Effective Reading Strategies and The Bottom-Line Book Club

This podcast is about how to read and learn effectively without being overwhelmed by information overload. It’s just over 53 minutes long and spans blog reading to book reading to learning strategies. There’s a story behind this podcast, though…

A few weeks ago, Cath Duncan asked me to be the guest expert for her Bottom-line on A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink. To give me some more background on the Bottom-line Book Club, she let me listen to her Bottom-line on Nick Williams’ The Work We Were Born to Do. I really liked her coverage of Williams’ book, but I let her know that I didn’t know whether the Bottom-line Book Club was actually for the people that she was saying it was for.

Let me explain: the Bottom-line Book Club (BLBC) was originally pitched as something that was for busy people who wanted to get the basic ideas from influential books but didn’t have time to read all of the books to figure out what those ideas were. So Cath would read a book in the context of everything else she has read and cover the high-value concepts from that book. Her coverage, then, would let people get the important stuff from the books without them having to read the book. She also interviews the author or an expert on the topic, which is pretty fantastic when you think about it: not only do you hear Cath’s perspective, but you hear the perspective of other experts, as well.

The quality of the product was exceptional – it’s hard to imagine that she does this every month – and while I was excited by the content, I immediately sensed that it wouldn’t save me any time; in fact, after reading her Bottom-line and hearing Williams’ talk about the book, I wanted to read his book even more! So I wrote this to Cath:

I’ll have to comment that I’m probably not your Right Person for BLBC. I’m an avid reader and deep consumer, so reading your BL only made me realize that I wanted to read Nick’s book myself. If I were to take your awesomeness, his awesomeness, and then add my own experience, how much more would I get out of it? I also read 6-10 books a month, too, and reading is just a part of my holistic growth process.

We continued to talk about the BLBC and who it was for, and much of what we talked about was already on Cath’s mind, but she was also curious about how I’m able to read that much with everything else that I’ve got going on and thought that it’d be a good discussion for a lot of people. So we jumped on the phone and talked about effective reading and learning strategies and what the real benefit of it is.

Cath ended up making some changes to the Bottom-line Book Club, and, while I’ve always thought it was an awesome program, I think it’s now much clearer what you’ll get out of it. You can join one of two membership programs that give different levels of information – this’ll help you get what you need without getting overwhelmed by how much is already there. If you’d rather just get the Bottom-line for a particular book, you can do that, too. This is a great resource for coaches and people really into the personal development since you can integrate the different perspectives when you share the insights with others.

I’ve already mentioned that you get content from Cath and either the author or an expert, but you also get emails from Cath that help you integrate the ideas from the Bottom-lines. You might think this would be overwhelming, but the truth is that you really learn by implementing ideas, not just adding them to the stock of stuff you already know. If you’d rather just learn random ideas and not apply them, skip out on this program and pick up Trivial Pursuit, but if you’re interested in learning and growing, then the Bottom-line Book Club is right for you.

I hope you enjoy our discussion of effective reading and learning strategies, and I think you’ll like our discussion on a Whole New Mind, too. It’s the book Cath covers this month, so if you’re interested, run over and check out the Bottom-line Book Club.

The links to the Bottom-Line Book Club in this post are affiliate links and this review falls under my review guidelines. Please sign up for this program by using my link if this review helps you make an informed purchase. Thanks!