Or Why those who read more, win more!
Two of the better articles I’ve read over the past 6 months have been by my marketing idol Ryan Holiday and the very smart Matt Paulson, who both highlight the benefits of being a ferocious reader!
The Solutions Lie Within The Pages
Self-made millionaires understand that there’s a lot in the business world that they don’t know. They recognize that the world is constantly changing and there’s always new information to learn which could have a tangible impact upon their businesses. They know that there are critical pieces of information about their business and their industry that they don’t know that would be game-changing if they did know them. Unfortunately, people don’t know what they don’t know. So, they embark on a journey of life-long learning to become better entrepreneurs and more well-rounded people.
…Most of the content you will consume won’t lead to an immediate game-changing breakthrough in business, but every now and then, you’ll find a needle in a haystack and uncover something that will change the way that you do business for the better. I can think of dozens of things that I’ve learned and implemented as a result of books that I’ve read, podcasts that I’ve listened to and online courses that I’ve taken.
If you’d like to have the same educational advantage that self-made millionaires do, the prescription is simple. Become a life-long learner.
—Matt Paulson on the benefits of being a life-long learner
What Matt is touching on in the above excerpt is that any situation/strategy/problem/solution/passing thought/stroke-of-genius that you could need for your life or business is within the pages of a book somewhere.
The answers to any question you could have are contained within a book – you just have to find them by “becoming a voracious consumer of content”.
How Do I Read More?
The challenge then becomes “if all of the solutions for my problems are contained within books, I simply need to figure out how to read more!”
Luckily, well-known book fiend and author Ryan Holiday has some solid advice for fitting more reading time into your life:
…where do you get the time to eat three meals a day? How do you have time to do all that sleeping? How do you manage to spend all those hours with your kids or wife or a girlfriend or boyfriend?
You don’t get that time anywhere, do you? You just make it because it’s really important. It’s a non-negotiable part of your life.
…The key to reading lots of book begins with stop thinking of it as some activity that you do. Reading must become as natural as eating and breathing to you. It’s not something you do because you feel like it, but because it’s a reflex, a default.
Carry a book with you at all times. Every time you get a second, crack it open.
…When you’re eating, read. When you’re on the train, in the waiting room, at the office–read. It’s work, really important work. Don’t let anyone ever let you feel like it’s not.
There’s some great (practical and mindset) advice in this article on reading more, I recommend checking it out. I’ll finish with this excerpt from the same post:
Perhaps the reason you having trouble is you forgot the purpose of reading. It’s not just for fun. Human beings have been recording their knowledge in book form for more than 5,000 years. That means that whatever you’re working on right now, whatever problem you’re struggling with, is probably addressed in some book somewhere by someone a lot smarter than you. Save yourself the trouble of learning from trial and error–find that point. Benefit from that perspective.
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