Hello. Thursday, got the day right. Confession, I just fell asleep watching Netflix, so this live is a little bit later than anticipated and I’ve crawled into my room going, oh my God, you’ve got to take your face off. I had a photo shoot today so it’s all dolled up. Don’t do bad, don’t do bad. Don’t scrub up too badly, I don’t think. Came into my room to take my face off and then went, oh, I’ve got to do my life and I’m just, as I said, I’m determined to do these 365 days. I had a little look on my schedule and what I actually wanted to talk about today was reading and why it’s so important, and I read a lot.
I used to definitely read a book a week. Years ago I read primarily fiction and crime fiction was my genre of choice and then I flipped to a few years where it’s business books, business books, business books, business books and accounting and business planning and systematization and all that kind of stuff. Then I went a bit, then I got into personal development. I had a little bit of a woo woo tangent for while. I call myself analytical with a woo woo rising. These day I’m trying to get a really good balance of fiction and nonfiction. I don’t actually have my Kindle in my room.
What I do is, because I like to reread nonfiction, I buy them in books, buy like real books, you know, old fashioned paper. For fiction I read it on a Kindle because I read it once, I’m not going to read it again, chances are by the time I’m halfway through the next fiction book, I’ve actually forgotten what the last fiction book was about it, because it kind of goes in like, you know the saying in one ear and out the other? When I read fiction it’s in one eye and comes out somewhere, I don’t really know, but at the moment I’ve got two books tonight where I get to choose what I’m going to start, so welcome into my bedroom too by the way.
One’s probably a bit more deep and meaningful than the other, not sure. One is The Fabulous, so let’s buy a lot, challenge accepted. I’d actually love to go and see her new tour. I think that would be quite good on stage. That’s choice number one. Choice number two, The Holy Shit Moment, How Lasting Change Can Happen in an Instant, by James Hill. I actually picked this up when, you can see it from the back label, when I was in Singapore recently. When I’m in bookshops, and this is how daggy I am, when I’m in a bookshop and they’ve got like walls and walls of books I’d be really keen on reading, I take photos of the books.
Then I, because I can’t lug a whole heap of books around, so then I’ll look for them on sale on websites or I’ll start following the person and read a bit more if I thought the book looked interesting. I’ll read a bit more to find out a bit more about them. What I do and I read my books, because I think all knowledge is good knowledge, it’s so exciting beside my bed, there’s a speaker and a highlighter. Every girl needs a highlighter by her bed, so then I’m reading the book, I can highlight things that I like and then I do that terrible thing that, don’t ever tell my old librarian, I do turn down the corner.
Once I’ve read the book and I’ve highlighted stuff I find relevant, or interesting, or kind of thought provoking, or I’m sure in Celeste’s case it’s going to be something that’s pretty funny. That’s a nice frock actually, I think I’d look good in that frock. If anyone knows Celeste, can you find out how to get that frock please? That’d be great, thanks. I’d appreciate that. Yeah, thanks. Thanks a lot. I don’t need the gym pants, I’d like the frock. I highlight and then I dog ear.
I turn it down and then I go back about a week later after I finished it and I go through and all I do is look at the pages I’ve turned down and reread what I’ve highlighted and then I might make some notes on it online, save it in a Dropbox file. I might turn it into a blog post or some content because it meant something to me, it was thought provoking. One of the things when we were at school, we got taught we had to read books and then we had to regurgitate all the information in exams, but I don’t think we really learnt how to suck it all in. Like suck it all in, absorb it. That’s the word I’m looking for.
I don’t think we learnt how to absorb it all. There’s many ways I’ve read books, the irony I know, I’ve read books on how to retain more information from reading better, something really loopy about doing that, and that one of the suggestions was to highlight or mark and then go back and reread those bits and then make notes, et cetera, so I’m doing that. So far, so good, I think it is helping me remember a little bit more because otherwise this information is going around there like, what do I do that from? Like I talk about with anything, once you learn something, once you discover something, put it into action.
That’s the most important part, so if I get something really useful out of this book when I start reading it, halfway through, or at the end, I will be sharing it and I’ll always say where I picked it up from. It’s just bad karma to people that don’t do that stuff, like bad juju man, like let people know where you found, nothing’s bloody original. Let them know where you got the idea from. How Lasting Change Can Happen in an Instant. Who doesn’t want more of that?
All I’m going to say is tonight is instead of going to bed with Netflix, which I didn’t do, I sat on the couch and I fell asleep with Charlie. I don’t actually have a TV in my room because I think they’re really bad for you and they wake me up usually. Must be tired, so read a book, take some notes, go back to it and see what it really meant to you, and then do something with that information. Okay? I’m going to go and take these tired eyes and take this makeup off and get my beauty sleep. Night night.