Ep. 33: Reading as a Superpower

Happy Friday, all! 🪷 

We all know we should be reading but we don’t. We want our kids to read, but they don’t. We don’t read, so how can we force them?

This is an age-old problem and if not solved early, can have a lifetime of repercussions.

Every great leader reads a TON. In my experience learning, teaching, and working in healthcare, regular readers become great leaders, and those who do not, are (great) followers.

This is especially true early on. From teaching/tutoring these past 10’ish years, students who read regularly are significantly sharper in school, their extracurriculars, and even socially. From the leadership side of things, THESE are the kinds of students/learners I’d prefer to have as a colleague, a boss, and friends.

I want to share a few actionable clips (bolded below) from the Almanack of Naval Ravikant, which is free to read online and can be found here. It is FULL of great wisdom and action items for self-development.

Heads up, a slighter longer post this week, so here is the TLDR (Too Long Didn’t Read);

Read. Learn how to make it fun. Lean into the harder subjects (and in life in general) because of science. You don’t need to finish everything you start, just start and stop as you please, but read. If you don’t do it for yourself, then do it for your loved one(s).

With that, from Ravikant:

The genuine love for reading itself, when cultivated, is a superpower. We live in the age of Alexandria when every book and every piece of knowledge ever written down is a fingertip away.

The means of learning are abundant—it’s the desire to learn that is scarce. [3]

I don’t know about you, but I have very poor attention. I skim. I speed read. I jump around. I could not tell you specific passages or quotes from books. At some deep level, you absorb them, and they become threads in the tapestry of your psyche.

I probably read one to two hours a day. That puts me in the top .00001 percent.

I think that alone accounts for any material success I’ve had in my life and any intelligence I might have. Real people don’t read an hour a day. Real people, I think, read a minute a day or less. Making it an actual habit is the most important thing.

It almost doesn’t matter what you read. Eventually, you will read enough things (and your interests will lead you there) that it will dramatically improve your life.

Just like the best workout for you is one you’re excited enough to do every day, I would say for books, blogs, tweets, or whatever—anything with ideas and information and learning—the best ones to read are the ones you’re excited about reading all the time. [4]

I’ll start at the beginning, but I’ll move fast. If it’s not interesting, I’ll just start flipping ahead, skimming, or speed reading.

If it doesn’t grab my attention within the first chapter in a meaningful, positive way, I’ll either drop the book or skip ahead a few chapters.

I don’t believe in delayed gratification when there are an infinite number of books out there to read.

Generally, I’ll skim. I’ll fast forward. I’ll try and find a part to catch my attention. Most books have one point to make. They have one point to make, they make it, and then they give you example after example after example after example, and they apply it to explain everything in the world.

Explain what you learned to someone else. Teaching forces learning. It’s not about “educated” vs. “uneducated.”

Read the greats in math, science, and philosophy. Ignore your contemporaries and news. Avoid tribal identification. Put truth above social approval. [11]

When it comes to reading, make sure your foundation is very, very high quality.

The best way to have a high-quality foundation (you may not love this answer), but the trick is to stick to science and to stick to the basics. Generally, there are only a few things you can read people don’t disagree with. Very few people disagree 2+2=4, right? That is serious knowledge. Mathematics is a solid foundation.

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.

Quote of the week:

Velocity is not equivalent to speed; the two are sometimes confused. Velocity is speed plus vector: how fast something gets somewhere. An object that moves two steps forward and then two steps back has moved at a certain speed but shows no velocity. The addition of the vector, that critical distinction, is what we should consider in practical life (1).

I’ll see you all next week & Namaste 🙏 

Deepak

 Currently: 📖 : Reading | 👀: watching/listening | 🎵: song of the week

📖 : Collect Mental Models

👀 : Wall-E - Disney+

🎵 : Nevergreen- Emancipator