“Ryan, it’s not enough that you read a lot. To do great things, you have to read to lead.”
It worked wonders for me: at 19, I was a Hollywood executive. At 21, I was the director of marketing for a publicly traded company. And at 24, I’d worked on 5 bestselling books and sold my own to the biggest publisher in the world. I may have been a college dropout, but I have had the best teachers in the world: tough books.
Note: Damn. I’ve been missing out on a TON of opportunities from books.
Forget everything but the message and how to apply it to your life.
The first 50 pages of the book shouldn’t be a discovery process for you. You shouldn’t be wasting your time figuring out what the author is trying to say with the book.
contemporaneous
Note: existing in the same period of time.
I have the same schedule with every book I read. After a mandatory 1–2 week waiting period after finishing, I go back through the book with a stack of 4×6 index cards. On these cards, I write out—by hand—all the passages I have noted as being important. It might seem strange, but it’s an old tactic used by everyone from Tobias Wolff to Montaigne to Raymond Chandler, who once said, “When you have to use your energy to put those words down, you are more apt to make them count.” Each one of these cards is then assigned a theme and filed in my index card box. The result of 4–5 years of doing this? Thousands of cards in dozens of themes—from Love to Education to Jokes to Musings on Death. I return to these pieces of wisdom when I am writing, when I need help or when I am trying to solve a business problem. It has been an immense resource.
You highlight the passages for a reason. Why type the quotes if you aren’t going to memorize and use them? Drop them in conversation. Allude to them in papers, in emails, in letters, and in your daily life. How else do you expect to absorb them? The more fulfilling an outlet you find for the fruit of your database, the more motivated you will be to fill it. Try adding a line to a report you’re doing. Find solace in them during difficult times. Add them to Wikipedia pages. Do something.
Note: I love this so much. I’ve been sharing a lot of quotes from the myriad of information that I’ve been digesting. Aside from the fun of blurting out scholarly ideas, I find that sharing and teaching valuable stuff to people make me feel like I’m having a positive impact on the world.
People always ask me if the books I carry around are for school because they’re full of notes, flags, and folded pages—why would anyone work so hard on something they were doing on their own? Because I enjoy it, and because it’s the only thing that separates me from ignorance.
strike out on your own
Note: pursue something independently.
“Books give delight to the very marrow of one’s bones. They speak to us, consult with us and join with us in a living and intense intimacy.”