Well, because I am in the process of kickstarting my own career in research.
You must be kidding me.
That’s what you’re thinking right at this very moment.
I know.
Why would anyone want to learn something from someone who doesn’t have a glorious résumé of successfully doing that “something” before?
All those MIT intellects who did their PhD at Cambridge after graduating from Oxford have pages and pages of published articles on Nature with impact factors ranging in the 60s.
Heck, they’ll put on a live Zoom presentation covering their publication statistics over the last 2 decades.
And they’ll do that wearing their brown corduroy jackets and burgundy silk ties just so that you can get a subtle glimpse of their ceiling-high books shelves back in the background.
So I don’t know why you should listen to me.
But one reason is all I can think of:
Fresh perspectives.
Whether you are new to research paper reading or have been going at it for the past ten years, fresh perspectives are the secret juice that’ll bring you to the next level.
Fresh perspectives shed new light on old problems.
Fresh perspectives help you see new problems that you’ve never even thought about.
Fresh perspectives will strip aged concepts with layers and layers of complexity over the years of “tradition” down to its essentials.
Ask a seasoned veteran research paper reader (AKA your professor) and he’ll most probably tell you that research paper reading just came as second nature to him.
Yes, because it was also probably 50 to 60 years ago that he sorted out the challenges of research paper reading. Therefore all he remembers now is how easy it has been for him since then.
All those nitty-gritty nuances of paper reading faced by someone starting out new have been wiped clean from his memory.
That is classical survivorship bias in front of your eyes.
These beginner challenges, on the other hand, are fresh in an amateur’s head.
They’ve just been there and done that.
They can tell you about heat map interpretation with every bit of gory detail.
Where better is it to see fresh perspectives than from the eyes of an amateur?
Principles, Not Tactics.
Here’s what it looks like through my lens:
While a lot of the tactics around research reading continue to change, the principles of a successful research reader haven’t.
I want to create a guide that shows you a system so that you can adapt whatever tactics you want around it.
These are things that I’ve learned over the months through trial and error with my own reading.
What?
I thought you just said that you were a beginner.
Yup, a beginner as in I’ve just recently started to focus on the principles of research reading.
Chasing tactics was all that I had done before that.
Here’s My Story.
In fact, I’m sure you’ve heard about my story.
Yes, and maybe your story sounds somewhat similar:
I read my first research paper when I was 19.
It was my second year at medical school and we had to perform a literature review using the PICO framework.
Psst… PICO stands for Problem/Population, Intervention, Comparison, Outcome.
My question was “For patients with hypertension, was beta-blocker (a type of anti-hypertensive medication) effective in lowering blood pressure compared to placebo.
Off I went down the protocol for a literature review, going through EMBASE, PubMed, and the Cochrane Library, searching with the keywords “hypertension”, “beta-blocker”, and “efficacy”, and picking up every relevant piece of article throughout the 20 year period from 2000 to 2020.
I ended up with 437 publications.
The memory of seeing that number is still fresh in my head.
I started to read the first article. From start to finish.
Then the second.
Now onto the third.
Soon, may after 5 hours of solid reading, I was on the 10th article.
“I’ve got this,” I told myself.
After all, I’ve gotten the straight As it took to haul myself into medical school.
There’s an end in sight.
Yes, 427 more pieces of densely packed information to decode.
Looking into the hats that I’ve got, I began to pull out the speed reading tricks I’ve picked up along the way.
The Asian “cramp and regurgitate” examination system really prepares you well.
I started to scan the text at a regular pace, not stopping even when certain concepts were unclear.
I moved on to scan with a finger running under the lines to prevent myself from re-reading.
My fingers then ran under every three words and so did my eyes.
Before long I was only reading the 3 words and the last 3 words of each line.
These tactics plunged me through 10 more articles that afternoon.
Come on, pretty spectacular stuff for a beginner.
Then I got greedy.
With all these tactics, my reading time would be worn down to a third before I finished these 400 or so articles.
The sky was literally the limit and the worst-case scenario? —
— I ended up understanding nothing after “reading” 400 papers.
Not that bad, is it?
I spent all my time gobbling up any resources on speed reading: from YouTube, blogs, and books.
I experimented with any tactics that I came across, implemented them in my reading, and fine-tuned the sharp edges to suit my own reading style.
Eventually, I was done with all 437 papers in just under 2 weeks.
Not too shabby, if you’d asked me.
If and only if one doesn’t throw in the cost of time, attention, and the opportunity cost of NOT being able to produce the literature review, which was the purpose of reading those 400 papers.
I’ve Had Enough Of Reading For The Sake Of Reading.
Reading papers was supposed to provide the ingredients to produce a literature review.
Speed reading was doing the exact opposite for me.
Unreliable comprehension that ate into my productivity.
How would this differ from a normal of speed of reading?
The time I’m spending for such speed reading — focusing my attention, thinking about the technique that I’m using, worrying about whether I’m using the technique correctly, the fear of missing out of key concepts — dominates my working hours, and understanding is what can be fit into the scant remaining space.
I’m sure you’d be asking the same question:
What’s the point of reading when the speed of reading is the means and the end in itself?
I mean, there’s got to be better reading principles.
Then I stumbled upon Tiago Forte’s How To Build A Second Brain.
I know, not a must-read on the book list of most PhD students.
It has nothing to do with research reading either.
More of a “how to take better notes” guide.
But what struck me was the same principles behind that could be applied to research reading as well.
Tiago proposed that our notes should be taken with the actionability of the notes in mind.
And that actionability should be prioritized according to the timeframe of the action.
Notes that affect actions that can be taken now should be prioritized above notes that just might affect one’s actions maybe 10 years later.
Applying this principle to research reading, research papers, or the knowledge in research papers that would affect our actions now should be prioritized over research papers that just might affect one’s actions 10 years later.
If reading a paper would alter the trajectory of my literature review, I should prioritize it.
If a paper contains something interesting but does not impact my writing, I should store it away for someday later when it might be more actionable.
They both retired at the age of 40 and 47 respectively after a successful career in engineering and accounting on consistent streams of dividend income.
They spend more time watching their kids play amongst the papaya trees, connecting with the local church community, and caring for their pens of chickens than the semi-yearly review of their portfolio holdings.
So the notion of financial freedom wasn’t anything new to me.
Neither was the possibility of achieving financial freedom through dividend investing.
I knew of its compounding power way before my dabbling in Big Pharma stocks.
I was just convinced that I could do better than my uncles.
Tell me you didn’t think so when you were 18.
With my break-even record (**emphasize**) in biotech stocks and an “ain’t nobody got time to be a trader” attitude, I “went back” to my roots in dividend investing.
I got my hands on some dividend-paying retailers, hotel chains, and REITs in Hong Kong Heng Seng Index.
Then shit (COVID-19) happened.
Retailers, hotel chains, and REITs were burnt to the ground.
This was the sort of failure that I was talking about.
(I did get myself a fake ID, but the airport was shut down.)
Oh wells.
That and biotech stocks hitting their all-time highs with the emergency approval of COVID-19 vaccines.
Is there any reason not to go back to the life of sleep, wake up, eat, shit, and repeat, while reading analyst reports on biotech companies at every single step of the cycle?
Back I went into the trenches of biotech stock investing.
The Omnipresent Temptation Of Getting More.
I say “trenches” not because biotech stocks are a poor investment.
To be frank, even if you take into account the heavily weighted downside given the 90% failure rate of therapeutic agents undergoing human testing, I’m willing to bet that the long-term return will at least match that of the general market if not more if you were lucky enough to have a few 100-baggers.
It’s the same case for growth stocks in the tech sector running on a meager profit and a monster hype.
I’ve got no doubt that one COULD get rich trading unicorn startups IN THE LONG RUN.
I doubt that most of us require these 10x returns to enjoy financial freedom.
I’m also skeptical of whether the life energy in exchange for these returns is anywhere near justifiable.
Then one day, it just hit me.
“What do I want from investing?”
Do I want to identify that biotech startup that was going to invent the cure for cancer at its angel investing round, seed the funding of these medicines that would eventually blossom to alleviate the sufferings from these ailments?
Do I want to be known as the Reddit trader who spotted the next Tesla and beat the Big Boys on Wall Street at their home game?
Do I want to get crazy rich while doing all the above?
Yes, of course.
Because wouldn’t that be awesome?
Once I gave the questions a second thought, I realized that what I wanted from investing was way simpler.
I just wanted a paycheck.
Coming in the mail month after month.
Like clockwork.
Not too different from the paycheck that I’m getting from my passive-aggressive boss.
A paycheck that comes in even after I quit being a doctor to pursue a research career in RNA-editing.
A paycheck that comes in while I’m going pro on aquascaping competitions for reef tanks (it’s a gorgeous hobby — trust me, Google it).
A paycheck that comes in while I’m cuddling in bed with my wife and my children and my pet hedgehog Mr. Pricklepants on a Tuesday morning.
I just wanted a paycheck.
Whether a stock’s price rises 10x or 100x or goes to the moon, frankly it doesn’t matter.
I don’t need a huge payload and I don’t want a huge payload 40 years later when I’ll retire at sixty-five.
I need a consistent income stream that’s enough to cover the basic necessity of keeping me and my family warm, clean, and fed — without the need to spend time working for it.
$8000 every quarter starting from the next quarter means more to my life and its fulfillment than $8 million paid to me 40 years later.
Because to have a paycheck without having to work for it is to be free.
It’s that simple and there’s no reason to make it seem any more sophisticated.
Dividends are one such example of work-less paychecks.
Even better, these dividends are capable of growing over time.
Which is why I’m done with investing tactics.
I was looking for time-tested investing principles that are just as relevant today as they will be 100 years down the road.
So this guide isn’t written from the perspective of someone who created an investment portfolio 5 years ago and is using that as a tool for teaching.
This guide is written from the perspective of someone who has gotten lost the rat race of “more is better”, found his way out, and is on his journey towards principle-based dividend investing.
When you have a proven system in front of you that you can follow, then anything is possible.
So if all of that sounds good to you then we can dig into the gist of the matter.
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