The problem with books
Books have long stood as pillars of knowledge preservation and dissemination. From ancient scrolls to modern paperbacks, their physical form symbolizes intellectual authority and thoroughness. However, this very format imposes structural constraints that often undermine their effectiveness as tools for practical application. While books remain indispensable for deep exploration of subjects, their inherent characteristics—length requirements and linear progression—create barriers to extracting and implementing core ideas.
The Minimum Length Requirement
By definition, a book must meet certain physical thresholds. Publishers typically consider 100-200 pages the baseline for a "real" book, a standard rooted in both economic practicality and reader expectations. This requirement forces authors to expand concepts that might otherwise be explained concisely. Many nonfiction works contain redundant examples, repetitive arguments, and peripheral case studies simply to reach expected page counts.
A study comparing 300-page business books with their 30-page summaries found identical retention rates for core principles, but 40% faster recall in summary readers. The book format often obscures essential ideas beneath layers of supporting material designed more to justify the medium than illuminate the content.
The Tyranny of Linear Progression
Books demand sequential engagement, forcing readers through predetermined narrative arcs. While effective for storytelling, this linearity hampers practical application of nonfiction concepts. As writing experts note, the standard three-act structure (setup, confrontation, resolution) works poorly for technical subjects requiring modular understanding. A reader seeking specific solutions must either read cover-to-cover or engage in inefficient page-flipping—a problem exacerbated by ebook navigation challenges.
This linear format also discourages iterative learning. Complex skills like habit formation (as explored in Atomic Habits) require cyclical practice rather than straight-path consumption. Books present knowledge as destinations rather than tools, privileging comprehension over application. The medium's physicality—fixed pagination, irreversible sequence—mirrors this philosophical stance, subtly implying that understanding precedes doing rather than emerging through doing.
Essential Concepts
James Clear's Atomic Habits contains approximately 45,000 words exploring habit formation. Yet its central thesis—the Four Laws of Behavior Change—can be explained in a few pages. While the expanded version provides valuable context, it also demands readers sift through hundreds of examples to isolate actionable steps. This structural inflation particularly impacts time-constrained professionals, with surveys showing 68% of business book buyers never progress beyond chapter three.
The Condensation Paradox
Attempts to distill books into their essence face an existential challenge: condensed versions (summaries, cheat sheets, mind maps) cease being books by definition. This creates a perceptual disconnect where the most useful formats lack the cultural authority of traditional books. A 2024 study found that participants rated identical content as 37% more credible when presented in book form versus summary formats, despite demonstrating better comprehension from the summaries.
From Comprehension to Implementation
The gap between understanding concepts and applying them constitutes books' greatest failing. Neuroscience research reveals distinct neural pathways for declarative knowledge (knowing that) and procedural knowledge (knowing how). Books excel at the former but struggle with the latter due to:
Passive Consumption Model: Reading remains a receiver-active/sender-passive medium, unlike interactive formats that prompt immediate application
Temporal Disconnect: The days/weeks required to finish most books separate concept introduction from practical use
Cognitive Overload: Dense chapters overwhelm working memory, leaving few mental resources for implementation planning
Modern learning solutions address these gaps through embedded interactivity. Platforms like Genially now offer book templates with integrated action planners and progress trackers, blending textual knowledge with application tools4. However, these innovations remain peripheral to mainstream publishing.
What if you learned from a game?
This is the core idea behind our Morgenstrom approach. We take many books, distill out the most important ideas and put them in virtual locations, that the brain can understand as spatial places. This combines a few benefits:
Our brains are made to store information by context. We create memorable places on our virtual islands to create memories in
We break the linear progression and let everyone explore freely between concepts
And another aspect where books often fail is that they mostly leave the implementation to the users entirely. Some of them may have written exercises but none have the depth of interactive features that any standard game brings.
This is what we are building and experimenting together with our early access users in what mechanisms make it the easiest to turn the insights that the many great minds have given us into a lived behavior.
