“It’s easy to confuse the amassing of tactics with actual work. The work is the work.”
(From williejackson.com)
Check out Willie Jackson’s blog, if you haven’t already yet. Willie’s writing rides the line of sharp-marketing-insights-meets-personal-journal, but I find value in every post, which seems to be exceedingly rare these days. This last line from his most recent entry (quoted above) really resonated with me in regards to ActionableBooks.com, specifically.
We provide free business book summaries with personality. Hundreds of them, with hundreds more coming this year. But as with the books themselves, my concern is that people read the summaries, say “that was interesting” and move on with their day. Doing that – reading them and moving on – takes the summaries out of the realm of valuable and turn them into a distraction. Honestly, I think we read enough. Unless you’re applying what you read, your reading is recreational. Nothing wrong with that, but don’t pretend you’re “working” when you’re reading. You’re working when you’re doing the work. Leverage your books. Put them to work. Do something with them.
To help you out, all our summaries moving forward end with a question raised by the content of the summary. Answer the question publicly in the comments section and get some accountability out of it or just answer them in a journal, but do yourself a favor and answer them. You owe it to yourself to put what you’re learning into practice.
