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.