Introduction: How Strategic Reading Saves Executive Time
You pick up a new business book. The cover promises breakthrough insights. You start reading and within a few chapters, you get that feeling.
Haven't I read this before?
Or you’re reading the same book, and you get that feeling.
Haven't I read this before?
You have. Not the exact words, but the ideas. Growth mindset repackaged. The same leadership principles with a fresh metaphor. Another framework for productivity that's really just the same system with a new name.
This is the deja vu problem, and it's costing you something valuable: your time.
The Real Problem Isn't Reading More
Most executives I work with read constantly. They buy books, attend conferences, consume articles and podcasts. They're hungry to learn.
But when they're in a critical meeting deciding, or leading their team through a challenge, or pitching a new direction, they can't access what they've learned. It's all somewhere in their heads, but not so they can use it.
The problem isn't that they need to read more. It's that nobody taught them how to read strategically.
What Strategic Reading Actually Means
Strategic reading is reading for application, not completion. It's about extracting the ideas that will actually change how you work, not getting to the last page so you can say you finished.
But strategic reading is just the foundation. Once you can read strategically, you can do two things that transform how you think:
Syntopic reading: reading multiple books on the same topic simultaneously. Instead of reading one book at a time and forgetting what the last author said, you spot patterns across sources. You identify what's genuinely new versus repackaged. You stop wasting time on recycled ideas.
Intersection thinking: connecting ideas across disciplines. The best insights don't come from reading deeper in your field. They come from bringing psychology into your leadership challenges, or applying military strategy to your product launch, or using systems thinking to solve process problems.
This makes you irreplaceable. Not knowing more, but thinking differently.
Why I Created This Workshop
After my mother died unexpectedly in 2012, I turned to reading to heal. I created a Read the World Challenge for myself and dove deep into books across every discipline and genre.
That's when I kept hitting that feeling: haven't I read this before? Haven't I read this before?
I spent years researching how to read better, taking courses on knowledge management, and studying how learning actually works. I read dozens of books on cognition and developed a system that solved the problem.
Typically I read at least 150 books a year now, and I can tell you within 10 minutes whether a book has genuine insight or is just repackaging what I already know. More importantly, I can connect ideas from behavioral economics with frameworks from systems thinking and apply them to real problems.
This workshop is everything I wish someone had taught me before I wasted years reading the same ideas over and over.
What You'll Walk Away With
In two days, you'll master strategic reading, learn to read syntopically, and develop intersection thinking skills. You'll build a knowledge system that gets more valuable every time you use it.
You'll stop feeling like every business book says the same thing. And you'll become the person in the room with perspectives others don't have.
The Applied Knowledge Is Power Executive Workshop runs February 19-20, 2026, from 12:00-2:00 pm ET on Zoom.
Ready to stop reading the same book over and over? Learn more and register here.
