Maybe it’s an age thing. I’ve started to get genuinely annoyed when I finish a non-fiction book and can’t remember what I was supposed to do with any of it. Most books I read on Kindle now — backlight, bigger font, works outdoors and late at night. Yes, the eyes aren’t getting younger. None of me is.
So I’ve been forcing myself to take better notes. Sometimes I highlight a passage. Other times I’ll sit down and type out a quote properly. For the really good books, I’ve started leaving short audio notes. Faster, more fun, and I actually go back to them — which is more than I can say for most of my highlights.
The book that kicked this off was Oren Klaff’s Flip the Script. The core idea is deceptively simple: present your ideas so the other person feels like they came up with them. That flips the entire painful dynamic of having to hard-sell something — pushing, convincing, overcoming objections.
Instead, you demonstrate expertise. You show — through specific techniques Klaff walks you through — that you’re clearly the right person for the job. And you set things up so the conclusion feels inevitable. Not because you forced it, but because they arrived there themselves.
It’s a short read and a genuinely useful one. Especially if you’ve ever sat in a pitch meeting thinking there has to be a better way than this.
This post first appeared in German on reinergaertner.de, where I’ve been writing since 1997 — back when the internet still had that new-car smell. An AI assistant helped with the translation under my supervision. If something reads a bit odd, blame the Denglish in my head.