, he systematized it and patented it) and the author of a whole series of related books on how to make use of your amazing brain. It tries to spread the word that everyone can be a genius if they want to.
I actually do believe him.
Tony Buzan usually walks the reader through the amazing potential of the human brain in any introductory chapter of his books. A pretty astonishing fact he put forth concerned the human brain and the computer: I can’t remember exact figures but your brain and mine are both capable of processing information that would take the computer a hundred plus (?) years to do, and has I don’t know how many trillion cells I should think, all capable of storing information. The gist of it all is, your brain is powerful, and you’re under-utilising it, and guess what? Buzan will show you how to use it effectively.
Use Your Head talks about how to remember things by showing you that the brain remembers things if they are connected and vivid. If you had a list of 10 disorganised items to remember in order, a good way to remember them is to link them in a comic sequence of events. Say you had ’soap – elephant – fly’ you could imagine a gigantic bar of soap very full of suds – see the soap water oozing out at the sides? Then think of a huge gigantic elephant appearing out of nowhere, perhaps starting as no more than a dot, but in the twinkle of an eye, growing LARGE… the elephant slips on the bar of soap… think of the astonished look on its comic face and how fast it slides on the soap (like on a skateboard), then think that just as it leaves the corner of the imaginary world you created for both it and the soap, the elephant suddenly grew wings and flew… and its face turned to one of indescribable joy… things like that. The unrelated events are now both interconnected and vividly imprinted in your mind.
He goes through other more advanced memorizing techniques as well, like the Roman room system, which consists of thinking of your dream house with all sorts of things that you have to remember inside it – perfect for that shopping list you need in your head when you visit the supermarket. There’s also a number-word system that will be used as an advanced memory technique.
The Speed reading book guarantees that whilst the average person tends to read 200 to 400 words per minute, usually at the lower end, speeds of 1000 words per minute and over are possible. The secret? Your eyes – can take in more than one word at a time. If you don’t believe this, think about how your eyes can take in the view at a blind spot mirror in a split second. Then flip a book open and stare at it for one second: you will realise that you can remember the structure (the paragraphing) of the pages, and, especially, any illustration they have on the page. The second secret is that your brain should be the one doing the reading, not your eyes. After elevating my reading speed to about 800 words per minute, I figure speed readers probably skip words and grasp the general meaning of those words that they glance only momently and

Review: What colour is your Parachute?

What colour is your Parachute? is a best-selling job seeker’s manual, or so the book’s blurb touts itself to be.
If you ask my opinion, it’s even better than that. It’s one of those books that, if one really follows it wholeheartedly, will help one loads in getting THE job. Not just a job, THE job. The job that one is supposed to be in.
After so many entries on book reviews I’ve given up trying to summarise every aspect. It’s impossible. So I’ll just substitute what I cannot remember exactly for a general opinion on how the book was like on the whole, and insert bits that impressed me so much I remembered.
I must confess here: I didn’t finish reading it. But it’s so good I want to go back to it someday.
The basic philosophy of Richard Nelson Bolles (the author) is that the job-seeker should find a job that suits him, not market himself to suit the jobs that are currently in the market.
Good reasons for doing so: you will obviously love your job, if you’ve got interest, you’ve got drive, when you’ve got both, you’re likely to have material, and that makes you cut out for the job.
And when you have all three, the chances are, you’re a very unique individual with that special blend of skills and talents necessary, and it will be hard to replace you, and you will be in that special position doing the thing that, besides you, very few others are capable of doing.
Well, I wonder how that’ll work if you want to be something general, like an Engineer, or a truck driver, or a sales assistant or typist, but I guess nothing beats Drive and Passion.
Bolles starts off trying to get you to know thyself. Know, not just what you like to do, but what skills you have. Which is something that I think is simply great in this book. How many times have you heard people saying, ‘just follow your heart, pal’? Well, some things just need specialised skills that you don’t have. So, skills are an important consideration into getting a job that fits you too.
And: do you like to work with people, data, or things? Imagine that at the end of your life a group of people gathered from all around the world had a dinner held in your honour and everyone said something about you that was praiseworthy. What would you hope to hear mentioned? Role play is big in this book and it does help to make one figure what’s really important to one in life. And in case you worry you’ll be struck dumb and at a loss of what really is important to you, Bolles gives a dozen over suggestions for you to deliberate over. For example, that dinner role play situation: examples included: made a lot of money and had a great life (for the business-minded), was keen to help people and always charitable (for the kind-hearted), someone whose desire was to be a true servant of God (for the religious), someone who stood up for his/her own ideals (for those with firm convictions) etc etc. Take your pick.
Even if you didn’t end up finding out what you really want to do after reading the book (or chances are, reading the book halfway through), you’d at least end up with a better understanding of yourself. I ended up knowing that my top 3 favourite skills (amongst 20 over that his helping words helped me pick out) was: researching, analysing and performing.
Bolles also tries to drum in his readers the fact that a career = job + field. How so? You can’t just find what it is that you want to do, you must also be certain where you want to do it. Say you want to be a teacher. Good! Now where? So many places! His list had at least 12 institutions I think. Which really shocked me. Well, do you want to teach at: kindergartens? primary? secondary? tertiary? university? private institutions? as a classroom teacher? as a professional? doing something like Mr Bolles, teaching as a niche activity? Teaching people how to find jobs? Teaching people effective public speaking? Teaching people at local education instituions how to teach? The list goes on.
Another thing I took home was the fact that he tries to make us combine our top 3 interests to constitute a field. So after ranking all my interests I found out that my top three interests were (I hope they’re accurate, it was actually hard to choose between so many interests!) literature, culture (where by this definition I mean a very broadened and watered down understanding of a people’s history, tradition, way of living, art, society etc) and law. His challenge is to find, in the venn diagram where the three fields meet, that one job where all three interests will be put to good use. I told you, it’s very specialised.
If you ever think it’s impossible… he quoted a rather ‘impossible’ person’s venn diagram whose interests were: psychology, gardening and carpentry. Help me here! Well Bolles said the person followed his advice, which was to start ‘interviewing’ people in each field and asking them, is there a way to combine these three interests? What would I need to get me there? starting with the field that took the most effort to get qualified (in this case, the psychologist). And guess what? The guy eventually found a psychologist who told him there was a field of psychology that used plants to heal people. And as for carpentry, the guy could use his carpentry skills to make the planters that he would employ in gardening.
So… if you ever ended up in a place where you didn’t have the right qualifications for the dream job you’ve identified? Bolles admits that most of the time people will demand a degree in something something and minimum 5 – 10 years experience. But he also showed how people can market themselves even if they don’t have that kind of experience – by marketing their skills. Bolles insists that it is skills that one employs in a job, and having the right skills for the job might actually stand one in better stead. Say you want a job as a journalist. Skills to market: great writing and communication skills, attentiveness to details happening around one.
And for the job-changer, What colour is your Parachute? was equally written for these guys. Bolles was in fact in church ministry when he lost his job and had to change to a different track. He decided to help job-seekers find jobs. Talk about life-changing experiences.
Anyway, if, say, you want to switch to something drastically different – switching both job and field, as in the case of an accountant in a law firm who wants to switch to a medical journalist, say… take the 2-step approach! First, change either career or field. So, either: continue to be an accountant, but this time in a medical institution, or, switch to be a journalist, but continue in a legal institution. Stay in this position for a transition period of 2 to 5 years gaining experience about the other career that one is going to leap into. Then make the transition. This lessens the shock effect on future employers who might be wary of one’s capabilities when one makes too sudden a leap from something completely unrelated to what one is applying for.