I’ve always enjoyed reading books. Growing up, I used to blaze through tons of fiction books over the summers. I remember reading the Fountainhead by Ayn Rand when I was like 16, and that’s a gigantic book (> 1000 pages). Once I got through that (and by the way it’s a great book, highly recommend), I guess it gave me the confidence to read practically anything.
Then one day, I think during Junior year of High School, I came across the 4 Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss. This was the first book that I’d say had a big impact on my life. It completely changed the way I looked at starting businesses – pursuing a venture went from being some super risky thing that required tons of capital to something that was in fact extremely doable and entailed little to no risk. That book led me to starting IB Survivors, and it was the first book that got me into a rabbit-hole of non-fiction books related to business, self-improvement, and the like.
Adding on, I think the key with reading this book was that I combined it with action. I didn’t just read the information, store it in my head, and continue on with my usual life. I used the material I learnt to better my life. And that’s something that we don’t do enough.
As an example, in college, most students (myself included) cram the textbook and the required readings before their midterm or final. Once the final is over and the semester has come to an end, it’s almost as if you’ve been given permission to forget all that material you learnt. Getting a good grade in the class almost also vindicates you for forgetting all that stuff.
Sometime during Freshman year of college, I got a Kindle. I was skeptical at first because I didn’t really think a device could replace the feeling of a hardcover book, but boy was I wrong. Completely wrong. I love my Kindle because it’s super light, it stores over 100 books, and most importantly I can take it anywhere with me.
Over the last 1.5 years, I’ve downloaded about 100 books to my Kindle, of which I’d say I’ve fully finished about 60 – 65. That’s a little less than a book per week read, which I’m pretty happy with. You can find a list of some of the books (the most noteworthy) that I’ve read here.
Unfortunately I haven’t really put any of the information that I have read to use. For example, I read Mastery by Robert Greene and did absolutely nothing. The right thing to do would have been to reach out to a potential mentor and to ask him if I could work with him, develop skills that I’m interested in getting better at, and to get better at these skills.
I didn’t do that though, and I’d honestly say that reading that book was a waste of time. If you don’t actually put into action any of the stuff you read, you’re wasting your time completely in my opinion.
Recently, though, I have made a proactive effort to change this. I read this book by Steve McClatchy, and it’s completely changed the way I structure my days and to-do lists.
It’s also had a very positive impact on my life, and for that I’m very glad.
That’s another thing about books: you only really need one little nugget of wisdom to completely change the way you think about something, and then that can put you on a completely different trajectory for the rest of your life. That’s also why if I’m on the fence between buying a book or not, most of the time, I’ll end up buying just because the expected value of the book potentially positively impacting my life in some way is way greater than the cost of the book.
April 2018
Recently, though, I had a chance to speak with Noah Kagan, and he told me that no book he had ever read had changed his life. He told me that obviously books are amazing resources, but that in his experience, when you’re young, you want to be actually doing a lot more stuff than reading about stuff.
For example, you’re going to learn astronomically more by actually starting a business than by reading a book about starting a business. This is very common: many people will try to read a book about starting X rather than actually doing X because they’re either too lazy or too scared.
I also recently turned 21, and for some reason, I feel like reading may not be the best use of my time anymore. Of course, I still plan on reading in the long-run and do definitely believe that it’s one of the best habits you can develop, but I think that for now I’m going to take a little break.
I’m going to stop reading books for the next 3 – 6 months and instead focus on writing more (on this blog, for example), learning to program more, and spend more time doing things like podcasting.