Business Book Reports

This article is to share my own business book reports: Coda Book Reports

A voracious but forgetful reader

I’ve been reading “business books” since I was in college 15+ years ago. I read 5-10 per year. That’s over 100 business books in total.

And my struggle has always been that while I’m reading a book, I can see and understand the insight. But as soon as I finish the book, I rapidly forget about it. In one ear?? and out the other.

This isn’t that surprising given that adult learning experts highlight that for new information to stick, the learner should be exposed to the content in a number of ways across multiple occasions, not just one format at one point in time.

Becoming a better learner

This Book Report Project is my own personal effort to better assimilate what I learn from business books into my professional practices.

In my reading practice, I:

• Read the book, adding highlights if it’s in Kindle, or bookmarks if it’s a paper book.
• Upon completion, spend 60-120 minutes reviewing my own notes and summarizing what I think are the salient points.
• Add my own short view on the takeaways that really resonate for me. As such, the book reports are a combination of a succinct version of a particular book, with a small dose of editorial from me. If you have differing takeaways from the book, I’d love to hear from you.

In my work, I:

• Reference my reports when working with founders on myriad issues they encounter during the Supercritical stage of growth.
• Reference my reports when doing my own thinking and writing about modern work (e.g., FastCo and Fortune). I find I can more easily access disparate ideas I’ve encountered in this way.

Sharing the work

And now I’m sharing these resources for others to jumpstart learning in this area, or as a model for doing your own book reports! Feel free to read and copy the Coda template if it works for you in your own reading and writing. I've included three so far - Deep Work by Cal Newport; Primed to Perform by Neel Doshi & Lindsay McGregor; and Who by Geoff Smart. I'll be adding many more regularly, mostly from this list.

I encourage readers to remember that reading something once, a full book or summary like these, is only one step in a journey to deeply learn something new! Happy reading!