“To attain knowledge add things every day. To attain wisdom subtract things every day.”
Lao Tzu
When I reconnected with books a few years ago, I felt as if I had discovered Alexandria. Suddenly, I had access to limitless information. Naturally, I read everything I could get my hands on, especially when it came to non-fiction. That first year, I read around fifty books. On the surface, that sounds great. I had replaced mindless entertainment with books and I was learning new things all the time. But there’s something I ignored: learning without action is just entertainment.
Let me clarify. First, the number of books you read is also meaningless. Naval Ravikant once said, “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”. And that’s exactly what happened. The more books I started, the fewer ones I finished because I’m already familiar with most concepts. At some point, the number of books you finish is meaningless if you’re not learning anything new from them.
Learning new things is great, but unless you apply those new concepts you’re reading about, they mean nothing. When you read nonfiction books, you want to change your behavior in some way. When I think about some of the best nonfiction books I’ve ever read, they mean a lot to me because they changed what I do. For instance, The Bullet Journal Method encouraged me to start an analog system I use daily. Atomic Habits helped me exercise regularly. Other books, I don’t remember reading and I don’t think about often because they never lead to behavior change.
Reading leads to action and action (as simple as it sounds) changes your life. You can read about the perfect system, but unless you try for yourself, knowing about it is pointless. Knowledge is a small part of the equation. As James Clear once wrote, “The first minute of action is worth more than a year of perfect planning.”
The modern world is full of information. Therefore, we don’t have an information problem, but we do have a behavior problem. Reading a self-development book and hoping that our life suddenly transforms is a delusion. We have to be willing to apply those principles and make adjustments over time. For that purpose, you can follow these simple steps:
- Read: What are you interested in learning about? What are the most important concepts you want to remember?
- Plan: How are you going to apply those principles? How does that information translate into action? What are you going to do with what you learned?
- Experiment: When are you going to carry out said action? In what form? How often are you going to repeat it?
- Reflect: How did it feel? Is there anything you would like to change?
Interestingly, reading takes place at the beginning of the journey. At some point though, you need to put the book down and do something.