My low-maintenance hobby is gardening.

By low-maintenance I mean that I can do it when I feel like it and ignore it when I’ve got other things to do.

Sit down for this statistic. I don’t have a large yard. We’ve been in this house for five years. I’ve spent more than $30,000 to create the yard I want. And the result? My wife and I LOVE our yard.

We go there. We do things in the yard. We have people over. We see humming birds and butterflies almost every day. We have plants that only bloom two weeks out of the year. And we enjoy them for every day of those two weeks.

But sometimes we get too busy.

I have two Monster rose bushes. One is an amazing lavender color (guys: that’s a light purple) and the other is a great dark red. There are other roses, but these two are on either side of my weeping ornamental cherry tree. And these roses are almost as big as your head.

I’m not kidding. These are “freakin’ huge” roses. And I let the bushes get to be about six feet tall. So they’re massive and awe-inspiring. People as me whether I’ve fed them steroids or something.

But this year, at the very height of their first bloom, I have been four different cities and run all over the place. I’ve literally been too busy to stop and smell the roses. And I realized this afternoon that the spectacle is beginning to fade. The super explosion is almost over.

And I just about missed it.

The good thing about roses is: They’ll keep blooming. They’ll give me another chance.

Maybe that’s what I like about gardening. I always get another chance.

My daughter’s 16th birthday is this weekend. So I’ll be around for sure. But she’s going to have a bunch of friends over, so I won’t really be welcome to hang out with them all day.

Where will I be? I’ll be pruning the roses and the bottle brush bushes. I’ll refill the bird feeders. And I might replace a couple of straggling plants that bring more irritation than joy.

But I won’t feel left out of the birthday party either. For some miraculous reason, God has given us a daughter who says she loves us — in front of her friends. She talks to us about problems. She schemes with us about jobs and friends and school.

The good news for me is: I can put my attention somewhere else for a few days here and a few days there and my relationship with my daughter will still be good. Just like the garden. I can put my attention somewhere else and it will be fine.

But if I turn my attention away at the wrong time, or for too long? Well, I’ll miss something important.

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For this exercise you will need the following:

- A Book
- Large Post-It Notes
- Pen or Pencil
- Highlighter
- Small pad of paper (optional)

Step One: Smell the Book.

Okay. Not really. But you do want to familiarize yourself with the book. Flip through it. Read the table of contents. What’s the plan? Where are you going?

Are there cartoons, tables, charts, etc.?

Step Two: Take a small stack of Post It notes and put them in the front of the book. I like the ones that 3″x5″ or 4″x6″ with lines. But the small 3×3 work just fine.

You need these so you can jot notes to yourself while reading. Remember, ideas are easily lost if you don’t write them down and take action. So the first part of that habit of success is to write it down.

This does not affect your ability to write comments in the margins.

Step Three: Read.
Obviously, at some point you’re going to actually read the book. Just remember that all of your formal education has taught you the wrong way to read.

Reading is not a one-way process. It is not an activity in which you passively ingest knowledge and try to understand and accept everything you find in the book.

You’re reading the book for a purpose. Let’s assume that purpose is to improve your self, your skills, your business, your personal life, etc.

If you’ve been around long enough, you might remember the “capture” mode on computers. It basically worked like this: You prepare your local machine to capture everything that scrolls across the screen. Then you execute a command on the remote computer to send the information you want. When the “download” is complete, you close the capture mode and save the file.

That’s not how you read a book!

You don’t ingest a book: You interpret it.

Good books are not written to give you the absolute truth so you can turn off your brain and just “be” successful.

Sorry.

As a non-fiction writer, I’m not trying to give you the one true nugget that will magically transform your business or life.

I’m arrogant, but not that arrogant. The best I can hope for is to spark a fire under your imagination.

Your brain will naturally interpret the world as it is presented to you. Use that process. Be open to it. Welcome it.

Ask yourself . . .

- How does this apply to me, my life, my business?

- Is this true and accurate?

- Does that apply to me?

- Am I doing this already (in another form)?

- Is that the only way?

- How would this work for me?

- etc.

Step Four: Write.
Here’s another thing you need to un-learn from school. It’s okay to write in your book. In fact, it’s more than okay. It’s encouraged!

Write notes to yourself. Write feedback to the author. Circle things. Underline them. Re-write key ideas in your own words.

When you stumble across real gems that you don’t want to lose, do one or more of the following:

a) Dog-ear the page. Fold down the corner so you can find it again.

b) Write a note on the inside of the back cover.

c) Write a note on one of those sticky post-its.

Step Five: Summarize.
When you’re done with the book, make sure your effort is not for naught.

Review your notes, marking, hyroglyphs, and feedback. Create a list of action items.

Reading a book is good. Creating an interactive experience is better. But stranslating that effort into action steps is the key to getting value from any book.

Warning: Don’t overdo it.

Every college freshman has to learn the lesson of over-highlighting. This is when you find yourself highlighting so much of the book that it looks like it was printed on yellow paper.

Even in the best books, you need to be picky.

Take a maxim from your personal to-do list: If everything is highest priority, then nothign is highest priority. If everything is highlighted, then nothing is highlighted.

One of the keys to getting the most out of a book is to use it interactively.

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I hope you took notes on this advice so you can interpret it for your own style and adjust as needed.

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If you are interested in getting started with a little “intro level” meditation, I’ve got a great resource for you.  Check out Yoga Nidra Meditation CD: Extreme Relaxation of Conscious Deep Sleep by Swami Jnaneshvara Bharati. You can find it on Amazon.

Yoga Nidra is not “yoga” as we tend to think of it. The only thing you do with your physical body is lie on the floor and remain motionless. Meanwhile, your mind is focused on a tour of your body. As with most meditations, the goal is to focus your mind on essentially nothing. You remain awake, but not consciously using your mind to do work.

We spend so much time letting our mind focus on work and troubles and problems, that our poor brains never get to rest. This is particularly true of people who experience chronic pain. Recent research shows that brains of people with chronic pain do not get a chance to “rest” between periods of activity. This contributes to fatigue and restlessness at the same time.

The practice of Yoga Nidra is intended to help you achieve a restful state while remaining completely awake. It is very relaxing and many find it energizing.

This CD is particularly good for beginning meditation for two reasons. First, you are guided the entire time. When you haven’t meditated much, you mind tends to wander. The constant narration of this CD keeps your mind from wandering back to work, troubles, etc.

Second, the CD just jumps into the meditation. There’s no discussions about religious philosophy or new age light sprouting from your aura. It just gets down the project at hand: relaxing and meditating. That other stuff gets old about the second time you listen to an audio program.

I believe that, if you’re going to use a guided meditation CD, the CD should not contain philosophical discussions that people don’t want to listen to every time they do their meditation.

Overall, this is an excellent CD for beginners. It’s also good for experienced meditators because it adds a nice variety.

Hey, for $15 you can’t go wrong.

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