Effective managers read. They read broadly and regularly. Here are some tips to guide your own reading.
Join a library
If you are in Singapore, then you have no excuse. Singapore's public libraries are excellent, well stocked and easily accessible. You can go online to reserve items, you will be notified when they are ready for collection, and then collect from the closest library.
Read the books you want to read, not the ones you should read.
The books you should read are still sitting on your shelf collecting dust. No benefit to anyone except the author and book seller.
If you have to force yourself to read and learn in the domain of your job, then maybe you are in the wrong job?
You don't need to finish
If the book doesn't catch your attention, put it down. That's the great thing about a library. If it's uninteresting, return it.
Only read 2 books in any one topic or area.
Especially today, books tend to repeat the same ideas. This is an interesting phenomena on it's own however it doesn't help us learn.
Be wary of "best sellers".
A best seller is of course a book that sells in volume and publishers achieve this by targeting the largest common denominator (The cynics would say lowest common denominator).
Compare Blink by Malcolm Gladwell and Intuition: Its Powers and Perils by Professor David Myers. I read and enjoyed both books and both are concerned with the same topic. Intuition was a considerably more robust and valuable however Blink sold many times more copies.
Recent books are not necessarily any better than the older ones.
Innovation and Entrepreneurship by Peter Drucker, The Mind of the Strategist by Kenichi Ohmae or The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization by Peter Senge contain insights just as relevant today as when they were first written.
Read widely
There is much to be learnt from books in multiple fields. For example one of the most influential books in organisational thinking is Sociobiology by E.O. Wilson. A good novel is just as valuable.
Finally, do actually read
I read somewhere that the average manager buys five books a year and reads none of them. I don't know if this is true. Judging by the number of unread books I see on manager's shelves, it's pretty close.
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