Winter Holiday Reading List
129: The time of year when it's okay to take it easier.
Welcome reader! Things are slowing down, and the end of Q4 is approaching. Since most of you will be locked down or have extra free time… This is a perfect opportunity to read more.
Our Take On Reading
Reading doesn’t mean you are productive: Reading doesn’t make you productive and should not be treated as a form of productivity. Neither is it any form of work that brings you closer to your goals. Neither is it something you should brag about to others. Also, please stop taking seriously those who claim it is a tool that will make you productive. If that were the case, we would not have so many cases of people consuming material after material—waiting for the perfect time to execute something and never achieving it. Reading is a form of entertainment. Something to help you relax or gain a sharper vision of a certain topic. The beauty of reading is that it leaves you alone—silence and peace. That is why it provides you with a sharper vision in the end. It makes you think about something you would have never thought about. That is one way to put it. The main reason reading is powerful is because it provides clarity and a feeling of a fresh head. Constant exposure to the "dopamine rush" comes with its price. When you start reading books and approaching them from an entertainment perspective. That is when the books will begin giving you angles you never thought about. Repeating ourselves — reading is nothing else but a form of entertainment. Does that mean you should not read? No. It means you should do what others are not doing to achieve results others won’t — you want to find an approach to reading books and extracting information that works for you.
Getting the most out of reading: The bigger problem with reading is that no one approaches it as it should. Since our brains are constantly fed information ignoring the noise has never been harder. The proper way to get the most out of reading is by taking notes and extracting valuable information for your situation. The same book read by two people at different times in their lives will have different effects. One might find it valuable and directly applicable, while the other might find it useless. To get the most out of your reading, you must find a way to extract relevant information. Some people rush through chapters and only read those they find interesting. Others go in-depth with their approach, read the entire book, and write everything down. Our favorite way to extract information? When we find interesting thoughts, we write them down. If we think about them or ask ourselves questions about them, it often means that the book works for us and is worth diving deeper into. The same usually happens in the first 50 pages of the book. If that is not the case over time, we have developed the ability to discard something that is not worth reading—time is the most precious resource. Only you will know what works for you and how processing information impacts you. Don't be afraid to play around with an approach that works for you.
Extra tip #1: Stop picking books at random. Stop picking best-selling books. Stop picking books from random lists you find on the internet. It is one of the easiest ways to set yourself up with a mediocre reading list that won't give you much in return. You want to find someone whose advice has been 100% applicable to your situation and start with their recommendations. Chances are that their other advice has helped you and helped you shape your mental models. Their recommended book list will do the same. By following this approach to reading books, you will get much more out of them in the long run. Suppose you want to take things to another level. Each time you find someone else’s name or an author's recommendation inside the book you read, write down that recommendation and make sure to look it up later. A few good book sources are all you need and will help you create a reading collection.
Extra tip #2: If you want to take things further with your reading and how you extract the information. You should create a collection of takes, thoughts, and other relevant information—creating subfolders based on categories (think lifestyle, career, health). Over time, you will end up with a collection of takes and advice applicable to your situation. Give yourself something to reread and remind yourself of what is important. We recommend going through it at least a few times yearly—removing everything you don’t find relevant anymore. Sooner or later, your collection will be based on the core principles and beliefs you have for yourself. Serving you as an enforcement system.
Winter Reading List
Our approach to reading: Now that you know how to get more out of reading… It is time we get to our reading list. Suppose we exclude social media from our consumption and consider everything else. Our reading is 90% based on newsletters and books. There are great profiles on social media, but knowing how to filter them is not easy. What about the websites and random finds on Google? The good old Internet and the websites that used to be our primary information sources are behind us. The Internet is becoming more P2P every day, and no one with anything going on has time to read articles full of AI-generated content that has no value. Our approach is by far the most efficient one. Either you are getting everything in your inbox (making it harder to miss), or you have a specific book recommended by someone you trust. Hard to beat.
Newsletters
Substack newsletters
There is a good reason all of them are on our Substack recommendation list.
Non-Substack newsletters
The Founders Tribune
Weekly Readwise
Riley
Cole Ryan
This is what has been working for us at the moment. None of them is extremely specific or centered around certain topics. They serve more as a guide to the good life, so we look forward to each new email from them. We have never been big on specific-only newsletters because they can become repetitive after a month or two— there is so much to say about only one topic.
Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly. – Sir Francis Bacon.