300 Books Later - 3 Concise Unique Takeaways

Main takeaways after reading 300 books

1. Find peace and happiness in small things.

Reading a good book next to your cat, drinking a tea or coffee should bring you happiness.

Life is the small things.

Although I like playing the business and money game, if you HAVE to do this all the time and cannot be at peace, you will reduce your overall life happiness.

2. Play a game you want to win.

Purpose.

Design a life you enjoy.

Optimise for peace and experiences.

Ask yourself the question “what would I do if I knew I couldn’t fail” and then do it anyway in a way that of course tries to reduce the chances of failure.

We hear it all the time but the “don’t waste your life, you only have one” premise is key.

Optimise your life for what you specifically want, not what your friends, parents or society thinks you should want.

Dive into this and build a life you want, with goals specifically created by you, for you, playing a game that you actually want to win.

Most people play a game with rewards they don’t want to win, this makes absolutely no sense.

3. Read & Learn for a specific purpose.

Reading for reading’s-sake or “performative reading” is a poor use of time.

Read for a specific purpose.

That purpose can be point 1 from above, to help relax, because you enjoy it, to inspire you, but don’t read or learn something because you think you need to or because others will find it cool or it “might be useful in the future”.

Read and learn because you are interested in it now or have something to solve in the current project or business right now.

Reading books for the sake of reading books does not increase knowledge, it’s intellectual procrastination from what you should be doing (usually point 2 - purpose or even point 1 - find peace).

You will make far more progress by learning things at the time you need them than trying to “read for the future”.

This goes for any skill, languages or process.

Just a quick one I was thinking about this week.