the biggest myth about reading (that keeps you from learning)

Hey hey, it's Nik!

Remember what we learned yesterday? What you read is only as valuable as what you do with it.

Directly from this lesson flows another one, which, if you ask me, provides a great sense of relief to the guilty non-reader:

How much you read doesn't matter - what matters is that you read consistently and then try what you learn each time.

If you dare entertain this idea with me, you'll see it debunks one of the biggest reading myths of all time:

"You must read a lot - or it won't work."

This can be true, but it doesn't need to be.

Let's go back to Warren Buffett, one of the world's richest men and most famous investors. You know why he reads 8 hours a day? Because he gets paid for great ideas, and finding great ideas takes forever.

First, you must have 1,000 ideas. Then, you must single out the one, rare, perfect exception.

Warren Buffett only gets rewarded if he makes a big, smart investment - an investment that will play out well, and that no one else is seeing yet. The cases for such investments take a long time to build, and so Warren only makes a handful of investments each year.

Warren needs to make only 5 good decisions each year, and he reads all day in favor of nailing those 5 decisions when he makes them.

In most other careers, especially if you're in the early stages, you don't need to prepare each attempt for months. What you need is more attempts, and the faster you go through them, the quicker you'll learn.

If you could read a brilliant tweet each day, then spend 8 hours testing it, that'd be a much better use of your time than poring over textbooks and the latest industry reports.

Even if you plow through 100 books a year, if you just shove information down your subconscious, you won't get a lot in return. How could you? You won't even have time to act on your growing knowledge! That's a shame.

That's why Four Minute Books is built around the number 4. We're obsessed with it. Four minutes.

Can you read 4 minutes a day? Of course you can. Anyone can, and that's why it's so powerful.

We want you to ace your next job interview, build financial freedom, or thrive in your painting career - and we want you to do it 4 minutes at a time.

Tomorrow, I'll give you some tips to make that work in practice. Until then, thanks for reading this today.

My clock tells me it's been 2 minutes. Two more left. What will you spend them on? Choose wisely, and then implement away.

Happy reading,
-Nik from Four Minute Books