What if for $15 you could read the minds of the smartest people who have ever lived?

You'd absorb their lessons, practices, processes, mental models—all the stuff that helped them achieve the extraordinary.

That would be a bargain, right?

It's called a book. :)

Example: It took Jim Collins a decade to write the book Good to Great. He studied 1,437 companies for 1,000s of hours. Hired an entire research team. And out of that decade of work he distilled the 6 core principles anyone can apply to build a great organization.

It's a masterpiece. The most important business book ever written IMO.

And here's the kicker: You can access all of that work for $15!

Books are the best bargain in human history.

But here's the problem:

  1. I have more books that I could ever read
     
  2. It takes me weeks (sometimes months) to finish a book
     
  3. Converting a book into action that produces results takes 10x more energy than reading it

Example: I recently read Breakthrough Advertising. It's a seminal work by Eugene Schwartz on writing advertising copy. Every copywriter I know gushes about it. It would take 1-2 weeks for me to read the book.

But to fully digest and convert the book into action that produces results?

Well. It took me 5 weeks just to get to page 37.

Reading is easy. But converting those words into action is an entirely different process.

Here's a trick I've found to help:

  1. Underline as I read
     
  2. Stop at the end of each chapter
     
  3. Type up the underlines
     
  4. Arrange them into a logical order
     
  5. Write out the how-to manual at the end

I'll show you an example from the book Hello, My Name is Awesome by Alexandria Watkins. This book lays out a method for creating good product and company names.

At a high level, the method is:

  1. List 12 words that describe or are related to your product
  2. Run each of those names through a 9-step brainstorming exercise
  3. Use her SMILE and SCRATCH criteria to pick the winner

Conceptually, it makes sense, right?

But if it's been 2 years since I've read the book, I'm not going to remember the specifics (or where to find them in the book) off the top of my head. Instead, I can jump into my outlined notes and resources to jog my memory in minutes:

Check out my full book notes here to see how they work.

There is a big difference in reading a book and digesting a book. Casual reading is fun. But when it comes to business I'm not reading to be entertained—I'm reading to learn and convert that learning into action.

This is my process for doing that.

What's yours?

- Bryan