Why Shortform Book Summaries Are The Best
With so many books to read filled with great ideas, you cannot possibly read all of them. You cannot even get close to reading a fraction of them. There are just too many.
But what you may have noticed if you read a lot is that there is often a lot of fluff and repetition sprinkled among the good ideas. A lot of the fantastic, non-fiction best-sellers you read could easily be condensed into 1/4 of the size without losing any of the value.
If this were possible, you could read 4 books for the time it would take you to read one. If you read 30 books a year, you could now read 120. If you learned on average 10 brilliant, new ideas per book, you are now learning 1200 brilliant ideas per year instead of 300. This is a total game-changer.
The more you learn, the more you earn. The more great ideas you have in your head, the more you can mix and match them to serve you in unique situations. The more you know about the world, the more information you can use to bend it to your will. Basically, knowledge is power in the information age.
If you are a creator, like me, this is also game-changing. Reading is just as important to creating as writing is. It is what gives you the content to write about. Good writers just steal good ideas from previous good writers. If you have more ideas to choose from, you can mix them in a wider range of ways to create more original pieces.
The benefits of brilliant condensed ideas are far-reaching, and hopefully, you are now convinced that smaller, more valuable pieces of work would be more efficient for learning.
Good news. There IS a way to condense all your books. There IS a way to get way more value per unit of information. There IS a way to become a learning machine. Let me introduce you to Shortform! (no affiliation btw)
So what is Shortform?
Shortform is a service that provides highly-detailed book summaries that go above and beyond the ones provided by your traditional ones.
They were founded in 2019 by Allen Cheng with the aim of educating the world at a faster rate.
They have seen a meteoric rise since their release and are now one of the big names in the book summary market.
Why Shortform over other apps?
With so many platforms out there to get your book summaries, why not choose a different one?
There’s one simple answer. They are just not as good. They are too condensed; they miss out on too much information from the book and do not let you get all of the value from it. I have tried Blinkist, Instaread and QuickRead, and they simply were not detailed enough. They missed out on many important points that Shortform included.
If you are looking to get a very quick, high-level overview of the book, then they can serve their purpose. But if you are like me and want to get most of the value from the book, you will be very disappointed with those apps.
Many of the Shortform summaries are 70 dense PDF pages long and do not leave a stone unturned.
I compared my notes on a Shortform summary with my brother’s notes on the actual book, and we pretty much had the same thing. The only difference was that I spent much less time making mine as I did not have to sift through all the fluff.
Other reasons
Extra tips and analysis
Another fantastic feature of Shortform is the extra analysis they offer in their summaries. They will often take ideas from other relevant pieces that either support or contradict the author’s point of view. This adds an extra dimension to the stuff you are reading.
Example from book summary on Rich Dad Poor Dad
Oftentimes, there are inconsistencies in an author’s arguments, and Shortform makes sure to highlight these so that the reader is not misled.
Offering additional information from related books can also give you some inspiration for your next book. If there is a very similar idea in another related book, chances are you will also like that one.
So many books to choose from
Shortform already has 1000+ of the most famous non-fiction books. I have yet to stumble across a book I want to read that is not there.
They are also releasing 5 new summaries weekly, which will probably increase as they continue to grow.
In short, rest assured that 99% of the non-fiction you want to read will be on Shortform.
Highlighting
Another fantastic feature offered by Readwise is the ability to highlight and take notes of passages.
I am a very active reader and often like to take notes of the stuff I read so I can go back over them and find inspiration.
Also, when you are getting so much value per unit of information, it helps to take notes of all this stuff so you can absorb it better. Otherwise, you forget it very quickly.
Readwise integration
It is not very useful to have all these notes and highlights if you don’t go over them and make more everlasting notes from them.
Ideally, you should export all of these to a note-taking app where you can make sense of them all.
Shortform lets you integrate with Readwise so that all your highlights are sent there in the background. With Readwise, you can then send all of these highlights to your favourite note-taking app where you can take action on them.
If you are unfamiliar with Readwise, it is an app that lets you export all of your notes from various mediums and then enables you to bring these notes to your note-taking app. I use it all the time, and it is an essential component of my workflow.
If you want to learn more about my whole process for taking notes, exporting them and turning them into evergreen, permanent notes in RemNote, check out my comprehensive article here.
PDF downloads
Another great thing about Shortform is that you can download a PDF of the summary.
Then if you are on a plane or anywhere else without Wifi, you can easily still read your book summaries.
If you use RemNote, like me, you can upload your PDF to the app and directly highlight your stuff into RemNote. Chances are, your note-taking app of choice can also do the same thing.
Quick 1-page summaries
If you just want to get a quick high-level overview of the book, like in Blinkist, then you can also do this in Shortform.
At the start of every summary, they offer a short mini-summary of the whole book.
You can either use this if you are deciding whether to read a new book or if you just want to get the main points of it after it was mentioned by a friend.
In any case, it is always nice to be able to get a fast overview of a book, and Shortform lets you do this.
Some caveats about book summaries
The repetition and fluff of a book can be good for retention
Many argue that the fluff and repetition in a book can be beneficial for retaining information. Reading a book for longer, going over the main points several times and having the ideas roam around your brain for longer can definitely be helpful to synthesise the information. You do not get this advantage with summaries. They are quick, and if you need the time to synthesise everything, they may not be for you.
My antidote against this issue:
When I read these book summaries, I rigorously highlight and take notes. I then go over all these highlights and make more permanent notes from them in my note-taking app. Once I have finished my book summary, I will go over all the notes I made to create my summary, which I will then publish to my blog. This whole added process makes the repetition and fluff redundant, as I end up mulling over the material for quite some time. Instead of just re-reading to further my understanding, I am creating some actionable notes and creating content from them.
Not good for all books
Some books are already very condensed. For these, I would not recommend using Shortform, as you will inevitably miss out on some valuable insights.
Instead, I would recommend using Shortform for your average self-improvement book, which usually contains removable fluff.
Conclusion
I hope you enjoyed this article. If you, like me, are scared about the prospect of not learning enough brilliant ideas, then Shortform is absolutely for you. You will see your learning go to new heights when you start using it. If you are also a creator, you will see yourself coming up with many more ideas, as you will be consuming much more value-dense content.
If you would like to add something or if you disagree about my thoughts on book summaries, definitely get in touch here or on Twitter. I would love to hear your opinions.
And if you like what I write, consider subscribing to my newsletter here so you never miss another post. Thanks!
Originally published at https://www.timjcarden.com on July 22, 2022.
