Last week, I wrote that good thinking needs raw material, and that most of it comes from what we read.
We read more words today than any generation before us, and most of it happens on a phone.
But be honest with yourself for a second. How much do you actually remember from the last ten things you scrolled through this week? For most of us, the answer is pretty much nothing.
So let me share a few simple things that make it stick.
You Forget Most of What You Read
Students ask me about this all the time. They finish a chapter, feel good about getting it done, and move on. A week later, they remember only part of it.
Then how do you make what you studied actually stick? That's the question worth answering.
Reading something once isn't learning. It's just exposure. What you do around the reading is what decides how much of it you actually remember.
Speed and Volume Are the Wrong Goals
Somewhere along the way, we turned reading into a numbers game. People like to say they finished a hundred books last year, or that some app helped them read twice as fast.
But in real life, nobody cares how fast you read or how many books you finished. What matters is what you understood and can still use later. Reading speed is just a number.
There's evidence for this too.
A small confession here. I don't read on a screen at all, thankfully. Over the years I've built up a small library of my own, about a thousand books so far, and it's one of the possessions I treasure most.
So slow down. One good book read carefully and then read again can teach you far more than ten books skimmed in a rush.
And don't feel bad about giving up on a bad book. Every hour you spend forcing yourself through something that isn't useful is an hour you could have spent on something better.
And if you don't know where to begin, begin with the right set of books. I've put a short list at the end of this letter, based on what has worked for me. Pick from those, and take your time with them.
Not All Reading Is the Same
Mortimer Adler, in his classic How to Read a Book, made a point that changed how I read. Not everything deserves the same amount of attention.
This is what good research looks like.
That last level is exactly what real equity research requires. You don't understand an industry by reading one report. You read several companies' filings, read analysts who disagree with each other, and sit with those differences until you can form a view of your own.
When I ask students to build a view on a sector, this is what I'm looking for. I don't want them to skim one research note and call it research.
Match the depth of your reading to why you're reading. Spending twenty minutes deeply analysing a throwaway article is a waste of time, just as skimming something important can leave you with an understanding that isn't worth much.
Read With a Pen
The habit that has helped me remember what I read is simple. I don't try to read passively.
Highlighting can feel productive, but it often gives you the feeling that you've learned something when you've really just marked a sentence.
What I do instead is write in the book.
I underline things. I scribble in the margins. I write what a passage means to me, what I want to apply to my own life, or how it connects to something I read earlier. Sometimes I even add a small piece of paper with a longer note.
When I come back to the book a year or two later, those notes are what make reading it again so valuable.
At that point, the book stops being just the author's book. It becomes yours too.
Two small things follow from this. Use a pen, not a pencil. Pencil marks fade, and so can the meaning behind them.
And I almost never lend my books. There is simply too much of me written in them. If I want someone to read a book, I buy a new copy and give it to them.
Keep a Notebook to Yourself
It's simply a place where you keep the ideas you want to remember, but written in your own words. What you need to learn. What you want to apply to your life. What you'd want to tell yourself if you opened this page a year from now.
Start Here
This week, drop the inhibition about keeping your books clean and make one book truly your own. Three steps.
First, figure out which area you need to improve the most right now. Discipline, focus, strategic thinking, understanding business models, or applying equity research. Be honest, pick one.
Second, pick the book for that area from the list below and start writing in it from page one. Underline, scribble, write what you'll apply and how it connects to your life. I've shared pictures of my own marked-up pages on Instagram. That's what it should look like.
Third, keep a notebook next to it for notes to yourself. What you need to learn, what you need to apply. The Invest in Yourself journal works well for this if you have one.
And once you're in the habit, pass it on. Buy someone a copy of the book that helped you most and get them reading too.
Let me tell you where I'd start, based on the books that have made the biggest difference to me.
1. Beginners
- The Richest Man in Babylon
- How to Win Friends and Influence People
2. Finance
- The Psychology of Money
- Good to Great
3. Life
- The Gita
- Peaks and Valleys
4. Management & Leadership
- Winning
- Zero to One
5. Self-Improvement
- Atomic Habits
- The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
None of this requires more hours. Even twenty-five pages a day, read this way, can add up to a lot over a year.
Invest in yourself,
Aswini Bajaj