Breathing Life into Books with Your Mana‘o
Preface:
Your Mana‘o = your thoughts, beliefs and convictions
‘Ike loa = the Hawaiian value of learning. We are celebrating it this month on Talking Story with Joyful Jubilant Learning 2006
Books = one of my obsessions
Coaching = what I do, and with books, obsession blends with my ho‘ohana
This, which follows = an actual message I posted on a Basecamp project management site for a team leader championing a project to reinvent the use of email in his company.
Aloha Robert (and everyone), About that book…
… that I handed you yesterday morning. Because you are just getting to know me, I thought I’d explain how I love to use books.
In my mana‘o, books are for learning connections. The learning gets magnified in some very extraordinary ways when books are annotated, that is, when they are written in by the person who reads them. So please, when you read it, or even just parts of it, have a pen in hand, and feel free to mark it up, even though you are just borrowing it and giving it back to me — especially since you are giving it back to me!
As I mentioned to you, I had just bought it because the title jumped out at me, Never Check Email in the Morning and because I was somewhat familiar with the author. Therefore, it was a little outside the ordinary, in that I gave it to you before I’d actually read it myself, for otherwise you would have seen my writing all over it.
I’ll underline short phrases, circle words I like, bracket long passages, sketch visual conceptions of what the author described in the white spaces, but most of all, I write in the margins, writing what I think in response to the author’s assertions. Or, I’ll note the action steps I’ll immediately take when I put the book down, actions which will cement my learning with a possible new good habit. During my reading, those small post-it flags are usually sticking out all over the place, marking the actions I haven’t taken yet, and need to.
And I trade off with people all the time, particularly with people I coach, and particularly with people I care about. So welcome to my book club!
Normally, it works like this:
- I read, mark as I go, and when I’m done, I hand off the book to someone else.
- They read it, mark as they go, and when they’re done, they hand it back to me. Often we’ll talk about it and compare our impressions, but still,
- I’ll always go back and read it for the second time, and I keep marking it up because to be sure, I’ve learned even more by then, and the reading will strike me differently.
So the only difference this time is that you’re first! I’m posting my note here because the book relates to your team project … pass it around to everyone in your team and we can have a group mark-up!
With aloha, Rosa
Do you have some annotation habits to help us learn from too? Please comment for us!
Related Reading:
Have you kept your books in pristine condition up until now? Perhaps reading a bit more about this will eventually change your habits too:
- 7 More Ways to get the most from Books
- A Dozen Myths about Reading
- How to Read a Business Book— by Bren Connelly at Slacker Manager
- Twelve Ways to Mark up a Book— by Bert Webb at Open Loops
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