How to Pair Books to Accelerate Your Career

Develop the habit of pairing or grouping books to extend your knowledge of a topic. Doiing this enables you to accelerate your career

Introduction: Pair Books to Accelerate Your Career

Though active participation in real-world environments is encouraged, people find that reading books helps them keep current with events and provides new insight into different problems from a novel angle. As part of continuing their education, people often find that reading books is a good way to fuel one's curiosity and intellect so that they are better prepared for any work scenario. By pairing or grouping books, you'll broaden your knowledge and perspective on a topic.

For years, I have promoted the idea that if you want to lay a solid base to really understand a topic, you must read at least five of the best books on the subject. However, when you're reading a book, think about what companion book you can couple with it. Also, use what you already know and the expertise that you have gained in your career as a way to enrich these connections even more. Once the books are paired, do a self-review. See how this pair supports each other, and how they reinforce each other, because that is how you really get a solid understanding. A section of each Bookish Note I create for the Art of Learning Leadership Academy is called Book Pairing. Sometimes, when I pair or group books together, it’s an easy exercise. Other times it feels like it's a hair-raising one. And I struggle to come up with a suitable match.

Recently, I read If You Ask Me by Betty White, the actress who recently died. While writing the Bookish Note for the book, I was concerned about the Book Pairing section. I haven't read many memoirs and biographies, so I was unsure of how to pair or group this book. For the past two months, I've been more intentional about reading memoirs and biographies because on Wednesdays, I want to dedicate the book summaries on my blog, The Invisible Mentor, to that genre.

Pairs Books to Expand Your Mind

When we pair a book together, we can benefit in more ways by reading together.
Your brain should process the concepts differently.
Give you opportunities to interact with areas you may never have considered.
Increase understanding of concepts.

A good way to get people to read more widely is by pairing or grouping books. It allows you to get an easier grasp of new information and encourages interest and participation. What I have noticed about consistently pairing and grouping books is that sometimes it seems obvious; and other times, this happens, and it seems non-obvious. The answer may come to you when your mind isn't thinking about it consciously.

I was struggling to know what to pair or group with If You Ask Me. I was thinking about which other biographies or memoirs it might complement. Nothing was coming to me, so I started working on another task. I came across a concept called irrelevant reading. This is reading that has nothing to do with what you're working on.

Often, when you’re creatively problem-solving, during those moments of rest, or when you're working on an unrelated task, the solution to your problem comes to you. It popped into my head that I needed to pair If You Ask Me with Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life. You may be wondering how I came up with that book pairing.

Betty White died about three weeks shy of her one hundredth birthday. Ikigai is about longevity, and the reason you get up in the mornings. One of the characteristics of people who live very long is that they never retire - they remain active. Betty White was still working in her nineties. I was able to pair the books together, based on the thread — longevity.

Book Pairing Guidelines

There are no hard-and-fast rules when it comes to pairing books. Think about which topics you want to learn more about and how to apply the information. Group books to read based on the topic you'd like to learn. I've mentioned that you should choose at least five o the best books on the topic. What I’ve discovered is that it’s best not to read the five books one after the other. I get overloaded whenever I do that. Therefore, I recommend that you read one or two unrelated books in between. That is, you engage in irrelevant reading.

Choose books that have different genres and perspectives. And what often happens, is that you’ll find that the books you thought had nothing to do with the topic you’re interested in, will be connected somehow. Your brain will find connections. And you’ll end up understanding your topic in new ways. You're more than a book-reader; you're a life-reader. You're a reader who learns from books. You generate ideas from the books you read.

According to Rohit Bhargava, author of Non-Obvious 2019: How To Predict Trends And Win The Future, one can define the concept of irrelevant reading as understanding the relation between things without understanding the way they are actually connected.

“The idea of overlapping a series of ideas for the purpose of generating a new product or service is known as intersection thinking. You can use ideas such as the one above to power and accelerate your own success. It allows you to think in a way your competitors aren’t.”

You have at least five titles you want to read about a topic. When you’re reading them, you read other unrelated books in between. Your mind goes into weird and wonderful places. A good exercise is to figure out how to connect these unrelated books. Perhaps you can do so using only a thread, or even one idea.

I don’t have a system for organizing and pairing books. All the connections occur when I’m in the process of reading, and sometimes when I’m reflecting. Generally, the connections fall into place when I read and make sense out of my readings.

If you’ve never paired or grouped books, a logical place to start is to ask and answer the following questions.

How does the book connect to what you know?
What problem is the author trying to solve?
At the end of the book, did he or she solve the problem?
What breakthroughs did you have while reading the book?
Does the book contain facts that are somewhat surprising because they are different from what you know?

Final Thoughts: Pairing Books to Accelerate Your Career

Having the right book beside you will give you the opportunity to learn about a topic and become a more knowledgeable person. During your learning journey, and as you delve deeper into a topic, you will become a more knowledgeable person. And that’ll will enable you to accelerate your career.