What is this newsletter about?
This newsletter is fundamentally about using books to solve problems. What kinds of problems?
Any kind of problem.
What ever problem you are facing, I guarantee that there are books out there - detailed books, written by experts - that can help you deepen your understanding of the problem and, most importantly, solve it.
Why Books
For $10-15, you can get the distilled collection of wisdom from someone who has spent years studying and researching the problem in front of you. For $30, you can get 3 books by 3 different experts and at that point be one of the most well versed people on the issue that you know.
So let's say you're a CEO or entrepreneur and you want to understand how to turn your company into a really great one. Well Good to Great by Jim Collins took 21 people 5 years and a combined 15,000 hours of research to write. The book is 320 pages and costs $15.
Perhaps best of all, the time commitment from you is pretty minimal. The average book is 300 pages. If you read 25 pages a day (a daily time commitment of about 1 hour) then in just over one month, you'd be one of the most well versed people on that issue. One month!
Sticking with our CEO, entrepreneur example, let's say you wanted to read Good to Great (320 pages), Great By Choice (320 pages), and Built to Last (372 pages). You'd be reading a combined total of 1,012 pages. If you read 25 pages a day (again, about an hour) that would take about 40 days (or a month and a half). Over 20 years of research compressed into about 1,000 pages all for a grand total of $45.97.
Where did this idea come from?
“Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.” - Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book
Where did I get the idea to start Read This? And why do we say 3 books and not 2 or 4?
I grew up in a house with a lot of books. My mom is actually the person who first introduced me to the 3-book guideline. Whenever she was faced with a problem in life or at work, she would find all the books she could on the topic and read them. Overtime, she learned that it was best to focus on the 3 best books on a topic.
After that, you start experiencing diminishing returns on any future books you read. More importantly though, after 3 books you know enough about the problem to start working on it.
Sign Up
As I said, this newsletter is fundamentally about using books to solve problems. Each week, I'll email you the three best books on a particular topic. If you've got a problem you'd like book recommendations for, then respond to the email. I'd love to chat about it.
