The beginning of this year was full of frustration and pain related to sharing and tracking the books I’d read (see here). My Google Sheet wasn’t cutting it anymore, and I couldn’t share it publicly (it’s pretty crude). That led to my adding a Library section to this site in February, which I’m happy with. The look and feel will get tweaked more, but the functionality is just what I was aiming for.

I mainly read biographies about entrepreneurs, and I want a way to track and share my research about these people. The process has been slow, with starts and stops, but I now have a better idea of how I want it to work. So that’s the current side project I’m working on for this site. Hopefully, I’ll have something to share in a few weeks that you’ll find useful and that will help you learn more about entrepreneurs too.

One of my friends, whom I’ve known for decades, told me I do a great job of researching and of learning about topics at a deeper level than most. He said that’s the reason he comes to me when he has an idea or wants to talk through something—I can often share a piece of information I’ve learned along the way and point him toward an article or other resource he finds useful.

He suggested that I link to more things I find interesting on my blog instead of primarily sharing when people ask. He thinks people would find the curation helpful.

I like this idea, but I’m not sure what it would look like in practice. I do share some links or resources today, but I don’t share most of what I consume. I’ll think more about this, because I like the idea of being more intentional about regularly sharing the resources I’ve found valuable via this blog.

Let me know what you think.

Ever since I read James Webb Young’s  A Technique for Producing Ideas a few weeks ago, one of its ideas has been in the back of my mind: the importance of learning a principle before a tactic when trying to master something.

Here are a few passages from the book about this:

“In learning any art, the important things to learn are, first Principles; and second, Method.”

“Particular bits of knowledge are nothing, because they are made up, of what Dr. Robert Hutchins has called rapidly aging facts. Principle and method are everything.”

“We may know all these [advertising tactics] and still not be an advertising man, because we have no understanding of the principles and fundamental methods by which advertising works.”

“On the other hand, we may know none of these [advertising tactics] but have insight into advertising principles and method, so that employing technicians to help us we may produce advertising results.”

“Thus we sometimes see a manufacturer or merchant who is a better advertising man than his advertising agent or manager.”

I’m not sure how other people approach this, but I haven’t been intentional about learning principles first when I’m trying to master something. I’m intentional about focusing my reading and knowledge consumption on information specifically related to the topic. But I haven’t thought to prioritize starting with a book or podcast that explains principles. It happens sometimes, but it’s random.

The more I’ve thought about Young’s approach, the more sense it’s made. Principles are the foundation that isn’t likely to change, while tactics and methods evolve with the times. Understanding the principle is key to understanding why a current tactic is valid and to being able to experiment to find its replacement if it becomes ineffective.

I suspect that Young’s approach applies to learning in general, too. To understand concepts (even if you don’t plan on mastering something), it’s best to seek out and understand the principles and then seek out tactics that others have used. Doing so will result in better comprehension and retention, or so I think. I’m going to test this theory as I learn about copywriting this summer (see here).

I’ve been learning more about copywriting, which most people think of as writing that makes people buy something. That’s true, but it’s more than that. It’s about persuading or influencing someone, but with the written word instead of oral communication.

I’m not great at persuasion, but I’ve always wanted to get better, which is why I’m curious about copywriting. When I read the biographies of advertising and public relations entrepreneurs Albert Lasker (see here and here) and Edward Bernays (see here), I realized that I don’t understand the fundamentals of persuasion. Before I dive into the tactics of writing persuasively, I want to learn the principles underlying them.

Influence is a famous book by Robert Cialdini. I’ve heard nothing but good things about it, and it’s been mentioned in several biographies as having an outsize impact on entrepreneurs. I’ve owned this book for several years but never read it. But that’s about to change—I’m going to read it soon. I hope it helps me understand the principles of persuasion so the tactics I learn regarding persuasive written and oral communication will be more effective.

I listen to YouTube every day. It’s one of my preferred daily learning methods (see here). I even pay for the premium version, and it’s money well spent. As I’ve ramped up my use of YouTube, I keep running into the same pain point. Today I hit it again.

A few weeks ago, I listened to an interview on YouTube in which an entrepreneur shared one of his tricks for improving his decision-making when something isn't working. It was a good trick that stuck with me (high level, at least). Today, I wanted to use it but couldn’t remember the specifics. I tried to find the interview without success. I know who said it, but I don’t know which YouTube video he said it in.

It’s a pain not being able to quickly find a specific segment of a YouTube video I’ve watched. My current workaround is to search through my viewing history and try to figure out which video is the right one. Then, I search through the transcript to find the segment I’m looking for. Sometimes I find it, and sometimes I don’t. But in all instances, it’s a painful experience.

I’d love to use a tool that looks at my YouTube history, indexes the transcripts of the videos I’ve watched, and helps me identify the segment I need via a simple chat interface. I’d happily pay for this because it would enhance my learning and give me a repository of all the information I’ve consumed on YouTube.

If you know of a tool that can solve this problem, please let me know.

A few days ago, a friend told me about Reducto. The company just raised over $24 million from venture capital firms to solve the problem of unstructured data in PDFs by making it usable. It structures the text in PDF documents so you can feed it into other systems, such as LLMs or your own applications.

Some companies are building solutions that require information from PDFs to be fed into their software to achieve a desired output. They spend a significant amount of time figuring out how to extract unstructured information from PDFs, which isn’t as easy as it sounds. The issue is that this isn’t what these companies specialize in, so it takes them a long time to figure out. In many cases, they build something that’s decent but not great. Reducto’s PDF-processing service lets them skip mastering PDF extraction. They use the output from Reducto and focus on the more important aspects of the solution they’re building.

I spent some time playing with the tool’s free version. A few notes:

• Reducto can scan any document and turn the entire document into structured JSON. The free version has a 30-page document limit.
• The tool is incredibly good at extracting information from charts, which isn’t easy.
• There are many useful settings, including extraction method, chunking method, and more.
• The tool has an API, which is great for automation.
• If you need the extracted data formatted in a particular way, you can create a schema in Reducto, and the output will be formatted using your schema. I love this feature.

This is an impressive tool that solves a boring but big problem for companies. I can see companies quickly agreeing to pay for this service, which likely led to rapid growth in revenue and caught the attention of venture capital investors.

I get the impression this service is built for enterprise clients. I wonder if Reducto plans to offer something that’s more suited to small or midsize companies.

I’m committed to reading a book a week to learn and improve. Usually it’s a biography or autobiography because I get the most from reading about entrepreneurs’ journeys. I’m also committed to sharing what I’m reading in the library section of this site. Each week, after I read a book, I share it in my Learning Library, as it’s called now. My goal is to post a new book every Sunday.

This week, I shared a biography I read about Charlie Munger. Several books have been written about the life of his business partner, Warren Buffet, but I wanted to learn about Charlie’s journey, too—specifically, how he came by his multidisciplinary way of thinking and solving problems.

Damn Right! was just what I was looking for. Not only did it offer great insights into Charlie’s early career and tragedy, it also included great context about his businesses before Berkshire (including his hedge fund), his personal life, his quirky personality, and his commitment to multidisciplinary learning.

If you’re interested in learning more about Charlie Munger, consider reading Damn Right! by Janet Lowe.

This week, I connected on X (formerly Twitter) with an investor who’s an avid reader. He does a great job of sharing what he’s reading and what he’s learning from the books he reads. From what I can tell, he’s a fan of biographies and investing books, as I am.

When I interact with avid readers who also share their learnings publicly, I get excited and curious to learn about their process. I’ve struggled with managing and later finding highlights in books I’ve read (see here). I’m trying to solve this problem for myself or at least reduce the pain. I asked this investor and learned that he’s doing a lot of what I’m doing: manual highlighting and making notes in physical books.

One thing he does stuck with me: He extracts quotes from books and stores them in a file, sorted by quote type. Retrieving a quote when he needs it is significantly faster than if he had to find it in one of many physical books.

Even though I send friends quotes from books all the time (by sending pics of the page with the quote highlighted), I don’t keep all the useful quotes I’ve read in a single place.

I’m glad this investor took the time to share his process with me. His approach to storing quotes is something I’ll replicate going forward.

I’ve been happy with this site’s new library section, which lists the books I’ve read in the last year (see here). I’m constantly referencing it and have gotten positive feedback on it. It was intended to help readers, but I constantly use it to find posts I’ve written that are connected to specific books.

This weekend, I looked at a stack of books I’ve read and realized that a material number of them aren’t listed on this site because I read them before 2024. I also realized that I don’t have a central place that captures all the books I’ve read over the last five or ten years, and that’s something I very much want.

So, this weekend I decided that I’m going to add all the books I’ve read to this site. It’s a long-term project, but it’s something I want to and will do.

This week, I caught up with a friend at a VC firm. We talked about books we’ve read recently and our reading habits, and I was excited by what he shared.

My friend unexpectedly read two books by different authors about similar topics. Normally, he’d read a book and then move on to the next one. But he’s started using ChatGPT to enhance his understanding of what he’s reading. He typed in his comprehension of and thoughts on points made in a book (he disagreed with the author) and asked ChatGPT for feedback. ChatGPT gave him feedback and pointed to another author who disagreed with the first author and could provide an alternative perspective on the topic. He read the book ChatGPT suggested and sought feedback as he read that book, too.

The result was that he read two books related to a topic he’s interested in. He was able to understand differing perspectives on the topic and debate his own perspective. All of this led to a deep understanding of the topic that he wouldn’t have gotten from the way he used to read as well as to deep conviction about his perspective on the topic.

This conversation reminded me of an Andrej Karpathy video that I wrote about a few weeks ago (see here). Karpathy also uses AI to help him read books.

I love to hear about anything that enhances people’s reading experience. I’m wondering if more people are starting to use AI to help them understand and retain what they’re reading. If so, how big could this trend get?