How to apply what you read, with three worked examples from work

Learning how to apply what you read comes down to four small steps. Pick one idea from the book. Write down the exact moment you'll use it, as an if-then plan. Rehearse it once, out loud. A week later, note what happened, then keep the plan, fix it or move on.

The steps target the usual gap. You can explain the idea fine; what fails is noticing, mid-meeting, that this is the moment for it. Below are the research on that gap and three worked examples from work, ending in a template you can copy.

Why reading rarely changes what you do

You can explain Ruinous Empathy over dinner and still tell a teammate their weak draft looks great the next morning. Remembering an idea and knowing how to use what you read are separate skills. If remembering is your problem, start with how to remember what you read.

Psychologists call using something learned in one setting in a very different one far transfer. In a 2002 review in Psychological Bulletin, Susan Barnett and Stephen Ceci of Cornell found that a century of research had not settled whether far transfer happens, largely because studies measured very different distances and called them all "transfer."

They proposed nine dimensions for describing how far apart two situations are, and concluded that transfer is well supported under some conditions while many that matter remain untested. Six of the nine describe context. Run a business book through them and you can see how far an idea has to travel:

The table is our illustration, not theirs.

A classic set of experiments shows where the gap opens. Mary Gick and Keith Holyoak had people read a story about a general who splits his army into small groups that converge on a fortress at once. Then they gave them a medical puzzle: destroy a tumor with rays that would also kill the healthy tissue they pass through. The answer is the same move, many weak rays that meet at the tumor.

As the two researchers summarized in their 1983 paper in Cognitive Psychology, about 30% of people found that answer on their own. About 75% found it when told only that the story might help. About 10% found it with no story at all. Most people who had the idea didn't notice they had it.

This was a puzzle in a lab, not a meeting. But the story came just before the problem, inside an experiment where a link between the two parts was easy to suspect. At work the gap is days, and nobody gives you the hint. Understanding is rarely the bottleneck. Noticing is.

How to apply what you read: one idea, one plan, one rehearsal, one review

These four steps are how to implement what you read at work: they give you the hint in advance, then check whether it worked.

1. Pick one idea

Choose one idea you could use in the next week or two, and write it as a single sentence in your own words. One, because each idea needs its own cue, and a list of ten cues is a list nobody checks. If you can't write the sentence, reread that chapter first.

2. Write one if-then plan

Psychologist Peter Gollwitzer named these implementation intentions: a plan in the form "if this situation comes up, then I'll do that." In a 2006 meta-analysis, Gollwitzer and Paschal Sheeran combined 94 independent tests and found that forming an if-then plan had a medium-to-large effect on reaching the goal (d = .65). The plans helped people get started, and they helped people drop an approach that wasn't working.

Why they work matters here. The authors found that a plan makes the situation easier to spot and the response more automatic. That is the noticing problem from the Gick and Holyoak experiments, solved ahead of time: the if is the hint you give your future self.

A work example: if a stakeholder asks to add one more thing in sprint review, then I'll ask what they want to drop to make room. The if is a moment you will actually meet, tied to a person or a phrase you know is coming. The then fits in one sentence.

One caveat: we found no study that tested if-then plans for using ideas from a book. Treat this method as an application of the findings, not a tested program.

3. Rehearse it once

Say the line out loud before the real moment, or try the idea on a smaller case first. In the 1983 experiments, people who read two different stories with the same solution, and described what they had in common, often worked out the general principle, and the better they stated it, the more often they solved the new problem. Our reading: a rehearsal is a cheap way to get a second example before the one that counts.

4. Review it a week later

Write down what you did and what happened. A plan that never fired needs a new if, because the moment you picked didn't come up. A plan that fired and fell flat needs a new then. Once a plan runs without effort, pick your next idea.

Worked example: Radical Candor in your next one-on-one

The idea, in our words. Radical Candor by Kim Scott asks you to do two things at once: show you care about the person, and tell them plainly what isn't working. Care without the challenge is what Scott calls Ruinous Empathy, and she argues it's the mistake managers make most. She also says to ask for criticism of yourself before you give any, so people see you can take it, and then to sit through the awkward pause: she suggests counting to six before you speak again.

The situation. You lead a small team. Priya's last client deck had a pricing slide that didn't match the appendix, and you fixed it quietly the night before.

The if-then plans.

• If Priya and I reach the end of the agenda in Thursday's one-on-one, then I'll ask her for one thing I should change, and count to six in silence before I say anything else.
• If she brings up the client deck, then I'll name the pricing slide in that meeting, with the example, instead of saving it for the review cycle.

The rehearsal. Two lines, said out loud on the way to the meeting:

1. You: Before we finish, what's one thing I did this month that made your work harder?
2. You, later: On the client deck, the pricing slide didn't match the appendix, and the client caught it. I want your decks to land, so let's add a numbers check before they go out.

What to note afterwards. Write down what Priya said when you asked, as close to word for word as you can. Note whether your feedback came out clear or got softened into nothing; softening is the Ruinous Empathy box, and the fix is a more specific then.

If you don't manage anyone yet, run the first plan with your own manager. For the books around this one, see books for first-time managers.

Worked example: The Mom Test on a customer call

The idea, in our words. People are kind about ideas, so their opinion of yours tells you little. The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick says to ask about their life and what they have already done, not about your idea or what they might do someday, and to talk less than they do. Fitzpatrick treats compliments as noise rather than evidence.

The book is written for founders, and the same questions work for a product manager on a discovery call or a consultant interviewing client staff. Three questions to stop asking, with what to ask instead (our wording):

The if-then plans.

• If someone says they'd definitely use it, then I'll ask when they last had the problem and what they did about it.
• If the call goes well, then I'll ask for a next step that costs them something, such as an intro to a colleague or a date for a follow-up.

The second plan comes from the book's test of a good meeting: it ends with the other person committing to something, not with a compliment.

The rehearsal. Ask a teammate to play a customer who loves everything and commits to nothing. Practice turning each compliment into a question about the past.

What to note afterwards. Mark each line of your call notes F (a fact about something that happened) or O (an opinion or a prediction). A page of O's means the call measured politeness.

The Mom Test opens our reading order for startup founders for this reason: it changes the first conversation you have about an idea.

Worked example: Thinking, Fast and Slow before a big decision

The idea, in our words. Much of Thinking, Fast and Slow is about how quick, intuitive judgment feels certain while missing risks, and how plans tend to run optimistic. In the book's chapter on optimism, Daniel Kahneman describes a practical check developed by the psychologist Gary Klein: the premortem.

In Performing a Project Premortem (Harvard Business Review, 2007), Klein explains the method: before a plan is final, the team imagines it has already failed and writes down why. Klein cites a 1989 study by Deborah Mitchell, Jay Russo and Nancy Pennington as finding that imagining an outcome had already happened raised people's ability to correctly identify reasons for it by 30%. The paper's own abstract describes the result differently. Setting the event in the past or the future made little difference. Presenting the outcome as certain did: people's explanations got longer, and more of their reasons described specific events. Our takeaway: the ingredient to keep is certainty. Say "it failed," not "it might fail."

A premortem in five steps, adapted from Klein's article:

1. Brief everyone on the plan as it stands. For a decision you're making alone, write it down in two sentences.
2. Announce the failure as a fact: we went ahead, and it failed badly. Kahneman's telling sets the scene a year from now.
3. Everyone writes down reasons alone, before anyone talks, including the ones that would be awkward to say in a normal meeting.
4. Go around the room one reason at a time, starting with the plan's owner, until every list is used up. No debate yet.
5. The owner takes the list and changes the plan: fix the risks that matter most, and name an early warning sign for each one.

Klein gives a real case. On a project to bring planning software to military air-campaign planners, a team member who had said nothing during a long kickoff pointed out that one algorithm would run too slowly on the laptops used in the field. The developers turned out to have a shortcut they hadn't mentioned. It went in, and the project succeeded.

The if-then plan. If I'm about to approve a plan I've argued for, then I'll run a premortem before the decision meeting. For a personal call, such as a job offer, write the failure story yourself, then ask one friend to write theirs.

The rehearsal. Run one on something small first, like next sprint's plan, so the steps are familiar before the decision that matters.

What to note afterwards. A week later, check whether the plan changed because of the list. A few months later, check which reasons on the list actually happened.

Rehearse before the real thing

Rehearsal is the step people skip. Make it as close to the real moment as you can: the same words, and a choice you have to make.

Knotd, our app, has two formats built for this step. Your Move tells a short story a scene at a time: you choose what to say, see what happened, and the book names your choice, so the Radical Candor story can tell you that staying quiet to spare a friend was Ruinous Empathy. Spot the Trap gives you a short case file and asks you to tap the line where it goes wrong; the Thinking, Fast and Slow set covers traps such as the sunk-cost fallacy and the halo effect.

A one-page template to apply book knowledge at work

Copy this into a note, one row per idea, and keep one row live at a time. For more books to run through it, see the career shelf.

When you fill in the last column, answer these four:

• Did the moment in my if come up?
• What did I actually say or do?
• What did the other person say or do?
• Keep the plan, change the if, change the then, or move to the next idea?