Get Better at Getting Better

by Chandramouli Venkatesan

Books and training programmes have the potential to become change events in your get-better journey. Getting better by yourself normally results in continuous learning and a linear curve. Books and training can create step jumps and inflection points in that curve. To leverage them, it is important that you go beyond knowing the content to embedding the content—avoid the Friday/Monday syndrome. Be it a training programme or a book, make a list of things you want to imbibe and create time, space and discipline to embed them. Start the imbibing process from the next day—don’t postpone it. To fully utilize a book, it is important to read it at a fair pace. A book read over many months is unlikely to make you better as you lose the links between chapters. Some of the content may not be relevant right away, but might be useful to a situation you face in the future. You must know the content well to be able to come back to it when required. Books and training programmes improve your core capabilities and that is why they are crucial to getting better.