If you are serious about trying to apply some of the insights contained in this book, then I suggest you quickly review the entire book. Once you have an idea of its contents, identify a problem that you have and select the entry that you think is most likely to resolve it. Read the entry again and implement the approach suggested. You don’t have to follow every suggestion in an entry. You may also decide to combine one or two entries in order to meet your unique requirement. This amend, mix and match approach is the correct strategy to adopt when using this book.

In order to increase your learning, annotate the book as you go along. Note which ideas could be applied with no amendments and those which you might be able to use if you changed the advice given or combined two or more entries.

Once you have actually tried to implement an idea, jot down a few short notes about how well or badly your intervention went; what you would do differently next time in a similar situation; which other ideas you could have used but didn’t. By reflecting on both your successes and failures, you are embedding knowledge in your brain which you’ll be able to access in the future when required. Do this and you’ll quickly turn this book into a learning journal which you can refer to time and again.

Feel free to reject certain entries that you don’t like/agree with but, before you do so, identify what it is about the idea that you dislike. If you tried to apply a similar approach in the past and things went badly, ask yourself, ‘Was it the idea or how I used it that was the problem?’