Sales Letter to Myself #17: Why You Should Read Books Every Day
Facebook post written on November 15, 2021
original: Facebook post written on November 15, 2021: https://www.facebook.com/mike.ying.personal/posts/pfbid0xXjVFUVJ8w4CeMBFus7dDnay6eAvJLvqqLyFELYHaEcLNS9BEqqdd3fZMBqFj7YKl
Why You Should Read Books Every Day
"The more you learn, the more you earn." - Warren Buffett
Reading books is the highest ROI activity you ever did.
Let's take some examples.
You spent 23 years in formal education 'schools'.
And it probably gave you a negative ROI.
You never got back all the time, money, energy, and focus invested in school.
It's hard to measure but it's easy to imagine the life you could have if all that time, money, energy, and focus was invested smartly.
But reading a book doesn't take much time, money, energy, and focus.
And reading a book can give you lifetime knowledge and wisdom (that you actually rarely get from school) that can return your time, money, energy, and focus invested exponentially.
If you read a book from Eckhart Tolle, you can go from suicide to enjoying life.
If you read The 5 Love Languages, you can go from a divorce to the happiest marriage ever.
If you read The Education of Millionaires, you can go from broke to billionaire because of a mindset shift.
And these are just a few examples.
There are books on everything.
Whatever you are interested in, you can find a book on it.
Alright, you've read a lot of books already.
Now this post is about why you should read even more books.
On some days, you read 3+ books but it also happens that you don't read at all for 1-2 weeks.
I want you to enjoy reading books more and make it an integral part of your life.
Dan Henry says that he spends 50% of his day reading books and learning.
Wouldn't it be awesome to do the same?
One problem you have is that when you read a book, you feel like you are wasting your time because you are not doing a priority task like working on a business.
Well, just clear that problem out of your mind.
Warren Buffett also spends his days reading stuff.
You can too.
It actually doesn't matter if you don't work all day.
Your focus right now is spend more time on beneficial activities and spend less time on distractions. (+ improve focus and deliberate practice time)
You realized that there are so many books that you want to read and that there is so much knowledge and wisdom to uncover that if you don't increase your speed of learning, you will die stupid (compared to the wise man that you could be).
You can't fit reading into your daily schedule right now.
You just want to read here and there when you have time for it.
Instead of scrolling the Facebook newsfeed, watch YouTube videos, and listening to music, you could read books.
That's it. Make reading books your main leisure time activity.
Writing and creating content is also fun.
So make reading and writing your main leisure time activities.
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What are the alternatives to reading books?
The best way to develop a skill is get a mentor and practice.
The best way to gain wisdom is reflection, experience, and getting knowledge from wise people.
The best way to gain knowledge is getting taught by a teacher, watch a great course, and reading books.
Depending on what you want to learn, reading books is not always the best choice.
But it's always a great choice to read more books.
When you'll have enough wealth, you'll be able to be constantly taught by experts 1 on 1 but until then, reading books is a great way to learn anything.
Courses are great too so you can alternate between books and courses.
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Let's finish this post by motivating yourself to read more books.
The costs of not reading more books:
- staying stupid
- dying stupid
- not having knowledge to develop skills
- not being able to gain knowledge
- not being able to gain wisdom
- not discovering a lot of different concepts which would make you capable of horizontal thinking, inspiration, innovation, analogical thinking, conceptual thinking, abstract thinking, metaphors, and comparison
- not developing the mind
- staying stuck in problems without solution
- less creativity
- not getting inspiration from successful people
- not learning about what you want
Imagine the life you will have after reading a lot of books.
You already mastered fitness after the Menno Henselmans PT course so you don't really read about fitness anymore.
You mostly read about business, marketing, psychology, spirituality, and productivity.
Alright, how would your life be if you read more about these?
(Of course, you read about other subjects too to learn concepts from different industries and get inspiration from different stories.)
Let's start with business and marketing.
Obviously, if you know how the best businesses operate, you'll be able to replicate the same + have world-class marketing + innovate with new concepts.
Psychology is super interesting. You still have a lot to learn and You can master your mind better. It also helps with interacting with people and communicating.
Spirituality is great but you feel like there is not much to learn. Though it is useful to understand different perspectives, philosophies, and being able to teach different concepts.
Productivity is interesting because procrastination is a struggle.
Alright, this makes it clear that right now you are more motivated by reading books about business, marketing, and psychology.
If you read 3 books per week, you may finish one third of your reading list before the end of the year.
