The Reader's Manifesto: Why Reading Is The Habit of The Highly Successful

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We Have A Problem

There is something completely wrong with society today. We live in a world where we have an abundance of information; We have sites like Google, Bing, and YouTube at our fingertips; We have countless free eBooks and audiobooks that we can download and learn from; We have millions of great books that we can check out at the local library or read at a Barnes and Noble.

We have all this knowledge for us to use, but it seems like no one is really getting any more educated as a result of it.

“We are drowned in information, but starved for knowledge.”

One of the biggest reasons for this is because education has turned so many people off from learning, especially when it comes to reading books.

After years of being forced to read books and give reports and presentations on them, students, by the time they graduate, never want to pick up another book ever again. In fact, 42% of college graduates never read another book for the rest of their life!

This is a shame because if you study all the greats, such as Oprah Winfrey, Steve Jobs, or Charlie Munger, you’ll find that they are all voracious readers.

This is because reading is, and always has been, the habit of the highly successful.

It's not a coincidence that the billionaire investor Warren Buffett reads eight hours a day. "The more you learn, the more you earn,” Buffett says.

Bill Gates is another great who is well known for reading. Gates will actually take reading vacations for weeks at a time.

If you look at CEOs in the world, the average CEO reads one book a week. That’s 50+ books a year!

Now, just imagine what your life would be like if you also read one book a week for the next 10 years of your life.

Given that you read the right books, you couldn’t help but be healthier, happier, and financially more successful as a result of just reading more.

This is something that all highly successful people know - that if they can get the right book in their hands, then the rest will naturally flow their way.

Luckily for us, books will do more for you than just give you the knowledge they provide. Books have the ability to cut the learning curve by months, years, even decades for you.

This is because so many people have gone ahead of you in life, which means you can learn from them. You don't need to learn everything the hard way through trial and error.

As Will Smith once said,

“There have been gazillions of people that have lived before all of us. There's no new problem you could have - with your parents, with school, with a bully. There's no new problem that someone hasn't already had and written about it in a book.”

This is…

The Key To Making Fewer Mistakes In Life

For the next 10 seconds, just imagine if you could avoid making all life-changing mistakes in your life. Mistakes like investing years of your life into dating the wrong person only to have it end with breakup, failing in business and going bankrupt, or being a runner and getting a knee injury that would cause you to never run again.

Some people think it's noble to make mistakes because it “builds character,” but this is a myth.

Making mistakes isn't bad; in fact, they're essential for growth. But some mistakes are fatal and making certain mistakes over and over again is time consuming and unnecessary.

In the book "The Selfish Gene,” Richard Dawkins, who is an evolutionary biologist and author, says,

"Survival machines that can simulate the future are one jump ahead of survival machines who can only learn on the basis of overt trial and error. The trouble with overt trial is that it takes time and energy. The trouble with overt error is that it is often fatal. Simulation is both safer and faster."

This means your ability to simulate is what will give you a competitive advantage in the game of life.

Many of you may want to start your own business, climb the corporate ladder, or find the love of your life someday, and as you strive towards these goals, you'll inevitably approach many forks in the road where you will have to make certain decisions. But keep in mind that every decision you make is, in a sense, a gamble.

Most people give no thought to this. Most people just make a decision they predict to be the right choice and then go down that path to see if they were right. After time, if they see that it wasn't the right path, they turn back and take the other path.

They'll repeat this process until they find the road that eventually takes them to where they want to go, but this is ineffective and is the least efficient way to start a business, to enter a relationship, or to achieve your goals.

The way to solve this problem of making decisions that could be mistakes is to become a learning machine. If you want to improve your ability to simulate then you need to simply do one thing: You need to read more.

Reading books about other people’s experiences and their advice on what you should do will provide you with a proper framework on what has worked for others and what hasn’t. By doing this, you’ll save yourself a lot of time and effort.

So, Which Road Are You Traveling?

Understand, whatever your goals are in life, there are two ways of achieving them: There’s the long conventional path and the short less conventional path.

The long conventional path is what happens when you think you don’t have to read about other successful people in your field or listen to the advice of those who are 20, 30 years down your same path.

Unfortunately, this is the path most people choose. Most people skip the shorter path, which is learning from other people's success and failures.

Don't do that.

Instead, "Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for," as Socrates once said.

Warren Buffett said something similar, "People learn from mistakes, but it doesn't have to be their mistakes."

This is why I’m writing this manifesto. I’m writing this manifesto because I don’t want you to waste your time making time consuming and unnecessary mistakes as you navigate through life.

No matter what your goals are, whether it’s health, love or financial success, making mistakes will be an inevitable part of your learning process. The goal, however, is to minimize the number of mistakes you actually make.

This is why we all need to read the advice that other successful people have laid out in their books to help guide us in the right direction.

The Importance of Learning From A Mentor

When you start to read about the stories of successful individuals, you’ll notice that the common denominator in all their success is the presence of a mentor who has helped them achieve their success.

As humans, we learn by example, and the successful are no exception to this. They, too, all had mentors who taught them and helped them along the way.

When Albert Einstein was young, for example, he had Max Talmud - his first mentor. Max had a meal every Thursday with Einstein for six years. It was Max who introduced 10 year old Einstein to math, science and philosophy.

Alexander the Great was mentored by Aristotle. Aristotle had Plato. And Plato had Socrates.

Oprah Winfrey credits her father for “saving her,” but professionally it was Jeffrey D. Jacobs.

The Beatles had George Martin, who has often been referred to as the “Fifth Beatle.”

Tom Hanks was mentored by Rawley Farnsworth.

Warren Buffett learned from Benjamin Graham.

Jay-Z had Lyor Cohen.

Even Gandhi had a mentor.

This is the power of having a mentor. Unfortunately, mentors are very hard to find. Either they simply don't want to mentor you or they're too busy, which is a shame because we all need good mentors in our lives.

Even more unfortunate is that some of the greatest mentors in the world are no longer alive. Sam Walton, Sigmund Freud and Mother Teresa are no longer with us. Luckily for us, though, they still live on through their books.

The actual presence of a mentor is great, but you can still learn from the all time greats through books.

Have you ever wished you could sit down with Warren Buffett and learn everything he knows that made him a success? Well you can. If you want to be mentored by Warren Buffett on how to invest in the stock market and build a business, just go to Barnes and Noble and spend $20.

What about Nelson Mandela, Steve Jobs, or Buddha? All of these people could be your mentors as well as long as you decide to read what they wrote.

The Best Mentor I’ve Never Had

In relation to me, I like to consider Gary Vaynerchuk, who is an entrepreneur, marketer, and best selling author of 4 books, to be one of my biggest mentors even though I’ve never actually met him.

Why? Because I’ve read his books.

12 months ago, I had come across one of Gary’s keynote speeches, and I thought that his style of speaking was so interesting and authentic that I’ve followed him ever since.

Shortly after that, I decided to purchase one of his books: “Crush It.”

This book is what taught me why it was important to have a digital presence and why I needed to build an online brand. This book is the reason why I started writing and why I started an online book club.

It’s all the practical advice and life lessons I’ve accumulated from reading about people like Gary that has allowed me to move faster toward my goals by quickly cutting my learning curve.

When I decided to start writing on LinkedIn halfway through 2016, for example, I set the goal of eventually becoming a LinkedIn Top Voice. The only problem was that building and growing an audience on a platform like LinkedIn takes years.

Being new to writing, I knew I didn’t want to spend all that time trying to learn everything there was to learn about writing and LinkedIn publishing through trial and error.

So, I read everything I could about writing from those who were successfully doing it. I read books about how to write and what it takes to become a successful writer; I read articles by fellow LinkedIn Top Voices; I took online courses; I joined webinars; And I listened to people who had amassed 100,000+ readers to see what they were doing successfully.

I learned from as many people as I could and then applied what I learned. And 5 months later, I was named a LinkedIn Top Voice and had built a following of over 80,000 people. Something that should’ve taken me years to accomplish only took me a few months.

This is the importance of having a mentor, someone who is 20 years ahead of you and who can show you what to do.

Remember in life, no one succeeds alone. No one is self made. Everyone in the world who is a success has had the help of a mentor who taught them and helped them along the way.

So ask yourself, how much better would your life be if you read about the wealthiest, healthiest and happiest people who ever lived and applied their teachings into your life?

It’s Time To Start Building Your Library

More than anything else, the information you’ll read in books is the key to living the life you want to live. So, don’t be lazy in gathering the books that will teach you and instruct you on how to do that.

As someone who reads a lot of books, I believe you can always tell what someone wants to be in life just by looking at the books they've read.

If someone says they want to be a millionaire, for example, look at the books they've read. Do their books represent that of someone who wants to be a millionaire?

If someone says they want to be a successful writer, do they have a collection of books written by individuals who have successfully built a career through writing?

What about you? What does your library say about you and what you want?

It’s very possible that you may not even have a library yet, but your library, which is the collection of books you decide to read, will show what you really want in life.

So before you start to build your library, ask yourself, what is it that you want in life?

Find Your 50 Books

Hopefully by now, you know how important reading is to your success, but how do you go from knowing that reading is important to actually getting the books you need? Well, first, you have to find your 50 books.

Ever since I read the stat that the average CEO reads one book a week, I’ve made it a goal in my life to read at least one new book a week as well.

Doing this is what inspired me to start vincentcarlos.com, my own personal book club site, in order to inspire other people to start reading as well.

However, when I first started this online book club, my goal was never to get people to simply read more books. In relation to reading, quantity should never be the goal. What should be the goal is quality because it’s not about whether you’re reading a lot of books, but whether you’re reading the right books.

The problem with focusing on the quantity of books you read is that when you read books just to say you've read them, you miss out on all the great ideas that are in them.

Throughout my entire life, I can clearly remember reading a few lines in all the books I’ve read that have completely changed my life for the better.

Reading that one line, that one little golden nugget, that one simple and practical idea, is what’s important when it comes to reading books that can improve your life.

Unfortunately, people get caught up on trying to get through the book they’re reading as fast as they can so that they can move on to the next one. But it’s important to not think like that.

When it comes to reading, you should always try to focus on finding that one piece of advice that will bring you more success in your life, whether it’s advice on how to have a happier and healthier relationship with your spouse, a tip on how to double your income, or an idea that significantly raises your level of happiness in life.

In every book, there is one great practical idea that will help you improve your life. You just have to be curious enough to find those ideas.

Because of this, it's important that you stop looking at books as something you only read once. Instead, what you have to do is read them over and over again so that the ideas and information in those books get retained in your brain.

This is why I have 50 different books that I’ve read that I choose to re-read constantly and that I recommend to people. In fact, if this manifesto is resonating with you and you don’t know where to start, I recommend you check out my list of my top 50 recommended books here. It’s been these 50 books and the information inside them that have laid the foundation for my life when it comes to achieving health, love, and happiness in my life.

Maybe they’ll even help you achieve success in these areas of your life as well. If a book on my list resonates with you, then make it a part of your 50 books.

But whatever you do, don’t go into the process of reading thinking you’ll read a book, move on, and never read it again. Instead, think of these books as your mentors that you keep coming back to over and over again whenever you need advice or support.

Read From A Wide Range of Books

Now, if you look at my 50 recommended books list, you’ll notice that the books on that list includes books about marketing, health, love, psychology, finance, and everything else in between.

When it comes to reading, it’s important to learn from a wide range of topics.

For me, I try to focus on 4 main categories: Love. Health. Happiness. And Work/Wealth.

Love:

Sigmund Freud once said that you need to get two things right in your life in order to be happy. You need to get work right, but more importantly, you need to get love right.

A good strong relationship is one of the life factors most strongly and consistently associated with happiness.

However, as much as a good relationship can make you happy, nothing in life has the ability to break your happiness more than being in a bad relationship.

If you're in a bad relationship, then no matter how much wealth you have, how healthy you are, or how much you love your work, you will always find it very difficult to be happy.

In order to make sure you have a happy and healthy relationship, I recommend you read books like “Attached” by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller, "The 7 Principles For Making Marriage Work" by John Gottman and “The 5 Love Languages” by Gary Chapman.

Health:

Health is similar to love in the way that even if you’re a millionaire, wealth won’t matter much if you’re always sick in bed. What’s the point of having a great life if you’re not healthy enough to enjoy it?

To help prevent this, I recommend you read books like “The Story of The Human Body” by Daniel Lieberman, “Born To Run” by Christopher McDougall, and “Salt Sugar Fat” by Michael Moss.

Happiness:

No matter where you go, whether you’re standing at a busy street during working hours, sitting on a subway train midday, or even dancing at a music club late at night, you will always see a lot of unhappy people around you.

A vast majority of people are unhappy, but feel they shouldn’t be. More often than not, their unhappiness is largely due to the mistaken beliefs they have about what actually makes people happy.

For those who seek to better understand happiness, my advice is to read books on happiness. Books such as "The Happiness Hypothesis" by Jonathan Haidt, "Civilization and Its Discontents" by Sigmund Freud, and "The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari" by Robin S. Sharma.

Work/Wealth:

The average person spends over 50% of their waking life working. Yet, we spend little time learning and studying about how to make money doing something we’re passionate about.

If you wish to make a living doing something you love, then I recommend you read books like “How To Be A Billionaire” by Martin S. Fridson, “The $100 Startup” by Chris Guillebeau, and “Sam Walton: Made In America” by Sam Walton.

Now It’s Your Turn

So, there you go. These are some of the 50 books that have changed my life for the better and that will help provide you with a proper starting point as you start to build your own library.

Reading is, by far, one of the best habits you can build in your life so I sincerely hope you take the lessons mentioned in this manifesto to heart so that you can experience the same positive effects from reading that I have.

Have fun and happy reading!

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