Normally I don’t do new year’s resolutions but this year my plan is to *NOT* read any books!
I will no longer seek to consume ever more content on business, leadership, or coaching.
Instead, I will continue to learn by doing. I will deliver more executive coaching, leadership programmes, and team workshops. And for any additional personal development needs I will invest in real experiential training and continued supervision.
But not business books.
We are constantly told to improve ourselves. To eat better. To exercise more. To get up at 5 am and do two hours of meditation before work. And to read the latest books.
Stuff that.
Fellow coaches will recognise what I mean. In our never-ending quest for learning, we try to devour all the knowledge we can lay our hands on. Hardly a day goes by without someone announcing their latest book on coaching or leadership. And so our Tsundoku* guilt just grows. (*the Japanese word for a pile of unread books)
But we didn’t to learn to swim from a book – why should anything else be different? I have a PhD in satellite geodesy but I learned more from wrestling a tripod through a muddy field than from any book I ever read on the subject.
What I do now is no different. In fact, it is even more so. It is more experiential, embodied, real and human.
I will continue to learn – by doing. But I will not continue to buy and read books that are basically 1-page ideas expanded to 300 pages. I am no longer subscribing to an industrial complex where authors give each other glowing reviews for describing the same thing in umpteen different ways. A thing that can only be experienced by doing it.
Instead, I will just light that match 🚀
(And yes, this is my own squiggly drawing… things don’t need to be perfect!)
Happy New Year… what are you NOT doing in 2024?
True Horizon Coaching 