The finding
Just before Christmas, I finally managed to finish reading the book “Finding my virginity,” a biography of and by entrepreneur Richard Branson. “Finally,” because it finally took me more than 2 years to get the book out. That’s 2 years of resolutions like “This weekend I’m going to read it”, “this summer vacation I’m going to read it by the pool”…. Granted, with 3 screaming little kids in that same pool, it’s an illusion to even try to read half a page.
You could argue here, “maybe the book wasn’t that interesting and you should just go read something else”. Only: that wasn’t the problem: I was immensely enthralled by the book and then when I picked it up again, I could easily read on in it for quite a while.
But what was actually stopping me?
Setting priorities
Looking back now, I’m convinced that it was ultimately a problem of prioritizing. I enjoy reading business books, I often learn a lot from them and it makes me think more critically about how I handle business myself. However, I noticed that I often only started reading when it was already late in the evening and the rest of the family had already gone to bed. As a result, I found myself reading well into the night, no longer paying full attention and finally going to sleep far too late.
At other times, I would pick up the book when I knew I didn’t have much time to read it: just grab the book while my wife and kids are getting ready for a trip. So that’s not ideal either: you get half a page, a page or maybe 2 pages far, but it’s not efficient and by the time I was back in my head with the thread of the story, I had to stop again.
At this point, you probably wouldn’t believe it, but reading those books is still important to me. Therefore, if I want to get more out of them, I will have to give them more priority in my schedule.
Into action
The combination of that insight, along with the arrival of some books as Christmas presents, incidentally just as I was also filling out my Year Compass, led me to the following: why don’t I take my new books, along with some of the books that had been sitting here for a while to be read, and make it a 2024 resolution. That then becomes an intention of my top 10 books I want/need/wish to read in 2024. You can see the stack in the photo to the right.
One book for each month.
Now I hear you thinking, “Uhm, there are 12 months in a year, right?”. Indeed, but have you seen the giant book on Warren Buffett on the picture? That’s worth over 800 pages, so it already counts for two.
Besides, I also know that summer months are a very challenging period for effective reading (vacation, work in the garden…) and I want to keep the goal a bit realistic: if for some reason I don’t reach 6 books by summer, I’ll give myself the summer months to catch up.
10, that is. For 2024….
The list
More or less in the order in which I plan to read them (but we remain flexible, of course):
- The obstacle is the way (auth: Ryan Holiday)
- The psychology of money (auth: Morgan Housel)
- How to be a productivity ninja (auth: Graham Allcott)
- Same as ever (auth: Morgan Housel)
- Clear thinking (auth: Shane Parrish)
- The snowball – Warren Buffett and the business of life (auth: Alice Schroeder)
- De intelligente belegger (auth: Benjamin Graham)
- The black swan (auth: Nassim Nicholas Taleb)
- Die with zero (auth: Bill Perkins)
- The art of the start 2.0 (auth: Guy Kawasaki)
I’ll tell more about the contents of these books later. For now, it’s time for me to start doing some reading!
