Always Be Reading. But Reading More Isn't Always the Answer

29 Nov 2024 #books

Before finding “The Almanack of Naval Ravikant,” I was a ferocious reader.

I was in the “let’s read as many books as we can” team. By pure FOMO, I was trying to follow YouTube trends like “I read 9,999 books about money, here’s what I learned” and the mantra “read one book per week.”

But out of dozens of books I had read, I didn’t remember reading some of them, even when I had notes. I kept one or two ideas from those books in the back of my head but I couldn’t trace them back to where I found them.

Then I found Naval’s reading strategy. Ironically, by reading another book.

Instead of reading as many books as possible, he reads and rereads a few good ones. The ones that have passed the test of time. He meditates on their lessons, acts on them, and then he uses X/Twitter to take public notes.

Naval’s reading strategy changed my mind about reading:

• I don’t have to read books from cover to cover. I can jump straight to a chapter or section to find an answer.
• I can leave books unfinished. For someone trying to increase a book count, leaving books unfinished made it hard to count. If I read only half of the book, should I add 0.5 to my tally?
• It’s OK to reread books. Again, rereading didn’t contribute to my increasing book count.

And more important than reading to increase a book count is acting on what we read. Remember, passive learning is just entertainment.

Once you read a book, write 10 lessons you learned from that book, and find one lesson you can act on immediately. That’s more valuable than a large book count without any taking any action.