I read nonfiction. Occasionally I read fiction, but my primary focus is on nonfiction. Psychology books, finance and economics, history, books about philosophy and mindset and life skills… I mostly stick to time-tested classics. I heard somebody very wise say that the only books worth reading are old. And I think that’s a great rule of thumb. Not always true, but a great thing to keep in mind.
I read to make myself a better person. Of course I get pleasure out of it, but I also look at it as a form of work. Of self-exploration and self-improvement. Of getting my hands dirty and fixing things that are broken inside my head. Or of filling in missing links in my thinking. Refurbishing and upgrading.
There’s an entire gigantic industry devoted to “self-help” - the pursuit of making oneself better. Better from what? Better how? My goal with this blog, as written in my mission statement, is to make myself fit more lovingly and productively into the world. But I honestly don’t think the “self-help” industry has that same goal. The self-help industry perpetuates a love of temporary fixes, magic, and mysticism. Of brief, short-lived episodes of inspiration and rejuvenation, followed by further droughts and emptiness. Most of the self-help industry is full of charlatans, grifters, and clowns. Which is why I don’t read “self-help.”
I read nonfiction.
I read books that have time-tested utility and wisdom that has been embraced at massive scale. I read classics. I read books that millionaires tell me to read. I read books that people look to for universal and widely-acknowledged wisdom.
Mark Manson wrote a great article 10 years ago about the self-help industry:
https://markmanson.net/self-help
This article identifies 5 things that are wrong with it and discusses how that industry massively lets people down and keeps them trapped in cycles of self-neglect and magic-chasing. That industry is, for the most part, not helping anyone. That industry is, for the most part, nothing more than predatory.
I don’t read books with cheesy titles written by people who smile too much. I don’t read books by people who claim to have “solutions” to life. I don’t read about silly shit like the law of attraction or manifestation. I’m not interested in magic and effortless gifts from the universe.
I read books that will actually help me be a physically and psychologically better person. Books that will give me skills and strengthen my spirit. The way I see it, the only way I will ever deserve (or receive) anything worth having is by putting in the footwork to get it. And that means being the person who is worthy of it. Not just repeating mantras and pretending I’m the person who is worthy of it - actually working on myself until I am.
I read books for a number of reasons. Here are the things I want when I read:
Mental Models
I seek models and maps of concepts I don’t yet understand. Thinking frameworks for base-level assumptions and functions in life. I want to have mental models for basic physics, and chemistry, and economics, and finance, and history, and language, and sociology. Academic frameworks, base-level theory, and universally-accepted assumptions. I want an understanding of how various things in life work at the simplest and most rudimentary level. That’s a great place to start.
Charlie Munger, man who is richer than I’ll ever be, often talks about taking a multidisciplinary approach to all decision-making. He says that if you are a person who can think from the perspectives of multiple disciplines and come up with solutions that satisfy multiple basic models at the same time, you are probably the smartest person in the room. Most people don’t take the time to develop such a vast and solid web of foundational thought. But I want to. Because what else have I got to do. Watch TV?
I like to have a functioning understanding of the things that run our lives. Physics concepts, economic concepts, marketing, human behavior, a good business sense, how to communicate effectively with people, et cetera. The more of this foundational knowledge I have, the more equipped I am to be a useful person. I don’t want to specialize - I will probably never master anything. I am the quintessential layman. I just want to have a gigantic book of maps and rules in my head.
Mental models also includes things like heuristics (mental shortcut mechanisms) and illustrations of psychological concepts. Things that you can keep in mind when analyzing people, or situations, or social behavior. There are tons and tons of common analogies and thumb-rules that can be tremendously useful in analyzing people and our decision-making.
I read with the hope of identifying and building out more of these mental models. To learn them from someone and integrate them into my own life. I want to expand and solidify my thinking so that, no matter what situation I find myself in, I at least have a few good places to start brainstorming. Or, equally importantly, when I’m presented with an idea, I can usually think of a few critical questions to ask. For an investment proposal, a project at work, whatever it may be. I have a number of underlying assumptions and values that I know I must satisfy. Whether it be in business, or hardship, or idea generation, or some other decision-making crossroads.
Not to mention, it’s ridiculously useful to be able to follow along with people across a multi-dimensional spectrum of subject matter. To be able to read books about complex subjects and actually fill in all the blanks and fit the pieces together. To be able to talk intelligently with people about virtually anything - what a gift.
Critical Thinking Skills
When I say critical thinking skills, I mean not only arguments and perspectives I haven’t thought of, but the ability to generate those arguments and perspectives on my own.
I want to be able to fully flesh out a useful conversation or debate by myself without input from anybody else. (Of course, input from other people should always be sought - it’s how we get what we’re missing.) When it comes to politics, or economics, or social issues, or… Jesus, just about anything at all, people just don’t do this. People are tragically unwilling to engage in actual critical thinking.
Don’t get me wrong - I think most people are absolutely capable of sound reasoning and empathy and wisdom. People have this inside them. I just think people are too busy buying Starbucks and hating their political opponents to care. They just don’t want to put this kind of work into thinking. Or formulating arguments, or making sure they’re right.
Everybody wants to be right without doing any of the work to get there.
I want to do the work to get there.
Because I like being right.
But more importantly, I like the truth. And, if you know me by now, you know how I feel about the truth. It requires work to pursue. Nuance is required. We must dig for details. A willingness to say what is hard and accept what is unpleasant, especially about oneself, is the only way to consistently find the truth.
Everybody acts like “right” is this magical place where they exist. Some fancy walled garden where their house is, where nothing is required of them but to keep saying their current opinions and defend their gorgeous little paradise of correctness. From invaders and infidels and fools. But in reality, the landscape of being right is more like a disintegrating volcano where you have to watch your footing and constantly move around to avoid falling into the lava. The lava, in this case, is lazy thinking. If you’re not willing to adapt and think and move, you really don’t deserve to have an opinion. About anything.
I don’t make the rules. I just write them down and post them on my blog.
Psychological Wisdom
I am a behavioral analyst by nature. (No, I don’t have a psychology degree - I was too busy destroying my own mind during those years to get a degree to help others with theirs.) I read people. I analyze people. I like to see what they’re up to, what they’re thinking. I like to see what they’re struggling with, and what scares them. I like to figure out what makes them happy. I like to see the hierarchy of values and ideals that motivate people from within.
And I like to understand how the mind works. Because it’s unbelievably, ridiculously fascinating.
I like to see where we take shortcuts, and where we are biased, and where we are weak. I like to see where and why we are resilient, and where and why we are honest, and strong.
I want to understand me, and others, better.
I want to understand old stories and why they’re so important - what they teach us about ourselves.
I’m not religious. But I think the Bible is the most deep and thorough book of human thinking ever written. I take the Bible not as a book of literal truth, but as a book of psychological and spiritual wisdom. Everything in that literature is just dripping with intelligence and self-awareness. The Bible contains the pain of thousands of years of human mistakes, and cautionary tales against those very mistakes. It offers us solutions to things we don’t even understand. And yet it also offers us solutions to things we do understand and could easily avoid.
Everything from Cain and Abel to the Tower of Babel to Christ’s Sermon on the Mount… everything in there, upon close inspection, tells us a story about us. You just have to be willing to sit with some people and dissect it. You could unfold that book endlessly and expand forever on what the authors were trying to say.
And that kind of wisdom is everywhere throughout time-tested literature. When you read an author who knows himself, you learn about yourself. When you hear a high-quality storyteller and teacher describe something they recognize, it lights up that same thing in you. You see it and recognize it. And then you see it and recognize it in others.
I like to learn about how we think and behave as people through the mechanism of storytelling. And analogies and metaphors and illustrations. It’s the oldest (and in my opinion best) tool we have.
And I also like to read actual psychological studies about processes that have been discovered in the human mind that we can now give names and values to.
Before the psychoanalysts, or behavioral therapy, or neuroscience, all we had were stories. But, unsurprisingly, those stories were brilliantly useful. They were often telling us things about ourselves that science would take millennia to put into new words. More concrete and academic words. Classic and ancient stories contain the best of human insights - and they do so without identifying or naming them.
Both stories and science are equally valuable, and I’m looking for both when I’m reading. Both can teach me about myself and about others. About how and why we do what we do. About how we make decisions and what moves us.
Practical Life Skills
Another group of things I’m looking for when I read are frameworks for making decisions, and assessing myself, and growing as a man. Frameworks for being more disciplined and emotionally mature. I’m looking for life skill systems.
Much like the self-inventorying process I wrote about in an earlier letter, or the Inchworm concept… I’m looking for ideas that help me be a better person on a functional, daily basis. “We don’t rise to the level of our goals, we fall to the level of our systems” (James Clear). I want to keep finding useful systems to build my life on. We can find these systems anywhere - I’ve found some in Alcoholics Anonymous, psychology books, James Clear’s Atomic Habits, day trading books, personal finance books, and other random work by various other writers and speakers.
I want robust, practical systems with which to live my life. To monitor my own progress and keep myself in check. I want to have my thinking so aligned as to be able to detect when I myself am out of line. When I am falling short of who and what I should be.
And I also want strategies and tactics for making the most of life, and practicing gratitude, and being a grounded and fair thinker. I want conversational skills and linguistic skills. Writing and communication skills. I have a desire to be a clear and concise communicator - and how else would I learn that but by listening to people who are clear and concise communicators? I want to know How To Win Friends and Influence People (hat tip to Dale Carnegie). But not just for the sake of influencing people, no no. That’s ego. I want to be the kind of man who is worthy of influencing people. Because that in and of itself is the reward - being the person who is worthy of it.
I want to continue to find processes that produce remarkable results. And then I want to integrate those processes into my life until they are as close to automatic as they can possibly be.
This category is probably the most self-helpy part of what I want, but even so I’m not looking for cheesy short-term inspiration and short-lived advice. I’m looking for actual skills. Usable skills that produce sustained change.
Common Culture
And finally, I want to absorb culture. This one took me years to figure out. I have always had a very narrow interest in movies, for instance - for some reason, I only want to watch the ones everyone knows and likes. And it’s not because I’m a shallow conformist (God, I hope not) - it’s because I don’t even want to waste my time on what is irrelevant and mediocre. I have zero desire to sit around watching TV shows and movies just to be entertained - none.
I want to have an understanding of important cultural and literary references and ideas. I really enjoy reading books or watching movies that “everyone has read/watched.”
For two reasons.
One - it makes me fit better into my own culture and makes me understand people better. I get to have more interesting things to talk to people about, and I have more starting places and segues for conversations. And two - it allows me to dissect time-tested bits of culture for myself and figure out why they’re so important. This goes back to what I mentioned above about old stories. I want to see and feel why these ideas and pieces of culture resonate so much with people - why they’re such valuable and true reflections of us.
That seems to be the key truth in any great story, book, or movie - it reflects something we see in ourselves. Sure, people like being entertained. But the tremendously successful works of any time are the ones that capture something that people deeply need to reflect on. Something important. Whether we recognize it at first pass or not.
I find absorbing common culture to be a really important thing. I’ve got no interest in watching some B-list racing movie or some predictable superhero movie. Those are boring as hell. I want to watch character-focused movies that people think about for decades. Because those are the ones worth remembering, and worth talking to people about.
And that’s my list. That’s what I look for when I’m reading. Books (whether they’re fiction or nonfiction, allegory or history), articles, newsletters, blogs, research… anything that contains any of these things, I will read. And if I am in the process of reading and I’m not learning anything, and I’m not getting any of these things I desire… I’ll close the book or the browser window and not look back.
Never be afraid to walk away from a book or article or movie if it’s letting you down. Or, if it simply isn’t for you. There’s nothing wrong with that. Life is too short to finish things that don’t interest you. I will probably have time in my life to read about 4% of what I want to read. And that sucks. But it also means I have to focus as hard as I possibly can on what I do get to read.
As I said - reading to me is enjoyable. But it’s also work. Because I am actively engaged in something that’s crucial for my development. I want my reading to give me something. To put me somewhere I haven’t been. To give me new ways of thinking, new skills, new ways to connect with people. When I read, I want it to change me forever. Not temporarily.
It’s incredible what you can gain by just constantly reading. You don’t have to have a sense of direction or an aim to begin with - you just have to start reading. So much of the body of human wisdom is repeated and repackaged throughout good literature and good art. And the more you read, the more you draw parallels and build out more mental infrastructure. Knowledge itself pays compound interest.
And it’s not just anybody in those pages - it’s you. You’re in there. You can see more of you by reading.
Drink water,
JDR
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