Every chapter you read now earns interest in conversations you haven’t had yet.

Reading pays out on a delay and in a form you cannot predict. What you take in sits quietly until a conversation, a problem or a decision calls for it, and then it arrives as something you simply know. Because the payoff is disconnected from the moment of reading, it is easy to conclude the reading was not useful.

Read a bit of something most days without requiring it to be immediately applicable. Follow what interests you rather than what seems strategic. The connections form on their own, usually later and somewhere you did not expect.