To binge is humanI’m not blessed with a great memory. It’s not bad, but it’s certainly not a talent. And yet somehow, I’m a very good researcher and have produced work at an academic standard. How did I do this? Repetition. And by repetition, I mean repetition, repeating the same thing repeatedly over and over and okay I’ll stop. I make plenty of highlights on my Kindle, but I’m not great at synthesizing the highlights into notes. (By the way, the cool kids are now using Readwise, which just launched an exciting-looking reader app.) Rather than further processing what I’ve read, which frankly would be better, I tend to barrel ahead and consume more. To binge is human. But I’ve made this tendency work for me. The crude but effective method I relied on was, of course, repetition. Y’know, repeating the same thing over and okay seriously I’m done. I consumed multiple books, articles, videos and docs about the same topic, and followed many different creators from the same realm. Sometimes I would even read the same book twice, and then re-read my highlights of that book several more times. (My most read book of recent years is Thinking in Systems. Few books have been as transformative for me. This is Not a Conspiracy Theory was deeply influenced by it.) Repetition is your friend when learning. This method might not be efficient but it’s simple and effective. It’s good enough for most of us. But lately I stumbled upon an even better way to make binging and repetition work for me. I’m reading lots of about business, productivity and mindset. These books are often padded, have way too many examples and are overall just super mediocre reads. But they do contain good stuff and I want that information. I’m finding Blinkist to be an excellent way to just get the good stuff. Often I’ll listen to these summaries when I’m out with little Kirby. My attention will fluctuate so I listen to interesting summaries multiple times. I’ve started a playlist here of some of the blinks that merit multiple listens. You can listen to these for free. I’m pretty sure anyway. I’ve never used this feature before so if your phone explodes and melts your face Raiders-style, don’t blame me. When a Blink is especially good, I’ll read the full book—or at least parts of it. I used to consider it a badge of honor to read every page, but I don’t have time for that shit anymore. Another cool service I found via Annie Duke is LIT Video Books. These are like abridged versions of popular nonfiction books (about an hour long) presented as little documentaries featuring the author. This is a new-ish service and they’re offering great deals right now. With this link, you’ll get 50% off, which works out to $5 per month. (You’ll get the discount code when you checkout.) The repetition stack I’ve got right now is this.
Listen to the summary on Blinkist If it merits it, repeat the summary once, twice or more Get the book if I want more depth Watch the videobook to get the ideas yet again, this time in video format In the case of Allan Dib’s The 1-Page Marketing Plan, a nice concise marketing primer, I watched the video book first, then bought the book, and have listened to the Blinkist summary a couple times. Listening to podcast interviews with authors is another good way to double up on their ideas. That’s my formula, but there’s an infinite number of ways to do this. The more senses you can incorporate the better. Listen, read, watch. Feel and taste if you can! That’s it for this week folks! Again, I wanna know more about you! Take a minute to tell me more here. HAVE A GREAT WEEK EVERYONE!
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