Unable to implement what you read about investing? Try this method

If you have trouble remembering and implementing what you read about investing, try the reading method explained by Venkatesh Jayaraman in this free ebook

Published on / By M. Pattabiraman Twitter: @pattufreefincal / 1 Comment

Published: January 3, 2020 at 11:28 am

Last Updated on August 30, 2021 at 9:07 am

Author Venkatesh Jayaraman who previously published free ebooks on health insurance and an introduction to personal finance (links below) has now published a new ebook on A Reading Framework – a method to remember and implement what we read. The author has kindly shared his work with freefincal readers.

About the author in his own words: I was brought up in Chennai and move around Bengaluru, Chennai, Mysuru and Pune to cater my career requirements. But primarily live in Bengaluru and Chennai. Personal finance was my interest even before I started to earn. I found that many youngsters were mismanaging their hard-earned money, and few also had to borrow in the month-end for their food expenses. I used to discuss with them and enlighten on money management and personal finance.

I then extended this knowledge or advisory to new joiners, so that they can plan their finances well from the initial years of their earning and thereby put compounding to work at an early age of 25. I had been voluntarily doing this over the last few years until my work demanded frequent travels. I started investing stocks from the peak of January 2008, the right time to have learned many lessons on stock investment directly from the markets ?

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I tweet on Personal Finance, and Stock market @EWFA. My landing page with various eBook, Presentation, Compilation and notes is here: My Notes and Compilation on Value Investing. My YouTube channel is Empowering With Financial Awareness

Previously Published ebooks

Why this book on a reading framework?

There are many articles emphasising the volumes of contents read a day by Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. But not many discuss:

  • How to Retain and Remember what is Read
  • Implement what was Retained
  • How to get Return on our Reading (Benefits, This is the most important because you put the time to read a book, which is much expensive than the money you put on that book. So, getting Return on Reading is a must)

My investment-related readings started in 2012 from the book “Security Analysis”. From there on, I had read close to 60-70 books on investing. I identified a few challenges in this journey:

  • Initially, when I started, I did not take the notes properly. So, I had to re-read and take notes or make a mark on the books
  • I found that I could not recall many of the readings, even to the extent that I could not remember which concept was picked from a particular work
  • I started fixing targets to complete a certain number of pages/number of blogs a month.
    • I realised that this was also flawed
    • Reading is for my benefit and not to meet any target or a finish line where I compete with someone to read 500-1000 blogs
    • What use was reading, if I don’t recall when needed (or) not have some ‘take-away’ from these readings
  • September 2018, When I look back, I had read a huge number of books and blogs but was surprised (rather shocked!) that I don’t recall the contents of blogs that were read even two weeks back.

A lot of questions clouded my mind.

  • Without recall, how am I going to implement when the situations demand?
  • If, I am not able to use such readings when needed, is not all the time and effort on these blogs goes wasted?
  • Is a re-read needed to have an effective recall?
  • Would not such re-reads again take so much time (Could be years!)?
  • If I am unable to recall contents after a few weeks, how best can I recall the contents after a few years?

All these lead to one theme and question. Would there be any principles/framework of reading?

In the quest for a framework or principles of reading, I came upon a couple of blogs by (@ShaneAParrish) which was structured enough to create a framework for myself. This eBook has the notes of my readings from these blogs and my high-level reading framework.

Intended Audience:

Anyone who wishes to:

  • Read a lot of books/blogs
  • Retain the knowledge gained from the readings
  • have Return on Reading from their reading
  • Easily understand and recall complex concepts

This also will help to avoid frequent re-reads and understanding difficult concepts with ease.

Download the ebook on developing a reading framework