?? Booktoberfest Day 1: Why read books? ??
Plenty of folks reading this know that it's become increasingly rare to have a conversation with me in which I don't mention or recommend a book. There are plenty of reasons for my insatiable appetite for reading, as well as my penchant for sharing book recommendations. I'll spare you any attempts to self-analyze here and skip to the rationale for another month-long experiment in publicly sharing ideas, after a four-month break since my #MaybeMay experiment: I believe that one of the kindest and most loving things we can do as humans is to share ideas and knowledge that we've found valuable with each other.
Furthermore, I haven't found any better way to share ideas and knowledge that have helped me improve my thinking, better understand the world, and individually flourish than by recommending books.
Also, "Booktoberfest" makes me giggle.
So here goes with my first installment of a month of book recommendations: The Art of Impossible by Steven Kotler.
Reading this book made such an impact on me that I enrolled in Kotler's "Zero to Dangerous" training course just a few weeks after reading it. I love this book, and the ideas and knowledge contained within have yielded incredible, compounding returns on my investment of time, energy, and attention to read it. And while that might sound like a dispassionate way of thinking about the book, it comes directly from Chapter 9: The ROI on Reading.
Don't get me wrong, I love reading Medium articles, thoughtful LinkedIn posts, SubStack newsletters, and long-form journalism. But, as Kotler explains, if you're looking to "efficiently shove smart stuff in your brain" (as I so fondly refer to my obsessive Audible "bookstorming" habit) there's simply no better bang for your buck than reading a book.
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Kotler boils down the logic to the amount of time invested in the production of books versus the amount of reader consumption time. He shares his back-of-the-napkin estimates for the amount of his time it takes to read, versus how much time he invests into researching, writing, editing, and publishing a blog, long-form magazine article, or book, then presents the essence of his argument in favor of books:
So why is it better to read books than blogs? Condensed knowledge. If you go on a blog bender and spend five hours reading my blogs, at three and a half minutes per blog, you’ll manage to slog through about eighty-six of them—thus you’re trading those five hours for 257 days’ worth of my effort. Meanwhile, if you had spent those same five hours reading Rise, you would have gotten 5,475 days. Books are the most radically condensed form of knowledge on the planet. Every hour you spend with Rise is actually about three years of my life. You just can’t beat numbers like that.
I couldn't agree more, but in case that's not enough to convince you to read more books, Kotler goes on to highlight some of the additional benefits of being a bookworm:
Moreover, books pay performance dividends. Studies find that they improve long-term concentration, reduce stress, and stave off cognitive decline. Reading has also been shown to improve empathy, sleep, and intelligence. If you combine these benefits with the information density books provide, we start to see why everyone from tech titans like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk to cultural icons like Oprah Winfrey, Mark Cuban, and Warren Buffett credit their success to their incredible passion for books.
I couldn't think of a better book to kick-off my "Booktoberfest" experiment, and highly recommend The Art of Impossible for anyone looking for an engaging and inspiring source of condensed knowledge. I promise it'll be worth your time.