A new habit of mine this year is being intentional about rereading books. I try to reread at least one book a month, so my objective is three new books a month and one reread. That’s working pretty well, and I’m happy with it.

What I’m not happy with is my inconsistency around synthesizing books (see this example). I’ve tried a few times to get consistent, but I haven’t cracked it yet. My big takeaway is that synthesizing every book I read won’t work. I don’t have enough time and bandwidth, and also I’ve realized that not all books are worth synthesizing. Some books are good, and some are great. I want to synthesize only the great ones. Partly this is a way of making sure important concepts stick, and partly it’s a way to make it possible to read through the most important concepts in a fraction of the time.

Thinking about the book I’m rereading this week, I decided it’s a great one and I’d like to use this week to not only reread it but also synthesize it. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that might be the missing habit that will make me synthesize the best books I read more consistently.

So, this week I’m experimenting with this. Hopefully it works out and I can kill two birds with one stone by rereading and synthesizing the same book this week.