Tips on Writing Business Books from “How to Remember Everything You Read”
Special thanks to Alex Wieckowski for first sharing the article. "how to remember everything you read" on LinkedIn, which he found at polymathinvestor.com.Stealing Ideas for Writing Business Books From “How to Remember Everything You Read”
I’m reading this article from PolymathInvestor.com, dated November 2025, called “How to Remember Everything You Read.” I think there are some great ideas in here that we can steal to learn how to better write business books.
Encoding & Comprehension Heuristics
Preview First
“Begin any book or paper with a quick overview. It works because it gives your brain a framework to slide details into.”
Translation of that: Todd Sattersten, who’s now the publisher at Bard Press, told me one time that a book’s Table of Contents needs to tell a story. You need to have an idea of the journey. You don’t know every stop, but you do know that you’re going to Portland, Oregon, and you're going to take a car and cross through the Rockies. It’s a very different journey than getting on a plane and going to Puerto Rico.
On a slightly more focused scale, it’s one of the reasons I like having an anchoring metaphor for my authors’ books—something that gives them a kind of mental model that they can add to as they go through the book.
Turn Headings into Questions
“Active readers approach text with questions in mind. Before reading a section, turn the heading into a question. Why it works: having a purpose focuses your attention and engages your curiosity. It transforms reading from passive intake into an active hunt for answers.”
It’s an idea that maybe every chapter should have a subheading, or should have a question. Not a bad way to organize a book.
My own book, The Business Book Bible, each heading is a question. The entire book is organized around questions. But my book is a how-to, so it lends itself to that kind of structure.
For a book like Deming’s Journey to Profound Knowledge, I could see where having a subheading—say Chapter Two could simply be the question: Where did Deming first get introduced to determinism or pragmatism?
Chapter Three would be: Where did Deming get the lens of statistical process control?
Read in Layers of Depth
“Read in layers of depth: do a quick skim to get the gist, and a slow, careful read for understanding. Why it works: each pass builds on the last—first mapping the territory and then filling in detail.”
This is an idea we can use in business book writing. It’s okay—sometimes even helpful—to lay your concept out in layers. Instead of sitting someone down in front of a fire hydrant, let them drink out of a straw first, then a garden hose, and then maybe a fire hose. You don’t have to tell everything you know all at once, and you don’t have to explain a concept completely.
It’s okay to give somebody a high-level overview, and then throughout the book come back and go a layer deeper, and later another layer deeper. Even though you’ll be repeating some information, if you do it elegantly, you bring that information forward to the place the reader is in the book, and then build to it.
This goes back to the very first note about giving your brain the framework to slot details into.
Pacing & Chunking—Break Reading Into Manageable Chunks
The next tip is “pacing and chunking—break reading into manageable chunks.”
That’s why for business books, I’m not scared to have several chapters. In Rebels of Reason, I believe John and I arrived at 40 chapters. For Deming’s Journey to Profound Knowledge, I believe we had 21. I would rather have shorter, more manageable chapters.
Some business books are 50,000–60,000 words and have seven chapters. I find that crazy. When you open the book, you’re looking at long swaths of text.
It’s helpful—especially for people reading business books—if we break down the ideas into manageable chapters and then further break those chapters into manageable subsections.
A business book that has seven chapters—I would probably have turned that into a book with Part One, Part Two, Part Three, or Sections One and Two. If you want an overarching way to group ideas, you can do that simply by creating an artificial structure: chapters, parts, sections.
By breaking chapters into sections, it’s almost like giving your reader a visual goalpost. If they’re having a quick coffee break, or have five minutes between meetings, they can quickly read from the last section to the end of the new section. It gives them permission to stop reading right then.
For business-book readers, you want to make it easy for them to consume your book. Make it convenient.
Focus on the Vital Few—Focus 80% of Time on the 20% of Content With the Most Insight
“Focus 80 percent of your time on the 20 percent of content that yields the most insight.”
This is akin to my idea that you should write a business book the same way journalists write newspaper articles. They know few people will read the article in its entirety.
In journalism, they taught us the inverted pyramid: put the most important information at the front. In a newspaper, that would be the headline; then in your first few sentences, deliver the most important information. As the article moves on, you give more details, but the information becomes less important.
In business books, you can’t always follow that model religiously, but it’s a good principle. You want to front-load the value because most people will not read your book in its entirety. It makes sense to put your most valuable information where most people will read it.
So don’t withhold the meat from your readers until they get three or four chapters into the book.
I’m going to share a statistic—don’t know how much it applies to business books—but most people decide in the first 20 pages whether they’re going to keep reading or put it down. If I had to guess, I’d guess it's probably about the same.
I did this with Infinite Jest—supposed to be amazing. It did nothing for me. I decided long ago there’s no sense in torturing myself if I'm reading for pleasure. Same with Lord of the Flies. I’ve tried twice; I put it down.
You’ve got 20 pages or less to convince your reader that your ideas are valuable, so you’d better shine in those first ones.
Active Recall—Retrieval Practice
Another tip says:
“Active recall—retrieval practice. Forcing your brain to retrieve information strengthens neural pathways far more than rereading does.”
A principle we can steal for business books: you can offer a summary at the end of your chapters.
In my book The Business Book Bible, I wanted my ideas to be memorable and tweetable. My one-line takeaways—maybe three to five bullets—each bullet no more than 140 characters, so if somebody wanted to post it on Twitter, they could.
A good rule of thumb: if you can’t summarize the main takeaways of your chapter in two to five bullet points, and if those bullet points are longer than 140 characters, either you’ve put too much into your chapter, or you’re too attached to the material, or you don’t know how to explain it simply enough.
Mnemonic Devices & Association—Use Imagery, Acronyms, or a Memory Palace
“Mnemonic devices and association: use techniques like acronyms, imagery, or the memory palace to encode complex information. It works because these leverage the brain’s strength in spatial and visual memory.”
Translated: if you can associate pieces of information with internal imagery, it makes that information stickier, more memorable, and more easily recalled.
The way I suggest business authors do this is by explicitly using narrative examples—anecdotes, personal stories, professional experiences, case studies. Tell a story and use a narrative. A narrative can be three sentences or the overarching story for the entire book. The more you use narrative to illustrate ideas, the more it engages the brain, improves comprehension, and increases recall.
For business books, that’s what you want. You’re sharing your perspectives and expertise, and you want people to be able to recall and use your ideas, whether a day later or a year later.
Elaboration & Dual Coding—Use Multiple Modes and Link to Existing Knowledge
“Elaboration and dual coding: explain and connect new knowledge with what you already know, and use multiple modes—verbal and visual—to encode it.”
I could make a case this goes back to using narratives, metaphors, and analogies to explain your ideas.
In Deming’s Journey to Profound Knowledge, in explaining statistical process control, we use the example of a thermostat. Most people know what a thermostat is; they use it every day. By using examples from daily life, it anchors your ideas into things already well-established.
Synthesis & Integration
Make Connections
“Make connections: connect new ideas to existing knowledge at every opportunity. Elite thinkers relate what they read to their established mental models or frameworks.”
For a business book, give them the mental model or framework. In The Introvert’s Edge, we tell you up front there’s a seven-step process. We walk you logically through that process, and then spend the rest of the book explaining each step. By providing the framework up front, it gives you something to anchor yourself to, and as you get each new piece of information, you slot it into its place. As you get more information, it reinforces and relates back to what you just slotted in.
Mindset & Behavioral Heuristics
Habit of Reflection
Next category: mindset and behavioral heuristics. One tip is the habit of reflection.
“People who retain knowledge often reflect on what they read and learn.”
If your information lends itself to this, you can’t go wrong putting optional exercises at the end of a chapter. Plenty of effective business books have interactive content in the body of the chapter itself.
Different strokes for different folks.
Hope this helps.
And remember…
The world needs what you know.
