“I probably read one to two hours a day. That puts me in the top .00001 percent. I think that alone accounts for any material success I’ve had in my life and any intelligence I might have.”
Naval explains how his reading habit accounts for any material success he has had in his life. A claim like that gets taken extremely seriously by me.
During my teenage years I was able to devour 700-800 page fiction books in a week for fun, in the last few years I still managed to get through 10 or so non fiction books in a year thanks to Audible but I have so much room for improvement.
Inspired by this passage I have made a conscious effort to get back into reading fiction (or any book) every day. The goal is to get to an hour of reading a day.
Naval has certain tips around reading:
- Read what you love until you love to read.
- If they wrote it to make money, don’t read it.
- The number of books completed is a vanity metric. As you know more, you leave more books unfinished. Focus on new concepts with predictive power.
- Reading a book isn’t a race—the better the book, the more slowly it should be absorbed.
- Study logic and math, because once you’ve mastered them, you won’t fear any book.
- You know that song you can’t get out of your head? All thoughts work that way. Careful what you read.
Reading science, math, and philosophy one hour per day will likely put you at the upper echelon of human success within seven years.
P.S
I believe and I think Naval does too, that you can better the seven years average by reading the classics and great books in certain order. However, different books speak to people differently so it is hard to say with certainty.
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