I recently read through Your Next Five Moves by Patrick Bet-David. One of the things that stood out after reading through this book five times is that every person needs to find their own path to success and that there are many different paths we can take. As Patrick said:

Wealth and success are not waiting for most of us at the top of anyone else's ladder. A richer life—financially, emotionally, and intellectually—is possible only when you take responsibility for your own success.

Does this sound familiar? As you finish the last page of a great book, you experience a high. Armed with new knowledge, you're ready to put this into action. However, a week later, you can barely remember what you read, and a month later, all the time you spent reading hasn't had a material impact on your life's trajectory.

I invested time in establishing systems to capture, store, and organize information. However, I realized that I didn't want to optimize for curating information. I wanted to find a way to take more action and apply what I was reading. The following quote, attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, puts it well:

I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.

That then begs the question, “Why don't we put what we read into practice?” The overly simplistic answer is that there's too much information.

As Elbert Hubbard said,

It does not take much strength to do things, but it requires a great deal of strength to decide what to do.

That is why I've decided to put my time and energy into figuring out a system that allows information to be distilled into actions. That is why I read through a book five times; each pass through the book is faster than the previous time, and I prune away more and more content until what is left is actionable information.