1/ Just finished reading 15 book summaries created as part of my anti-book club, in which everyone reads and summarizes different books and shares the summaries using a standard template
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2/ First, it was a fantastic experience, condensing somewhere around 100 hours of reading (plus summarizing) by 15 ppl into 4 hours of condensed insights. I feel practically drunk on new knowledge
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3/ But of the 15, I only want to read 1, which brings up some disturbing possibilities: either a summary (even a multi-level, in-depth one) simply can’t communicate a book’s value, or worse, most books just aren’t worth reading once the main points are revealed
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4/ All books were drawn from a curated list chosen specifically because of their relevance to the book I’m writing, so I’d think my interest would be very high. But maybe that’s exactly the point: they mostly seemed like familiar rehashes of things I know already
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5/ I also got the strong impression that precise timing would play a decisive role. Writing a post on lean or just-in-time, I’d want super detailed notes on The Toyota Way. But not before
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6/ If I was facilitating a workshop soon, I’d want Six Thinking Hats ready to go, but not before. If I was training a dog, Don’t Shoot the Dog would be super useful. This confirms my belief that just in time learning is essential and much more practical
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I thought of doing this once but realized that for me writer-to-reader is not a commodity dumb pipe that can be shared. Reading is not BitTorrent.
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You have to see the book through the eyes of somebody to whom it can mean more than to you, so their take can include/emulate your hypothetical take had you read it. They have to read-as-you. Approach the book like you would. So at least narrowly emulate you.
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I thought I could create this effect with double opt-in: Praxis members only, and then only those who opt in. I thought them knowing my writing and ideas would give them a lens that would produce choices that mirrored what I would’ve chosen
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Emulation is more than shared input context though. They have to think like you or more richly in a philosophical sense. Two iron chefs given the same ingredient do very different things with it. Maybe same Myers-Briggs type would work better.
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I’d probably go the other way actually: ask them to choose the books that most appealed to them, and read in their own autonomous way. My job would be integrating their diverse perspectives rather than extracting an approximation of my own hypothetical one. Boydian auftragstaktik
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But the whole point is to show that a book CAN be effectively summarized, so we can avoid all reading the same books. If it depends on an integrator, than it’s not scalable!!!!
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Integration is still likely to be much less effort than reading I think. So still some scale.
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