Let me clarify. Reading more books will not make you smarter or richer overnight. There is no number (e.g. 50 per year or 100 per year) which will instantly make you Elon Musk. No. of books read is a vanity metric which frankly doesn’t matter.
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In order to read more books, first you have to let go the metric. Let go of the social approval you are seeking. Let go of the vanity that you will earn if you read “x” no. of books where “x” greater than my best friend’s “y”.
Once you have done that, let me tell you why you should read books. Put simply, books are wisdom condensed. Books are lives led by people which they are sharing with you so that you learn what they learned. So that you do not make the same mistakes they made. You maybe want to look at the world as they have.
Reading a blog is not same as books. When you read something on the internet, you have zero friction to change your choice. You don’t like the news – click on something else. You don’t like the long article, screw it. Hence, I consider reading physical books and reading on Kindle as “reading” in true sense.
Ok now let’s get to the tips:
1. Buy a Kindle. Do not worry about the model, battery life blah blah. If you can afford it, please buy a kindle. The return on investment for books and kindle is so huge that it will not matter. Seriously, just buy a kindle. End of story.
2. Go ahead and start reading blogs about books. Take for example Goodreads, Fivebooks etc. Go through them, curate a list of books that immediately draw your attention. Buy them on kindle immediately or buy them from Amazon. Buy 4 of them to be safe. Some of the easiest books to start your journey – Almanack of Naval Ravikant, Show your Work!
3. Treat books like Netflix Shows. Treat each chapter as a episode. Watch the first episode and then let it simmer. If you are a binger, then go ahead binge the whole show. If you don’t like it, just switch to another show. There are multiple books with the same wisdom, same knowledge. You should not put any particular book on a pedestal and think about finishing the book if you have started it. There are a lot of terrible books (shows) which you should leave when you have chance.
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4. Most non-fiction books will let you know their true advice in the introduction itself. Also, each chapter of a self-help or a non-fiction book can be read independently anyway. So, do not trudge through boring stuff – Just skip it. It is fine.
Once you have started doing the above steps, you will automatically fall into the rabbit hole of books. They are magical and once you get the bug, you will not leave it.