If You Don't Know Where To Start, Start With Books
Your next breakthrough might be hiding in a $10 paperback.
And the simplest way to build awareness? Books. Not just reading for entertainment. Not just collecting titles. Reading as a tool. A map. A shortcut. A mirror.
How to read for transformation, not information.
Reading the right books
Reading ≠ Reading.
“I read.” means nothing. It’s about what you read. Books can be truly life-changing. Marcus Aurelius' “Meditations” gives you a glimpse into one of the most brilliant minds the earth has borne. You have a problem? There’s a book about it. Thoughts, processes and systems from someone who has overcome and solved the thing you are struggling with.
You have a mental health problem? Here you go.
You struggle with consistency? Here you go.
Want to improve work ethics? Here you go.
You want to know more about the creative process? Here you go.
How valuable is that?
Monthly updated list of my recommendations is available here.
I knew a girl who consumed books at the pace I consume beer—fast. The books she read? Pure trash.
Reading a Wattpad romance is no different from watching a 4/10 Netflix series.
Review your to-read list, review your library. What books are there and why? If you have 100+ books marked as to-read, shrink the list. I bet some of them are lying there for so long that they have lost any relevance to your current situation.
And now, ask yourself:
What is the single problem you have been stuck with for a while?
Find a solid title about.
Buy the book right away to build accountability. Tip for EU readers: Scout Vinted for cheap copies.
Treat books like Reddit posts
Go on a hunt for information valuable to you. You don’t need to read books cover to cover. Books are a tool for you to utilize.
Skim the content table. Open the chapter that caught your attention.
Read from that point on.
Stop after finding the answer.
Now it’s time for action.
Quoting Naval Ravikant:
On the other hand, we’re also taught from a young age to finish your books. Books are sacred—when you go to school and you’re assigned to read a book, you have to finish the book. Over time, we forget how to read books. Everyone I know is stuck on some book.
I’m sure you’re stuck on something right now—it’s page 332, you can’t go any further, but you know you should finish the book. So what do you do? You give up reading books for a while.
For me, giving up reading was a tragedy. I grew up on books, then I switched to blogs, then I switched to Twitter and Facebook, and I realized I wasn’t actually learning anything. I was just taking little dopamine snacks all day long. I was getting my little 140-character burst of dopamine. I would Tweet, then look to see who retweeted my Tweet. It’s a fun and wonderful thing, but it’s a game I was playing.
I realized I had to go back to reading books.
I knew it was a very hard problem because my brain had now been trained to spend time on Facebook, Twitter, and these other bite-sized pieces.
I came up with this hack where I started treating books as throwaway blog posts or bite-sized tweets or posts. I felt no obligation to finish any book. Now, when someone mentions a book to me, I buy it. At any given time, I’m reading somewhere between ten and twenty books. I’m flipping through them.
If the book is getting a little boring, I’ll skip ahead. Sometimes, I start reading a book in the middle because some paragraph caught my eye. I’ll just continue from there, and I feel no obligation whatsoever to finish the book. All of a sudden, books are back into my reading library. That’s great, because there is ancient wisdom in books.
When solving problems: the older the problem, the older the solution.
If you’re trying to learn how to drive a car or fly a plane, you should read something written in the modern age because this problem was created in the modern age and the solution is great in the modern age.
If you’re talking about an old problem like how to keep your body healthy, how to stay calm and peaceful, what kinds of value systems are good, how you raise a family, and those kinds of things, the older solutions are probably better.
Any book that survived for two thousand years has been filtered through many people. The general principles are more likely to be correct. I wanted to get back into reading these sorts of books.
Get rid of the guilt of not studying the whole thing.
Nothing wrong with reading a few books at once too. If you, like I used to, feel the need to finish one book before starting another, you will end up reading noticeably less in the long term.
Why books are the best first step
Whatever you want to solve or achieve, it starts with awareness. Books are a great way to get unstuck and make meaningful progress with minimal effort. It is a low-effort, high-reward game. Great people read, they read a lot.
It’s not about books per se, it’s about compressed and easily digestible knowledge.
The word “course” raises a red flag in many people’s heads, but course is simply a more digestible book.
Both are knowledge carriers. Courses are more cohesive and actionable, books are more universal. Both are good education.
How to read when you hate reading
Set the bar very low: One page a day. If you can’t read 1 page a day, I can’t help you. You want to keep reading after that one page? That’s the point!
Pick an easy read: Almost all the most popular books in the self-improvement space are easy reads. “Atomic Habits”, “How to Win Friends & Influence People”, “Can’t Hurt Me”, etc.
As I said before: Don’t approach a new book (especially fat ones) with a completist mindset. Tell yourself: I’m gonna start and I’m allowed to drop it if I don’t find value.
Don’t bring your phone to the bathroom, leave a book there instead.
Audiobooks: Soak up knowledge while driving, working out, doing laundry. I love audiobooks.
1 hour challenge: In opposite to the first tip—set a timer for an hour and read till the time’s up. The point of this is getting you all in the book so you appreciate how valuable it is. After the session, you might be very eager for more.
This newsletter will transform in May. I already have a structure and solid plan. I cut through the bushes and carved a path. Now, the easy part, I have to do the work. By the end of May, this newsletter will be rebuilt into something of great value.