Many great ideas are ruined by high word counts. Books with 200 pages because the big publishers won’t sell a book with 20. Blog posts that run 5,000 words because 500 didn’t feel “serious.”
After reading one of these books or posts I try to synthesize “the big idea.” I need it to be simple, because—as Charlie Munger would advise—I want to take that simple idea and take it seriously.
If you don’t want to read a whole book to get “the big idea,” you might find it with an “inspectional read” (from Adler’s How to Read a Book). Basically: read the front and back cover, table of contents, first few pages of each chapter, and final few pages of the book.
You’ll know a big idea when you see it. “Make something every day and share it,” “incentives matter more than intentions,” “80% of the value comes from 20% of the effort,” “demos trump memos.”
A big idea fits on a sticky note. You can remember the surrounding context without reading it all. You can think of a few good examples of the idea in practice. Explain it in a couple of minutes.
The big idea of The Big Idea: make it small enough (ironically) that it fits on a Post-it with a regular Sharpie, and stick it somewhere you can see it. Write something, like… I don’t know: “the big idea should be small enough to fit here.” A simple idea to take seriously.