Reading a lot - is this really the #1 trait of rich people?

[Dan_Cardone]

I would say the number one most important habit that all successful people have in common is that they take massive action.

But yes, they tend to read a lot too.

 

[RazorCut]

I would say the most important habit is consistent progress towards a set goal.

You can have all the knowledge in the world but if you don’t do anything with it then that knowledge is pointless.

 

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[aminmo]

Just because a lot of rich people read doesn't necessarily mean reading will make you rich.

Does reading help? It can, but it really depends on WHAT you read. There's a lot of crap information out there, so it's possible reading may actually have a NEGATIVE effect.

That said, if you can find the right books and information that's been written by the right people, then reading can help MASSIVELY. Heck, this whole forum is basically based off one of the greatest business books I've personally ever read, and it literally changed my life for the better (it got me off my a$$ and made me take action towards my goals/dreams).

 

[Ismail941]

 

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[Sander]

I would say the number one most important habit that all successful people have in common is that they take massive action.

But yes, they tend to read a lot too.

And provide massive value

 

[Dan_Cardone]

In my experience, successful people spend more time THINKING than unsuccessful people.

Most of the best business people I know will spend a lot of time secluding themselves, thinking critically about their business. They spend time clearly defining their goals and creating a roadmap to achieve them.

Less successful people seem to spend a lot of time taking random actions that haven't been well conceived or thought out.

Action is good, but without thought or planning, it's more likely to push you away from your goals than towards them.

This!

One of the first things I have people do who seek my help is to write out a one year plan. Then break that plan down into four quarterly plans. Then come up with monthly plans. Then weekly plans. Then the weekly task transfer to your daily to do list.

Everyone complains of how much work it is until they get it finsihed and have a set roadmap right in front of them every morning. Makes it super simple (not to be confused with easy) to stay on track to accomplishing your goals.

 

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[MoneyHacker]

Not necessarily it has to be reading, but any sources of information. Just take action and learn along the way. Don't learn or read too much, it's an action faker.

 

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[GPM]

Those who can read but choose not to have no advantage over those who cannot read.

Reading will not make you successful in itself, but imagine how much more knowledgeable on any possible subject you can become by simply reading on a regular basis.

 

[Primeperiwinkle]

Reading literature books that are above a sixth grade reading level will enhance your vocabulary, grammar, and writing skills.

People judge you by the way you write.

Emails. Facebook ads. Instagram posts. Landing pages. Website content. These all need decent writing.

Do you want to come across well? Do you want ppl to understand you? Do you want to be an intelligent contributor to the conversation? Do you want to be a leader across more than just one platform? The fastest way to become a better writer is by reading more.

People write confusing posts on this forum almost every day. They fail to get help because they don’t communicate well. Reading literature would greatly benefit them. Reading self-help books would help them.

You grow in direct relation to your environment.

If your mental environment is filled with Spongebob we shouldn’t expect much more from you than we would from a bottom-dwelling crustacean.

Reading biographies and firsthand accounts of historical events prepare us for the future.

The economy is cyclical. There are clear patterns. Socialism has been attempted, repeatedly. Communism has too.

How can you be a wise investor or a global tradesperson if you have no idea about history? How can you see where entire countries have been led down dark paths if you’ve never read any history? More importantly how will you judge whether or not you’re being fooled? A YouTube video put out by someone in the last five months is ABSOLUTELY NOT comparable to a book that has lasted 800 years. Is YouTube a good way to get excited about a subject? Sure! But. There is no comparison to reading the words from someone who actually lived through the ______ war.

Reading connects us to great minds who have already struggled and overcome.

Being an entrepreneur is lonely work. Being unscripted is a decision to step away from popular culture. When you discover that Einstein and Sam Walton and Columbus just so happened to struggle with pressure and fear and betrayal... it lightens your emotional load. It is almost impossible (except on this forum) to have a group of successful geniuses all telling you what they would do in your exact situation. It is VERY simple to go get a bunch of books written by geniuses and discover how they overcame challenges like yours!

Change your mental environment!

If we really want to be ppl who reach millions but we don’t take the time to educate ourselves.. sigh.

Can reading be an action fake?

It depends on the book. Twaddle is intellectual candy. If a book hooks you, swings your emotions all around, doesn’t challenge your mind, your values, your cultural biases or it’s not something you’d be proud to have your children box up after your death? Yea. You’re just using reading to escape your issues.
Don’t do that.

Read excellent stuff because it makes you a better human being, a fuller more thoughtful person. Read a little every day from the the best stuff you can get your hands on.

End rant.

 

[Nice_home]

I came across this article and various other similar articles that claim "reading" is the most important habit for people who have become wealthy. If you have found success in business, do you find this to be true? Is there a habit that's been more important to you than reading? Here is the article:

The Reading Habits of Ultra-Successful People

Want to know one habit ultra-successful people have in common? They read. A lot.

www.huffpost.com

Thanks in advance!

 

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[biophase]

No it isnt. It is the speed of implementation. Look it up.

I highly doubt that speed is what most successful people have in common.

My vote is the ability to learn and implement, which basically goes back to reading a lot.

 

[mdmetelus]

Those who can read but choose not to have no advantage over those who cannot read.

Reading will not make you successful in itself, but imagine how much more knowledgeable on any possible subject you can become by simply reading on a regular basis.

I agree with your sentiments, reading allows you to benefit from years of wisdom, knowledge, and experience that other accomplished people have to offer, but if you take no action what value could reading have for you...?

 

[ChrisV]

I came across this article and various other similar articles that claim "reading" is the most important habit for people who have become wealthy. If you have found success in business, do you find this to be true? Is there a habit that's been more important to you than reading? Here is the article:

The Reading Habits of Ultra-Successful People

Want to know one habit ultra-successful people have in common? They read. A lot.

www.huffpost.com

Thanks in advance!

I'm not sure about the #1 trait of the wealthy, but yes, according to data and polls, wealthy people do read more.

More traits of the wealthy:

MINDSET - FEATURED! - Author spent 5 years interviewing 177 selfmade millionaires to find their secrets. Findings inside.

"Corley conducted a survey by interviewing 233 wealthy people who make $160,000 or more in annual income and hold at least $3.2 million in net liquid assets (177 of whom were self-made, coming from poverty or the middle class) and 128 poor people who make less than $35,000 per year and have less...

www.thefastlaneforum.com

HOT! - MINDSET - Dopamine. The missing piece of the success puzzle. (Improve Locus of Control, Motivation, Self-control)

Okay, we’re going to get into some deep and really cool stuff here. I bounced back and forth for almost a year on this forum as to whether I even wanted to post about this, since I’m planning on saving the materials for a book. But the more I think about it I think it's such an essential thread...

www.thefastlaneforum.com

 

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[TonyStark]

I would say working is the #1 trait amongst rich people.

 

[Rawseed]

@JScott

Scott Adams' Goal vs Systems is the same concept as Demarco's Event vs. Process.

James Clear discusses this in Atomic Habits
Andy Frisella's Power List is based on this
Hardy's Compound Effect
Maltz's Pyscho-Cybernetics
Many others say the same thing

They're all the same thing.

1. Set a goal
2. Create a plan to achieve that goal
3. Break that plan down into daily action steps
4. Use the goal for inspiration, but don't focus on it
5. Put your focus on executing the daily action steps
6. Fall in love with accomplishing the daily action steps
7. Accomplish the goal

Love the process, not the destination.

 

[JAJT]

It's worth considering that wealthy people have gotten to where they are by consciously making positive and better decisions about what they do and how they do it in many areas of their life.

Reading for the wealthy may very well simply be yet another one of many small choices they made along the way to replace a useless or negative action with a useful and positive one.

Maybe they were watching tv for an hour a day and flipped that to reading. Still using the same time in the day but replacing a useless activity with a useful one.

If an athlete said they eat a pound of veggies a day - would you say that the veggies are how they became an athlete? Or is it more likely that one day they cut out a lot of bullshit that was hurting them and picked up a carrot and went "yeah, this is better"?

 

[Dan_Fastlane]

the key difference is also that they don't read for entertainment and more for knowledge, don't forget that. I think they don't indulge much harry potter or twilight lol.

At all a good habit. Good for your Brain.

 

[MythOfSisyphus]

I get the correlation... reading shows a willingness or, more importantly, a desire to learn. That's a massive part of being successful when it comes to accumulating wealth in my opinion.

Obviously taking action, is just as, if not more important than reading/learning, but that's a little more difficult to boil down into one particular trait.

I never used to read at all until I was in my late 20s (in my late 30s now) and since then I go through about a book a week. It's helped me massively in every area of my life and the only other thing that's helped me just as much, if not more, is another habit commonly attributed to successful people... meditation.

 

[Ocean Man]

Read a book that you think will benefit or improve an area of your or someone’s life and then take what you learned from that book and implement it immediately.

Reading for the sake of reason is good, but it’s not as effective as reading and then acting.

Don’t just read TMFL. Read it and take action.

 

[Rawseed]

I like this thread. Everybody has great points.

To summarize the posts so far:

1. Read and understand a great book
2. Think about and process the ideas from that book
3. Turn those ideas into a goal to provide massive value
4. Create a broad plan to achieve that goal
5. Create daily action steps to execute the plan
6. Take massive action daily to execute those steps
7. Do this everyday until you're successful or you're dead

 

[babyballer]

I came across this article and various other similar articles that claim "reading" is the most important habit for people who have become wealthy. If you have found success in business, do you find this to be true? Is there a habit that's been more important to you than reading? Here is the article:

The Reading Habits of Ultra-Successful People

Want to know one habit ultra-successful people have in common? They read. A lot.

www.huffpost.com

Thanks in advance!

No it isnt. It is the speed of implementation. Look it up.

 

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[maverick]

Be curious about the world. How do things work? How can I improve this? Why do we do it this way?

By being curious, you'll want to learn more, understand more and thus you read.

 

[Nice_home]

I like this thread. Everybody has great points.

To summarize the posts so far:

1. Read and understand a great book
2. Think about and process the ideas from that book
3. Turn those ideas into a goal to provide massive value
4. Create a broad plan to achieve that goal
5. Create daily action steps to execute the plan
6. Take massive action daily to execute those steps
7. Do this everyday until you're successful or you're dead

This is a nice summary. I would summarize the conversation into essentially: "Reading, Thinking, Action, Repeat." Perhaps that is the best way to look at it.

Or perhaps there is another layer, "interacting." And the most efficient way to "interact" with ideas is through books, since they are packaged very well, and also the ideas pile up over time. (Someone - I think Warren Bufft - mentioned that reading promotes “compound interest” of thought. Yes, it was him (just Googled) - “knowledge builds up like compound interest.”

Although I do agree with another poster who said reading is not helpful, unless it’s directed (aimed). So perhaps a better way to summarize is like this:

Goals.
Reading.
Thinking.
Action.

(Rinse and repeat.)

That would cover both of the other aspects (Reflecting, Experimenting) outlined in another article: Bill Gates, Warren Buffett And Oprah All Use The 5-Hour Rule

The goals and then the action are the “experimental” parts - you get feedback on the goal and can thus set new goals, creating a cycle of experimentation.

So the question is how this applies to me - well at first glance, I would think that I am under-reading on the critical areas where I have set up goals (and instead, I am just reading "whatever" interests me).

I’m also probably under-thinking about my goals.

Perhaps I need to bake these 4 areas into my daily and weekly plans.

So I will set goals, read about them, think about them, and take action on them regularly. And then set goals again. Thus the reading and thinking should be as targeted as possible around those goals.

And this in itself will become my own little experiment How beautiful is that!

I definitely feel like this is a much more clear framework for pushing forth than what I have been using now (which essentially boils down to simply, Goals and Actions).

[Setting] Goals.
Reading [related to the Goals].
Thinking [about the Goals].
[Taking] Action [related to the Goals].

So basically focusing on the goals. Maybe that ties back into the dopamine-centric approach, too (I confess the dopamine post was massive and I couldn’t really follow/read it much)? Getting stuff done and creating a positive brain chemistry for doing so.

So I think I really will directly add reading [about goals] and thinking [about goals] to my game plan on a daily basis. Of course I can still read and think about other stuff....

So let’s say that setting goals maybe takes 30 mins per week? And taking action directly on these key goals takes maybe 10+ hours per week (I build a lot of bandwidth in for regular "life" and "work" around that)? So I guess reading and thinking should be somewhere in that mix. Perhaps around roughly 5 hours per week - following the "5 hour rule"? That would be roughly 1 hour per day total, more or less. So 30 mins of reading and 30 mins of thinking.

Actually I just calculated and it’s 42-43 mins per day, to achieve a minimum of 5 hours per week.

So I will just round it up and experiment with 30 mins per day reading about goals, and 30 mins per day thinking about goals. Because I already set up my goals each week, and I already have action steps tied to those goals. Sounds good?

 

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[Ismail941]

@ChrisV - It reminds me the link you posted a couple of weeks
That was awesome!

 

[astr0]

Yes, reading improves brainpower, memory and provides different views that improves creativity.

And thinking is as important as taking massive action to achieve great results.

 

[mdmetelus]

No it isnt. It is the speed of implementation. Look it up.

Excellent point!
"You're either first of you're last," Like Ricky Bobby said. If you're not first, you loose the premium value associated with the first mover advantage, and the opportunity to take all of the market share in a need industry or niche.

But to get back to the main topic; Upon further reflection I don't think there can ever be only "one best/ most important habit." I've always looked at success as stacking a (large) group of high end habits over time to achieve a goal or improve at any specific endeavor. That's the only way I was able to achieved success at school, sports or anything else that takes time, skill, and consistent action to improve. There are far to many variables for any one thing to be the reason for financial success, and building wealth. I think the more high end habits one cultivates the higher ones probability of getting to any set goal.

One person could genuinely attribute the majority of their wealth/success to a habit that another equally successful person does not have. Who would be right in that case? Would it even matter? I also don't think any 2 stories can't be identical so the habits necessary for one person to build with may be at variance with what another person, in another time frame, or another industry needs to do to great enough value to receive a fortune in return.

 

[babyballer]

This!

One of the first things I have people do who seek my help is to write out a one year plan. Then break that plan down into four quarterly plans. Then come up with monthly plans. Then weekly plans. Then the weekly task transfer to your daily to do list.

Everyone complains of how much work it is until they get it finsihed and have a set roadmap right in front of them every morning. Makes it super simple (not to be confused with easy) to stay on track to accomplishing your goals.

That's interesting. It is different from Scott Adam's "systems not goals" concept.

 

[babyballer]

How do you create systems to achieve goals if you don't start with well defined goals?

Goals vs. Systems - Scott Adams' Blog

In my new book, How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life, I talk about using systems instead of goals. For example, losing ten pounds is a goal (that most people can’t maintain), whereas learning to eat right is a system that substitutes knowledge for...

www.scottadamssays.com

 

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[100ToOne]

Targeted reading imo. Reading to get from A to B.

Try reading and learning Python books and implementing what they teach. It's trash. Because you don't have a point B you want to get to - such as creating a mobile app that connects two people together via chatroom for example. Or simply: "I want to understand more about how the economy works so I can simplify it to myself and my friend".

You should have an end goal before starting, otherwise whatever you read will just be forgotten or won't matter anyway.

 

[MoneyHacker]

Goals vs. Systems - Scott Adams' Blog

In my new book, How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life, I talk about using systems instead of goals. For example, losing ten pounds is a goal (that most people can’t maintain), whereas learning to eat right is a system that substitutes knowledge for...

www.scottadamssays.com

I don't see why we need to use either only systems or only goals. They are not opposite to each other. Instead we could use both.

 

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