Reading for Success

Do successful people read a lot? Do they read differently? Do they know something about reading and learning that helped them become so successful? Apparently, they do!

Here is what we’ve found on the reading habits of successful people:

Warren Buffet: 

    “Read 500 pages… every day. That’s how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest. All of you can do it, but I guarantee not many of you will.”

Bill Gates: 

    In an interview with The New York Times, Bill Gates shared that he reads about 50 books a year. He has also divulged that he takes reading vacations for 2 weeks at a time every year.

    Elon Musk has said that he taught himself physics (as well as rocket science) simply by reading a lot of books on the subjects. Furthermore, before he was Tesla CEO, Elon Musk supposedly read for 10 hours each day.

    Oprah Winfrey has referred to reading as her “path to personal freedom.” She said, “I learned to read at age 3 and soon discovered there was a whole world to conquer that went beyond our farm in Mississippi.”

It turns out that successful people focus more on self-improvement and learning rather than entertainment. They also read a lot of biographies of other successful people. For example, Albert Einstein was known to read books on maths and physics for hours every day. Abraham Lincoln was a self-learner – he said, 'All I have learned, I learned from books.' We think Steve Siebold, author of “How rich people think” says it best: "Walk into a wealthy person's home and one of the first things you'll see is an extensive library of books they've used to educate themselves on how to become more successful".

Charlie Munger, Vice-Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Corporation and Warren Buffet's partner in business says: “I constantly see people rise in life who are not the smartest, sometimes not even the most diligent, but they are learning machines. They go to bed every night a little wiser than they were when they got up and boy does that help, particularly when you have a long run ahead of you.” However, simply reading is not enough: when successful people read and learn something new, they apply it straight away to refine the idea until they understand it well. Because, as Tim Sanders said, “Education without application is just entertainment.”

Successful people learn constantly and make time for reading not because they have to but because they want to. According to various experts, it is not important what one reads until he or she has developed the daily habit of reading. Once this habit is acquired, you can begin reading books that are not quite so thrilling, but provide lots of value in the long run. This is our goal: to give children the opportunity to fall in love with books and develop the reading and learning habits that will help them further on in their lives. And various experts say that childhood is the best stage in which to begin creating these habits. For example, Thomas Szasz, a Hungarian-American academic and psychiatrist, points out that "learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-esteem... [which] is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily.”

Together we can help kids become the best versions of themselves and instill in them the knowledge that “The expert in anything was once a beginner."