How I read 200 sources a week without drowning
The reading system behind every issue, from first skim to final cut.
Leo Marin
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Every week I read somewhere around 200 sources: annual reports, earnings call transcripts, old interviews, forum threads and a long tail of newsletters. People ask how that's possible without reading all day. The honest answer is that I don't read most of them. I triage them.
This is the system behind every issue, from the first skim on Friday to the final cut on Wednesday.
Friday: wide and shallow
On Friday I pick the company and collect everything I can find about it in one folder. I don't read anything properly yet. I skim headlines, look at charts and mark anything that surprises me. Surprise is the signal: it means the story I assumed is not the whole story.
By the end of Friday I usually have 30 to 50 surprises and a rough guess at the one question the issue will answer.
Weekend: narrow and deep
Over the weekend I read the sources behind the best ten surprises from start to finish. Annual reports get the most time, because companies are more honest in their filings than in their interviews. Old interviews come next, especially ones from before a big decision, when founders hadn't yet learned what to say.
The goal of reading is not to know everything. It's to find the one thing the company would rather you didn't notice.
Tuesday: talk to people
No amount of reading replaces a conversation with someone who was there. I usually speak with two or three people: a former employee, a customer or a competitor. Most of what they tell me never makes it into the issue, but it stops me from writing something confident and wrong.
Wednesday: cut it to ten minutes
The last step is the hardest. Everything I learned has to fit into one idea, one chart and three things you can use. I usually cut half of what I wrote on Tuesday night.
What you can borrow
Skim for surprises, not for facts. When you research anything, mark the moments that don't match what you expected. Those are where the story is.
Read the boring documents. Filings, contracts and old job posts are more honest than press releases.
Decide what you're cutting before you start writing. Pick the one question first. Everything that doesn't help answer it goes in a separate file.
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