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Are You ADDICTED to Reading?

Black_Dragon43

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I recently spoke to a guy from here who reached out to me, said he's been on the forums for 7 years, and read over 900 self-help and business books, and yet can't get anywhere. Studied NLP, hypnosis, Tony Robbins, therapy, Michael Singer, etc. etc. and yet he still has a job, and has never been able to get any side hustle off the ground.

And what shocked me was when he said that he always feels like "the next book" will unlock what he needs to be successful. And there's always a next one. I mean there are 130,000,000 books in the world. If you read 1 book per day, every day, for 80 years, you will have read 30,000 books. Which is 0.023% of all the books that are out there. Meaning NOTHING!

Look guys - you can't read every book in the world. You can't even read a majority of them. You've got NO CHANCE to do that. The knowledge you'll gain in a lifetime will be as NOTHING compared to all the knowledge available out there.

I feel that just like porn has made the availability of sexual images at your fingertips, and hence many get addicted to it, the internet, Kindle and so on have made the availability of books virtually unlimited. This means that it's very easy to give your brain a shot of dopamine by learning something new, even if it's useless.

This conversation and a few others have made me convinced that there is an addiction to self-help going around. And it's all driven by wrong beliefs that people have.

If you're getting started, you don't need to read a lot of books. In my opinion, if you've just read TMF , you're more than ready. Maybe read Ca$hvertising as well for some marketing know-how. But that's literarily all you need if you're starting with ZERO and no EXPERIENCE whatsoever. If you've already worked a job, probably just TMF is all you need. And it's exactly how I started. It took many years before I started reading books more voraciously, and I honestly don't think I've learned a whole lot more from that, compared to what I learned by doing...

There's a process to figuring things out for yourself. If you want to be great at anything, you can't always go to a book. You need to be able to figure things out for yourself. Learn from LIFE. That's how the originators of the second-hand knoweldge you find in books first figured things out for themselves. You can do it too. In fact, if you want to be great, you NEED to do it.

If you always go to a book when you don't know, then you're running away from the "not knowing" feeling. You never learn how to figure things out for yourself. And you never gain any depth.

You need to question some of your beliefs to get rid of this addiction. One of the main beliefs is that "you need to read a lot of books to be successful". And that's false. There are some big hitters out there who didn't read ANY business book ever. I've met such people. How did they do it?

Call your compulsive reading in the face of the unknown for what it is - an addiction and a coping mechanism for fear and uncertainty. You need to let go, and learn to rely on yourself more, and on figuring things out for yourself. And you do that by taking ACTION.

Don't let reading hold you back from taking ACTION!
 
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dgr

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I've been guilty of this (and still am)

It's the same with online courses, etc.

Remembers me of that comic strip showing a guy doubting between 2 doors, both with a sign on top:
- Heaven
- Books about Heaven

If you always go to a book when you don't know, then you're running away from the "not knowing" feeling. You never learn how to figure things out for yourself. And you never gain any depth.

Some books are incredibly useful ONCE you have the experience.

You need reference experiences first. If not, it's mostly empty knowledge, it won't string any chord inside you.

Sometimes they also make you aware of new ways of seeing the world, but honestly, you can get a lot of that by sitting by yourself and thinking.
 

Kevin88660

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I recently spoke to a guy from here who reached out to me, said he's been on the forums for 7 years, and read over 900 self-help and business books, and yet can't get anywhere. Studied NLP, hypnosis, Tony Robbins, therapy, Michael Singer, etc. etc. and yet he still has a job, and has never been able to get any side hustle off the ground.

And what shocked me was when he said that he always feels like "the next book" will unlock what he needs to be successful. And there's always a next one. I mean there are 130,000,000 books in the world. If you read 1 book per day, every day, for 80 years, you will have read 30,000 books. Which is 0.023% of all the books that are out there. Meaning NOTHING!

Look guys - you can't read every book in the world. You can't even read a majority of them. You've got NO CHANCE to do that. The knowledge you'll gain in a lifetime will be as NOTHING compared to all the knowledge available out there.

I feel that just like porn has made the availability of sexual images at your fingertips, and hence many get addicted to it, the internet, Kindle and so on have made the availability of books virtually unlimited. This means that it's very easy to give your brain a shot of dopamine by learning something new, even if it's useless.

This conversation and a few others have made me convinced that there is an addiction to self-help going around. And it's all driven by wrong beliefs that people have.

If you're getting started, you don't need to read a lot of books. In my opinion, if you've just read TMF , you're more than ready. Maybe read Ca$hvertising as well for some marketing know-how. But that's literarily all you need if you're starting with ZERO and no EXPERIENCE whatsoever. If you've already worked a job, probably just TMF is all you need. And it's exactly how I started. It took many years before I started reading books more voraciously, and I honestly don't think I've learned a whole lot more from that, compared to what I learned by doing...

There's a process to figuring things out for yourself. If you want to be great at anything, you can't always go to a book. You need to be able to figure things out for yourself. Learn from LIFE. That's how the originators of the second-hand knoweldge you find in books first figured things out for themselves. You can do it too. In fact, if you want to be great, you NEED to do it.

If you always go to a book when you don't know, then you're running away from the "not knowing" feeling. You never learn how to figure things out for yourself. And you never gain any depth.

You need to question some of your beliefs to get rid of this addiction. One of the main beliefs is that "you need to read a lot of books to be successful". And that's false. There are some big hitters out there who didn't read ANY business book ever. I've met such people. How did they do it?

Call your compulsive reading in the face of the unknown for what it is - an addiction and a coping mechanism for fear and uncertainty. You need to let go, and learn to rely on yourself more, and on figuring things out for yourself. And you do that by taking ACTION.

Don't let reading hold you back from taking ACTION!
There is word for it its called infortanment or sth. Getting entertained by information.

Most self help books are misleading in a way that they subtly let you think they provide the all the revolutionary information needed for you to be successful.

1) Your failure is not your fault
2) You have been brainwashed by an old paradigm -lies
3) This is the revolutionary truth..that will change your life

If you get sucked by the snake oil narrative offered by most books, you end up waiting for the next “revolutionary book”.

Of course there are good information. But there is no one solution that will fix everything. Everyone has unique situation, skill set, personality, resources, living in different era different countries familiar with different markets and needs. Eventually you need to learn to self-diagnose and not expect a “book solution”. This is not a driving test or weight loss program.
 

allen0879

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Yes I am, but I used to be addicted to alcohol. I'd rather be addicted to books, than alcohol :rofl:

Quality matters. Don't read superficial biz books & self help books. Read the classics. Some recommendations:

- The Odyssey & The Illiad
- Walden and Civil Disobedience
- 1984
- Fahrenheit 451
- The Federalist Papers
- The US Constitution
- The Wealth of Nations
- Brave New World
- Bios: Ben Franklin, Da Vinci, Alexander Hamiltion, The Wright Brothers, John D Rockefeller, etc, etc
- Millionaire Fastlane (obiviously haha)

Too many good ones to name.
 
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Lyinx

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guy needs an FTE event
 

Lyinx

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Yes I am, but I used to be addicted to alcohol. I'd rather be addicted to books, than alcohol :rofl:

Quality matters. Don't read superficial biz books & self help books. Read the classics. Some recommendations:

- The Odyssey & The Illiad
- Walden and Civil Disobedience
- 1984
- Fahrenheit 451
- The Federalist Papers
- The US Constitution
- The Wealth of Nations
- Brave New World
- Bios: Ben Franklin, Da Vinci, Alexander Hamiltion, The Wright Brothers, John D Rockefeller, etc, etc
- Millionaire Fastlane (obiviously haha)

Too many good ones to name.
I'm now very curious, what are you trying to accomplish?
 

Vinz

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Yes I am, but I used to be addicted to alcohol. I'd rather be addicted to books, than alcohol :rofl:

Quality matters. Don't read superficial biz books & self help books. Read the classics. Some recommendations:

- The Odyssey & The Illiad
- Walden and Civil Disobedience
- 1984
- Fahrenheit 451
- The Federalist Papers
- The US Constitution
- The Wealth of Nations
- Brave New World
- Bios: Ben Franklin, Da Vinci, Alexander Hamiltion, The Wright Brothers, John D Rockefeller, etc, etc
- Millionaire Fastlane (obiviously haha)

Too many good ones to name.
Well those are narrative books. I suppose the guy OP was speaking with meant that he constantly read self-help books thinking they will solve his problems.
I won't count those you listed in the main argument here. They are for enjoyment.

Some self-help books can help first by shifting your mindset. Hence TMF . Then they are mostly useful as reference when you already took action on a subject. I feel when you have experience they are much more useful because you actually put them in context and compare with what you did.
Otherwise if you read a book on how to sell but never did selling it will be shallow knowledge.
 

allen0879

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Well those are narrative books. I suppose the guy OP was speaking with meant that he constantly read self-help books thinking they will solve his problems.
I won't count those you listed in the main argument here. They are for enjoyment.

Some self-help books can help first by shifting your mindset. Hence TMF. Then they are mostly useful as reference when you already took action on a subject. I feel when you have experience they are much more useful because you actually put them in context and compare with what you did.
Otherwise if you read a book on how to sell but never did selling it will be shallow knowledge.
I agree that reading shouldn't interfere with taking action. It can definitely be used as an excuse for not taking action. It's all about balance. Read and apply. Apply and then read.

I'm not saying that all business & self-help books are bad. The Millionare Fastlane completely changed how I view entrepreneurship, for example. But most modern books in that genre add very little value. The author will use 300 pages of fluff to tell you something that could have been summed up in 20 pages or less, so that they can then go around calling themselves a "guru" and make money. Don't let them steal your time.

I will say that reading can save you from making a lot of stupid mistakes and wasting a lot of time. It's an investment. I've spent thousands of dollars on books. Real, physical books. I've built my own library. Half of the books I haven't even gotten around to reading yet. What Taleb calls the antilibrary.

And when done right, it can change who you are and how you view the world. Don't underestimate fiction books, either. Yes, I very much read them out of enjoyment, but they have also drastically changed my worldview, and therefore, have changed me. I think it was Tyler Cowen that calls them “quake books”—shaking everything you think you know about the world.
 
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Ivex

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Reading is a great hobby for increasing knowledge, expanding your mind and inspiring new ideas. I'm 30 books in to my 50 book for the year challenge.

However, it is a hobby.

When people mistake it for being productive, for action towards their goals, this is where the trouble lies. I read when I've finished working for the night and I want to relax, not during the day instead of working on my business.
 
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Speculatooor

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Guilty as charged. MJ also had a piece about it in his new book and I felt called out.

There is one thing I noticed tho, and that is that most succesful people have had a period of just straight up reading as much books as possible about a subject they want to master (women, money, social skills .)

The second phase has to be massive action and to put theory into practise, otherwise it is just wasted time
 

BAUCE

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Im trying to find the opposite balance currently. I often end up taking action before I really understand the basics and its costs me time and money. I like to get in and see how things work on my own but Im paying for it right now by hiring a FB ads expert to fix my pixel and ad accounts.
 

allen0879

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Reading is a great hobby for increasing knowledge, expanding your mind and inspiring new ideas. I'm 30 books in to my 50 book for the year challenge.

However, it is a hobby.

When people mistake it for being productive, for action towards their goals, this is where the trouble lies. I read when I've finished working for the night and I want to relax, not during the day instead of working on my business.
I disagree. I view it as an essential activity, not a hobby.

It's the same with health & fitness for me. I'm investing in myself. It will compound over time and pay dividends.

How can you succeed in business if you're sick and diseased? How can you make good business decisions if you are incompetent, unwise and foolish?

Yes, you must keep things balanced. Anything can be taken to an unhealthy excess. But I've never met a wise person, over a broad range of subjects, that isn't a voracious reader.

BTW almost everything valuable that I've learned has been through self-educating myself outside of college. I actually view college as something I had to recover from. Ideological professors indoctrinating young people with bullshit. It scares me to think what I would have become if I didn't focus on intensely self-educating myself.

To each his own. What is a hobby to some, is a necessity to others.
 
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Ivex

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I disagree. I view it as an essential activity, not a hobby.

It's the same with health & fitness for me. I'm investing in myself. It will compound over time and pay dividends.

How can you succeed in business if you're sick and diseased? How can you make good business decisions if you are incompetent, unwise and foolish?

Yes, you must keep things balanced. Anything can be taken to an unhealthy excess. But I've never met a wise person, over a broad range of subjects, that isn't a voracious reader.

BTW almost everything valuable that I've learned has been through self-educating myself outside of college. I actually view college as something I had to recover from. Ideological professors indoctrinating young people with bullshit. It scares me to think what I would have become if I didn't focus on intensely self-educating myself.

To each his own. What is a hobby to some, is a necessity to others.
Did you write that just to sound as pretentious as possible?
 

Black_Dragon43

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Yes, you must keep things balanced. Anything can be taken to an unhealthy excess. But I've never met a wise person, over a broad range of subjects, that isn't a voracious reader.
Maybe not a wise person, but I've met a few very rich business people who are definitely not readers. There is a whole plethora of business people who do not give interviews, who detest publicity, and who keep their lives private, guarding them like hawks. Many of these guys would never come on a forum like this, read self-improvement books, attend a Tony Robbins event, and so on. But they have money. And keep making more and more of it.

It's street smarts, not book smarts.

From my own experience, I can tell you that only 15% of the knowledge that made me successful was found in books. Some of those were very important pieces of knowledge, as they were stepping stones to other knowledge. But still, the vast majority of my knowledge came from taking action, running into a problem, and figuring out a way to solve it.

For example, I'm now interviewing people on LinkedIn for a new venture. I've read a few sources about how to approach this, but 85% of it was useless. I ended up taking action, connecting with people, and figuring out my own strategies to do it. Strategies that nobody talks about. People talk about big picture stuff. They won't tell you "here's what to tell them"... and even if they do, that works NOW, but it won't work tomorrow when everyone starts using it.

So bump your head in the wall, run into problems, strategize, and figure stuff out. Experiment, and test. You CAN create your own strategies. When you realise this, you will know that you don't need X or Y telling you. I'm not saying that reading or knowledge isn't valuable - they are. But action-taking is even MORE valuable. If only 15-20% of the knowledge you need is available in books and similar sources, you're very handicapped if you spend 3-4 hours per day reading.

BTW almost everything valuable that I've learned has been through self-educating myself outside of college. I actually view college as something I had to recover from. Ideological professors indoctrinating young people with bullshit. It scares me to think what I would have become if I didn't focus on intensely self-educating myself.
I agree 100%. But, once you get out off the well-beaten path, whether that's through books, your own realisations or however, you have to start figuring stuff out for yourself. You're off the beaten path, YOU are the leader here.
 

Kevin88660

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Maybe not a wise person, but I've met a few very rich business people who are definitely not readers. There is a whole plethora of business people who do not give interviews, who detest publicity, and who keep their lives private, guarding them like hawks. Many of these guys would never come on a forum like this, read self-improvement books, attend a Tony Robbins event, and so on. But they have money. And keep making more and more of it.

It's street smarts, not book smarts.

From my own experience, I can tell you that only 15% of the knowledge that made me successful was found in books. Some of those were very important pieces of knowledge, as they were stepping stones to other knowledge. But still, the vast majority of my knowledge came from taking action, running into a problem, and figuring out a way to solve it.

For example, I'm now interviewing people on LinkedIn for a new venture. I've read a few sources about how to approach this, but 85% of it was useless. I ended up taking action, connecting with people, and figuring out my own strategies to do it. Strategies that nobody talks about. People talk about big picture stuff. They won't tell you "here's what to tell them"... and even if they do, that works NOW, but it won't work tomorrow when everyone starts using it.

So bump your head in the wall, run into problems, strategize, and figure stuff out. Experiment, and test. You CAN create your own strategies. When you realise this, you will know that you don't need X or Y telling you. I'm not saying that reading or knowledge isn't valuable - they are. But action-taking is even MORE valuable. If only 15-20% of the knowledge you need is available in books and similar sources, you're very handicapped if you spend 3-4 hours per day reading.


I agree 100%. But, once you get out off the well-beaten path, whether that's through books, your own realisations or however, you have to start figuring stuff out for yourself. You're off the beaten path, YOU are the leader here.
Exactly. Only you know best and decide what is the next best course of action to take given all the unique circumstances.
 
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Madame Peccato

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I quit reading self-help books. I’ll read one or two this year, but they’ll be books I have already read.

I read a lot of fiction. It helps me relax and it improves my linguistic knowledge. Knowing more words helps me make sense of the world.
 

allen0879

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Maybe not a wise person, but I've met a few very rich business people who are definitely not readers. There is a whole plethora of business people who do not give interviews, who detest publicity, and who keep their lives private, guarding them like hawks. Many of these guys would never come on a forum like this, read self-improvement books, attend a Tony Robbins event, and so on. But they have money. And keep making more and more of it.

It's street smarts, not book smarts.

From my own experience, I can tell you that only 15% of the knowledge that made me successful was found in books. Some of those were very important pieces of knowledge, as they were stepping stones to other knowledge. But still, the vast majority of my knowledge came from taking action, running into a problem, and figuring out a way to solve it.

For example, I'm now interviewing people on LinkedIn for a new venture. I've read a few sources about how to approach this, but 85% of it was useless. I ended up taking action, connecting with people, and figuring out my own strategies to do it. Strategies that nobody talks about. People talk about big picture stuff. They won't tell you "here's what to tell them"... and even if they do, that works NOW, but it won't work tomorrow when everyone starts using it.

So bump your head in the wall, run into problems, strategize, and figure stuff out. Experiment, and test. You CAN create your own strategies. When you realise this, you will know that you don't need X or Y telling you. I'm not saying that reading or knowledge isn't valuable - they are. But action-taking is even MORE valuable. If only 15-20% of the knowledge you need is available in books and similar sources, you're very handicapped if you spend 3-4 hours per day reading.


I agree 100%. But, once you get out off the well-beaten path, whether that's through books, your own realisations or however, you have to start figuring stuff out for yourself. You're off the beaten path, YOU are the leader here.
You make lots of great points.

You can certainly get rich without being wise.

I've always valued being "healthy, wealthy, and wise" as Ben Franklin would say. Pursing one without the other is not something I want to do. Everyone has different values and I'd rather sacrifice some wealth to work on my health and wisdom. And a lot of the wisdom does come from street smarts.

I respect that everyone has different values and goals and I agree with everything you say about the importance of applying your knowledge and taking action.
 

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Cool thread!
I like the angle of the OP, don’t confuse being busy with being productive. Take action. You can read 100 books on swimming and it won’t make you a Michael Phelps, at some point you have to get in the pool.

And I also think being addicted to reading isn’t the worst addition to have. I read all the time and look for better ways of living, earning a profit, racing, all of it. It’s like having a steady stream of knowledge to help fine tune all aspects of life.
 
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Linguistic determinism - Wikipedia

Here is a good wiki article. I read a lot because any book can serve as a new cognitive structure in our minds that can affect action and thought. Reading can change your life. If you are doing too much and not making progress then you are probably doing something wrong or missing something.
 
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"We have to cease to think if we refuse to do so in the prison-house of language." -Nietzsche
 
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" Self-help or Self management or Self improvement .
I don't like what those words have come to mean these days, because there's a lot of people out there that are trying to improve themselves by looking for the one change , the one change in their life that gonna make their dream come true.
And even worse , on top of that there's a lot of people out there , a lot of self-help gurus & hyperactive motivational speakers that they're trying to sell the one thing , they're trying to sell the nine steps or the enlightened path that's going to allow you to unlock all your human potential and fulfill the dreams so you can live the life that you've always wanted to live.
I'm no guru and i definitely don't claim to be. I'm just a man but i will tell you this:
It isn't one thing
It isn't ten things
It isn't a hundred things
It isn't a quickpath and there are no shortcuts
Getting better isn't a hack or a trick, it's a campaign. It's a daily , a weekly , a hourly fight against weakness , temptation and laziness. It's a campaign of discipline, hardwork and dedication."
-Jocko Willink-
 
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Yup. To combat the read-action-fake, I've done two things:

— Save ALL (and I mean ALL) reading for the end of the day before bed, AFTER you've been productive through the day and spent your energy on REAL output.

— Mostly re-read books that made the biggest impact on you (so the lessons are deepened). Make that ~80% of your reading, keep it on a yearly rotation, and only seek to read ~20% new material. I'd rather master the concepts from a book then read a dozen books speaking essentially the same diluted message.
 

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I recently spoke to a guy from here who reached out to me, said he's been on the forums for 7 years, and read over 900 self-help and business books, and yet can't get anywhere. Studied NLP, hypnosis, Tony Robbins, therapy, Michael Singer, etc. etc. and yet he still has a job, and has never been able to get any side hustle off the ground.

And what shocked me was when he said that he always feels like "the next book" will unlock what he needs to be successful. And there's always a next one. I mean there are 130,000,000 books in the world. If you read 1 book per day, every day, for 80 years, you will have read 30,000 books. Which is 0.023% of all the books that are out there. Meaning NOTHING!

Look guys - you can't read every book in the world. You can't even read a majority of them. You've got NO CHANCE to do that. The knowledge you'll gain in a lifetime will be as NOTHING compared to all the knowledge available out there.

I feel that just like porn has made the availability of sexual images at your fingertips, and hence many get addicted to it, the internet, Kindle and so on have made the availability of books virtually unlimited. This means that it's very easy to give your brain a shot of dopamine by learning something new, even if it's useless.

This conversation and a few others have made me convinced that there is an addiction to self-help going around. And it's all driven by wrong beliefs that people have.

If you're getting started, you don't need to read a lot of books. In my opinion, if you've just read TMF, you're more than ready. Maybe read Ca$hvertising as well for some marketing know-how. But that's literarily all you need if you're starting with ZERO and no EXPERIENCE whatsoever. If you've already worked a job, probably just TMF is all you need. And it's exactly how I started. It took many years before I started reading books more voraciously, and I honestly don't think I've learned a whole lot more from that, compared to what I learned by doing...

There's a process to figuring things out for yourself. If you want to be great at anything, you can't always go to a book. You need to be able to figure things out for yourself. Learn from LIFE. That's how the originators of the second-hand knoweldge you find in books first figured things out for themselves. You can do it too. In fact, if you want to be great, you NEED to do it.

If you always go to a book when you don't know, then you're running away from the "not knowing" feeling. You never learn how to figure things out for yourself. And you never gain any depth.

You need to question some of your beliefs to get rid of this addiction. One of the main beliefs is that "you need to read a lot of books to be successful". And that's false. There are some big hitters out there who didn't read ANY business book ever. I've met such people. How did they do it?

Call your compulsive reading in the face of the unknown for what it is - an addiction and a coping mechanism for fear and uncertainty. You need to let go, and learn to rely on yourself more, and on figuring things out for yourself. And you do that by taking ACTION.

Don't let reading hold you back from taking ACTION!
I like to listen to audio books while I'm working and doing my chores -- all non-fiction. It's a great way to make the time pass. BUT you're right. Reading is no substitute for action. And a lot of my knowledge has been gained in the school of hard knocks.
 
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MJ DeMarco

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As I wrote in TGRRE , at some point you got to stop reading about swimming, and jump in the pool.
 

Mario_fastlaner

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As I wrote in TGRRE , at some point you got to stop reading about swimming, and jump in the pool.
Hey MJ, since we are in topic can I ask you something? (Just a curiosity)

I noticed that in TMF you wrote a full chapter about education (I think the name was “your fuel” or something like that) and how real education starts when you finish school, then in UNSCRIPTED you didn’t write any specific chapter only about education.

Is that because you have seen lots of action fakers in the forum between the 2 books or is that a casual thing?
 
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Shamrox

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I'm not as addicted to reading as I used to be. I read a lot less fiction and a lot more non-fiction...though even those are audio books. I listen while driving between home and my office or on the way to working out with my PT. Gone are the days when I sat under a tree to read a novel. Perhaps I'll get that back one day :)
 
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Antifragile

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As I wrote in TGRRE , at some point you got to stop reading about swimming, and jump in the pool.

Right on, that’s where I got the analogy from! When it’s good it sticks in your mind.
 

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