Transcription
Okay. Hi everyone. So, I hope you can hear me and welcome back to my channel, I guess, where I just talk about things that I find interesting or I've read and try to comment on them. And for today, I thought that it makes a lot of sense to maybe mention and think about what I've been reading over the course of four years and specifically what impact it had on my life.
So, I've been tracking what I've been reading since 2022, and I've had it all in this notebook essentially, and I was just skimming through what I've been reading and decided to build a website around that just for me to see what I've been reading. You can find it down below, by the way. It was built again with Google AI Studio. It's not that hard to do. And turns out that I've been reading close to 4,000 books slash journals slash articles that I could document clearly. And obviously that sounds like that that sounds like a lot, right? And that would mean that essentially I would have been reading at least for 2 years three to four books a day, which is again quite weird probably. But 2022 that's where you know we still were in co kind of you know we still had lockdowns you really couldn't do anything and so reading for like 8 to 12 hours a day that that was fine for me like I had nothing else to do school wasn't that hard to be fair and like you can either sit on social media or read and I've been reading during that time so that's how you know the whole reading game started and then 2024 4 2025 I still kept the pace but that is because I was able to read faster just because these two years where I've been reading they helped me increase my reading speed and that's how I came in 2024 and five to read pretty quickly. Um but again I haven't been reading as much as in the first two years. So again, huge number. Um, do I remember everything? Probably not. But it does help to have read these books even if you don't remember them completely in the aftermath or the journals for that matter now.
Here's an example for instance. Right? So there was a time where I was like really into startups and Silicon Valley. So I've been reading like the PayPal mafia. I fret Paul Graham's essays. You can find them on the YC website. I'll also link it down below. And I've also read quite a lot about um how you get to ideas specifically pertained on this channel. And turns out if you ever cold call or cold email founders in San Francisco, almost everyone one will have been through YC. So they know the mentality and the philosophy behind YC and they all read for instance Paul Graham's essays. Two, if you are able for instance to know what they've read and figure out what lesson they are taking from Paul Graham and what they're currently implementing and you can see that and you can mention that. I feel like a lot of these founders, they are not hesitant to answer you or to help you out because I remember if you know simplify it's a platform where essentially apply for jobs pretty easily. It's like an AI agent for jobs that also mentions you. I remember I reached out to CEO because I was getting an email for user feedback. So I gave feedback. He replied and then you know I was asking him well are you doing currently things that don't scale because that seems to me the way because obviously sending out automated emails but even if they're personalized I don't think these tools like HubSpot and Apollo they can really personalize to an extent where it feels like oh this message was really sent to me. So apparently as I found out they were sending these emails manually and turns out I was able to kind of like start the conversation based on the question that comes from Paul Graham's essays which is also titled do things that don't scale and the idea behind that is that you do a lot of manual work uh work until compounds and then you can kind of back off the manual work because you have already an established customer base So you solve the problem, anything like that. So in general, it helps you get to connections like it helps you speak with people. Certain people have various interests. Um, you can accommodate to that because I've been a broad reader. I didn't like categorize myself into only reading one type of thing. I've read multiple categories and multiple genres which also means that you know I am probably a bit better in talking to wider range of people than people who don't read because again if you don't read you might have not encountered certain arguments in literature because again with the YC folks you kind of understand how they function how how they think based on what they read because it's quite easy to trace what they read like they will tell you.
Same goes for billionaires, right? Like I remember I went through El Musk's reading list and I've also read his biography and I mean if you know that for instance he was bullied as a kid and he was also reading extensively and he was like he had no friends until like college and stuff you kind of understand why certain pe people behave that way, right? just because you know certain background informations and that is also the thing worth reading for every people for every situation for everything that you might encounter in life that is not necessarily new because again I think that a lot of the things that are repeating are repeating because we are not changing right if you take history for instance there is this key argument that oh history doesn't you know it it never like comes across as a repeated cycle. They will tell you that history repeats but it's never necessarily the same which is not true because if you think about it one the situations would have been different for every historical event to be completely new. The people would have been very much different which which they are not right because you can think about it. We're people. We change based on culture and the society that is around us. Maybe scientific progress. But at the very end, we are still like the people in the 1700s. We didn't really change. We we seem to be more educated because we have so much more restraint on doing things that they were able to do that we are incentivized not to do by law, by punishment. You get the whole story. Reading also explains that to you.
Reading also gives you a huge advantage in terms of writing. And if you can write well, you start to speak well. Um, in my case, speaking to a camera is still still uncomfortable, still weird because even if I look at the videos afterwards, I'm always surprised at how bad, for instance, my voice is or how I'm missing a structure in talking. I don't have that with people actually if I talk face to face or over Zoom. But apparently with speaking to the camera, I still have that issue. But in general, if you read, you can write well just because you know how sentences are structured. If you read, and I'm not saying you should be reading as much as me because probably don't have the time and if you are if you're not like a teenager, um, you don't have the time unless you are kind of self-sufficient already, made your money, then obviously you can dedicate your life to read it. But because you cannot, you can still work on increasing your reading speed because at the end it doesn't really matter how much you read but what you've read. And if you develop or if you start developing a certain taste in books and you can read fast and understand pretty much everything, you've unlocked the most important skill that you could ever have. It's it's reading, encountering ideas, thinking about ideas, implementing ideas that no one has read before. Because for instance, if I show you these three books, right? Um this one is Vickenstein. He wrote certain theories on language and he was also, you know, apparently kind of in like a social elite, socialized. Again, I haven't read the book, so I can't really tell you what's about, but from the title alone, I can tell you what this might be about. Namely, discussions, right? Or if I show you if I show you these two books, the message is the same. If you've read enough, you can infer information from other people or from other works just because you have encountered similar ideas. I hope this point was kind of clear because the transition was a bit was missing a logical smooth transitioning. You get what I mean?
Anyways, what else? If you read, you'll have a pretty good library at the end. Um, people, you know, will probably stand and wonder what you've read, what you know. I currently not at home, so I can't really show you my library. Um, but it's nice. It's like really nice. And you know, people I feel like if they're standing in front of so much information, knowledge, they do want to know what's behind it. People are naturally curious. And I feel like if you can show them visually how appealing it is to be curious and gather information, then you know, they might become readers as well. So that's a nice network effect. What else? I feel like because I've been reading like this only works for high school and maybe certain degrees at university doesn't necessarily work for science. You have just because you know you're self-educated you have a broader acceptance to more complex topics because you have seen them before. I remember for instance in my FX class we were essentially discussing for two years what I've been learning in six weeks because I was following the online justice course by Harvard which was taught by Michael Sandler Sandler I think and you know I was reading essentially the works that we were supposed to be reading during the online course which is free by the way and because I have the rough structure in my mind about these ideas. I didn't struggle really in ethics in any kind of way because you've seen it before can just apply it again. Yeah.
Overall or like maybe one additional point you can talk and become interesting like you can monetize the knowledge to certain extent because I feel like if you look at certain people like Alex Hozi Dan Co um who these people that have certain skills they have certain niche knowledge they can monetize that and I still think that specifically people like Alex Fabosi own business they read a lot. I mean I came across um an article I think it was BBC where they showed that the average American CEO for instance reads 63 books a year because well the thing is I'm indicating the following. If I say they read so much and they are so capable, I'm only saying that because it's tied to their salary because they're making 100, 200, 300 times what German CEOs for instance make and that is also because of how their salary game is played by giving them stock options and so on. But I feel like still the American CEOs, if you're comparing, you know, um the companies, they they seem to be more visionary and take more risks than other CEOs. And I do attribute that fact to having them read so much because 63 books a year for a CEO is is it's quite a lot, right? because I'll have to see whether I can reach 63 books this year, which I probably will, but you know, my degree is exhausting. Now, imagine how full. So, yeah.
So, I feel like those were the points. I hope you found a bit of encouragement to start reading even if it's a bit it's like you you start gathering knowledge. It's the similar no how do I say that? You know what just screw it. Um, at the very end, reading has a ton of benefits. And the only disadvantage that you have at the very end is that you might be wasting time, losing time because reading takes time. It's an effort, right? And I feel like that's the only downside. And with that, I conclude reading is great. You should do it more often.