THE SECRET TO LONG-TERM SUCCESS IS HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT

My father, Vernon H. Mark, was an indisputable child prodigy and a genius. He graduated from college at the age of 17 and from medical school at the age of 21! If he hadn’t decided to become a neurosurgeon, he might well have been a concert pianist, but his aversion to playing in public ultimately tipped the balance from music to medicine. He spent more than 60 years on the staff of the Massachusetts General Hospital, was the Head of Neurosurgery at the Boston City Hospital, served as an Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School, and co-authored hundreds of scholarly papers in scores of prestigious academic medical journals. He accomplished everything he set out to do in his life except for two unattainable long-term goals: 1) He hoped to win a Nobel Prize in Medicine. And 2) He wanted to live to be 100. Sadly, he died in 2014 just a few months shy of his 90th birthday.

Growing up around someone that smart had its own set of challenges. It seemed to me, for example, that many of our conversations started in mid-paragraph; my father’s mind had raced ahead on some topic and he expected that I was at the same point. He already had “the answer” and couldn’t fathom that I didn’t!

From a very early age, I was fascinated by the topic of genius child prodigies, mostly because I knew that I wasn’t one. Why was that? Like lots of people at the time, I believed that geniuses were born, and that they had super powers that nearly all other mere mortals didn’t have. Mozart was a genius, Einstein was a genius, Rembrandt was a genius – these were one-in-a-billion type people who lucked out in genetics, right? Of course, it can be demoralizing to believe that raw intelligence is inherited. Who wants to play, if you believe the game is stacked against you from the start?

If you’re interested in the topic of gifted humans and intelligence, I highly recommend a book called Talent Is Overrated, which explains that genius is a kind of illusion. We see the end product but don’t completely appreciate the effort that went into producing it. In my father’s case, I assumed that his prodigious accomplishments came about effortlessly (or at least easily), a misconception he chose not to dispel. How else did he get to be so damn smart?

It turns out that my father’s secret for success was hiding in plain sight. Indeed, it was something I had taken completely for granted: books.

In the basement of our house, next to the furnace room, was a storage room that was filled to the brim with my father’s collection of paperback books – his hardcover book collection was upstairs in a separate library. When he wasn’t working at the hospital, my father spent nearly all his leisure time reading. His favorites were mostly ‘pulp fiction’ – Earl Stanley Gardner novels, Elmore Leonard novels, Dashiell Hammett novels, Westerns, Thrillers – you name it. Later in life he started re-reading the classics, Hemingway, Faulkner, etc., but he also liked WWII history, philosophy, science (but not science fiction), and travel books (ironically so, because he never liked to travel.) To make sure we weren’t giving him something he had already read, my siblings and I often bought him whatever the current best-sellers were for Father’s Day, his birthday or Christmas.

My father probably read five books per week throughout his entire life. Let’s call that ~250 books per year, times ~80 years equals approximately 20,000 books! He made monthly trips to the Brattle Book Shop on West Street in Boston where he was their best customer and would buy huge stacks of used books at a time. “Are you going to read all of those?” other patrons would ask incredulously. “No,” he would say with a wink, “I’m going to eat them!”

Being an omnivore when it comes to reading books means that you can hold your own on virtually any subject with virtually anyone. My father was not a social person, but he greatly enjoyed debating the most obscure subjects with friends (and later spouses) of my three older siblings. His memory was probably only better than average, and there was no Google in the ‘60’s or ’70’s to easily check his facts, but he had a knack for winning arguments by citing sources no one had ever heard of.

There are exceptions, of course, but if you had to look for commonalities between high achievers of all kinds, I would bet that reading books is key. And I don’t believe that one must read great literature to become brilliant – in fact, I think benefits can accrue from reading nearly anything – even comic books, graphic novels and pulp fiction. What matters most is constantly using the brain to process information.  Analyzing and synthesizing vast amounts of new information, of whatever kind, probably helps build new connections within the brain. 

Reading a lot likely helps in other ways too: pattern recognition, problem solving, data analysis, focus and attention. I incorrectly assumed that my father liked to read books because he was smart and needed intellectual stimulation. I now believe a very different cause and effect: his intellectual curiosity led him to an insatiable desire to read books, and in reading so much and so widely, he became brilliant. He started reading a lot from a young age, which created in him attention and focus skills his peers did not have. He was then able to use that learning ability to eventually master all kinds of subjects, including neurology and neurosurgery. 

So what do Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and Oprah Winfrey have in common? You guessed it – they are all voracious book readers. Avid readers have an advantage over those who don’t read, and that advantage compounds year after year, like interest on a great investment.

It pains me to see my own children not reading enough. They are so busy consuming online video, online games, television, and social media that they give reading books very short shrift. You can lead a horse to water…, goes the proverb. My sincere hope is that they start getting thirsty.

In my own case, I was not an avid reader growing up either – I read what I had to read for school, but did not often pick up a book just for fun. It wasn’t until well into my 40’s that I started reading a lot more, and I now read more books than at any time in my life. I have quite a lot of catching up to do, and do not believe that it’s ever too late.

I am still no genius – that ship sailed a long time ago, but after nearly 60 years I can at least hope I am finally getting smart…

Published simultaneously on my blog: www.sizzlinghotbutter.com. Please find me on Twitter @FEQR or email me at: [email protected]