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Josh Kaufman: Frequency analysis across diverse reading reveals key core concepts

Josh Kaufman · #106 Josh Kaufman: Maximizing Our Locus of Control · Mar 9, 2021 · at 21:20

Author Josh Kaufman explains his two-step methodology for synthesizing vast amounts of information and writing 'The Personal MBA'.

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“The wider you look, the wider the variety of sources that you have coming into your brain, the more access to interesting insights and connections you would have. So, so yes, reading broadly, experimenting broadly, having experiences in different domains and trying to bring those domains together. That's the first part. And I think once you do that, and this was very much the process for the personal MBA, I read 100,000 of business books over a very long period of time, and when you do that, you start to see the same ideas come up over and over and over again, and so there's a certain frequency analysis that you can do on paying attention to the ideas, the organizing structure, the names, the concepts, the relationships that keep coming up over and over as you are doing this wide exploration, and that's a really good pointer that, that there's something about that that's particularly important, that's worth knowing, that's worth understanding”

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