I Went from Reading 40 Books a Year to Reading 0

As we know only too well, reading books is considered the fundamental ingredient for moving from mental inferiority to inspiring intelligence. However, as a person who had been preaching book-reading for years, I recently shifted my trajectory from reading 40 books per year to finishing nearly 0. What caused this big step backward? Let’s find out…

For years, I cramped my ever-growing to-read list with promising titles. I spent every spare moment mounting books in front of my face to devour the contents and zealously inhale every bit of wisdom.

My logic back then was quite attuned to the general public opinion in relation to reading. That is, read more books and you will become more successful, happier, healthier, and basically a flawless human being who radiates wisdom and never makes a bad decision.

This type of thinking remained uninterrupted for quite some time in my headspace. New year meant more books. And more books had to hypothetically catapult my sorry ass into a more wholesome place.

With each annual reset, something extra came knocking on my door: the reading challenge notification from Goodreads. And as a person who wholeheartedly follows the mantra, get 1% better, I was committing to read more books than the previous year.

The peak of my reading life came in 2020, when I somehow managed to slog through 41 books. Yeah, I know – that’s probably just a light warm-up for those hardcore bookworms who treat Goodreads like a competitive sport. But for me personally, it was a huge victory, especially since my kid turned one that year. It was a heroic effort to maintain my reading routine while chasing a tiny human around with a diaper in one hand and a book in the other.

Just for context, here’s a little sneak peek at the number of books I’ve managed to finish over the past few years:

• In 2019, I finished 40 books.
• In 2020, I finished 41 books.
• In 2021, I finished 20 books.
• In 2022, I finished 13 books.
• In 2023, I finished 18 books.
• In 2024…

Yet, when 2024 rolled around and I got the familiar notification to precommit to some arbitrary number of books, I decided to leave it blank. Instead of attempting to impress myself and probably the bookish community of complete strangers residing on that book-reading site, I had an alternative idea: to read study a maximum of one or two books.

But before we get into that, let’s share why, for years, I was focused on reading more and more books…

What Inspired Me To Read Books

I won’t try to list all the benefits of reading – they are quite a few. Instead, I’m going to share what pushed me, personally, into a life packed with books.

Till the age of 25, I mostly jogged slowly and aimlessly through life without any real agenda. I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do with my flickering existence. Besides the endless quest for an inspiring job that, let’s be honest, hopefully didn’t feel like an actual job, I was also wandering around Earth trying to find a group of people who really got me. Yet, despite being surrounded by plenty of nice people, I always had that nagging feeling that something was missing. The moment I discovered reading, I felt that my enthusiasm for life had been renewed.

Not that books gave me an immediate answer to what I should focus on, not at all. But they provided me with something better: I opened up to a world of possibilities.

Each new nonfiction book I conquered was like gaining a new mental skill that (supposedly) improved the trajectory of my life.

However, there was something extra…

The books I was reading not only offered guidance on how to craft a better life. But also insights regarding how to think about different aspects of your life.

For instance, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson not only inspires you to take responsibility – and highlights ways to do it. But it also teaches you to think that being too occupied with what others say or think about you is not only a huge waste of time, but also a drain on your mind.

Another title that is worth mentioning here is The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt. This fiction-style business book teaches the concept of ongoing improvement. And more particularly, it illuminates that building a strong system entails pinpointing the weakest links in that system and then finding ways to strengthen them. But in addition to these to-dos, it directs your mind from thinking about starting a business to thinking about starting a money-making business.

The last two are totally different. A five-year-old can hypothetically start a business by selling lemonade on the corner of the street. But does that mean this will make dollars? Not necessarily.

The Goal – and more precisely, theory of constraints – concentrates your thinking on the most important aspect in relation to business: a business needs to make money.

These two concepts are observed in most good nonfiction books. They show you what to do, but they also highlight how to think about a certain topic.

What’s The Main Think I Love About Reading A Lot of Books

What I absolutely love about books is that they allow you to examine common modern problems from different angles.

After all, the issues we’re all grappling with are pretty much the same, no matter where you happen to live.

I mean that the problems the majority of people were wrestling with 500 years ago were a bit different. But in the 21st century, we’re all stuck dealing with “delightful” dilemmas like:

• Finding a job that aligns with our desires and nurtures our core values.
• Making enough money from what we do so we don’t have to take a second job that totally clashes with our worldview.
• Discovering a healthy way to express ourselves – not bombarding social media with inane messages that no one asked for.
• Creating a habit system that helps us avoid the pile of unhealthy foods.
• Mustering enough motivation to exercise after a long day at the office.

And books, good books, help you see these problems from a different angle.

For instance, there are quite a few books in the realm of habits and habit-change. But what James Clear did with his Atomic Habits was to translate the complicated, vague theoretical idea of getting better habits by scholars with their long and dry sentences into actionable bits of information that are comprehensible by the general population.

After reading the book, you no longer have to guess what motivated you to unlock your phone and mindlessly scroll through random pictures of complete strangers for half an hour. You understand that notifications are cues that trigger this nasty habit. Thus, you work on removing the cue, which, in turn, helps you find a replacement habit that actually contributes to your long-term growth.

The more books you read, the more perspectives you gather about various topics.

I like to imagine these as different lenses that help you see the world from various angles.

The more you gather, the better you become at seeing the nuances of the situation. Thus, the world adjusts from being black and white to being a different color of gray.

To give you an example of this abstract idea, imagine that you are just getting started with the concept of habits.

If you encounter a typical productivity hacker online, your mind will get infected with a bunch of rigid concepts about habits.

Stuff like:

• You shouldn’t miss a day. If you do miss a day, you’ve failed.
• It takes 21 days to build a habit. After that, your behavior (magically) becomes automatic.
• If you’re not waking up at 5 AM, hitting the gym, journaling, meditating, and preparing a green smoothie by 6, you are not even trying.

As you gain more experience in the realm of habit change, you understand that things are far more complex.

For instance, you realize that having good habits is fundamentally about having sustainable good habits. It’s not about working out for an hour every day and calling yourself a failure if you miss a day. It’s about regularly exercising – whether it’s for 10 minutes or 60 minutes – and making sure that you can sustain this over a long period of time. And if sustaining this means taking a day off, by all means, do so.

What Happened In My Life To Stop Reading

As you can see from my website, part of the content here is the creation of book summaries. Obviously, for a site that produces book summaries to function, I have to read books in order to summarize them (like, duh!).

However, with time, books gradually become something more than just content for my site. I started to perceive book-reading as a race.

Race towards a potentially ever-evolving individual who is getting better by the hour.

More books meant more knowledge. And more knowledge seemed to offer the possibility for more opportunities.

But was this true?

Sure, on the surface, devouring pages appears to offer ways to extend your capabilities. But in reality, you can’t make monumental changes in your life if you only read.

My enthusiasm for books faded with the following realization: I wasn’t trying to improve like I said I was doing. I was trying to avoid improvement.

This sounds bizarre. After all, book-reading sits atop the list of tasks one must do if he wants to be rich and successful – at least, that’s what we are told. How can doing this activity hamper my progress in life?

Well, think about it for a moment. What actually moves the needle if you want to start a business or if you want to get fit?

• Working on your business or reading business books?
• Going to the gym or reading about exercising?

Looking through the lens of basic practicality, it’s not difficult to conclude that spending more time on your business is the obvious choice. It’s the thing that translates to more progress.

Of course, there’s also the case that reading and working on your business shouldn’t be mutually exclusive. In the best-case scenario, you have a business, and parallel to that, you read books that help you make it even better.

Well, at first glance, this looks like a great idea. However, in reality, it’s not that simple. Usually, it takes months to implement an idea discovered somewhere in a book. You have to create a hypothesis, test it, and then make iterations to the initial plan. If during that time you devour even more business books, your mind – swayed by the novelty – will shift to this new concept, completely ditching your prior priorities.

At the end of 2023, I started to feel that I wasn’t getting anything new from the books I was reading. Or at least, I no longer had the motivation to finish a book from start to finish.

I’ve already created a daily routine that serves me well. Do I need to make it even better?

Well, if you ask the internet people, they will enthusiastically suggest ways that will supposedly allow me to become even more productive. But is this a sustainable strategy? Only I can answer this question properly.

Yes, I can potentially do a second workout right after work. Or, probably, this just-published book has that magic regime that can transform me into the next ninja guru. But this type of thinking is what originally drove me to avoid taking action.

I now realize why I was obsessed with reading. I was caught up in this cycle of an endless search for knowledge. I believed that there was always something missing. An ingredient that, once found, will totally transform my life.

Surely wellness preachers crafting self-help content want you to believe this. After all, if you aren’t watching their videos, they aren’t making money.

But after reading a bunch of articles, watching a ton of videos, and getting extra books that promised to give me the “secret” to mastery, I’ve realized that the hypothetical “secret sauce” is always the same thing: consistency.

Doing something ordinary for an unordinarily long period of time.

In the realm of business – sure, thanks to the books I’ve read on the topic – I now have a solid view of what I want to do with my website. But does this mean that I have to pick all the new titles emerging on the topic? Not at all.

Similarly, in the realm of exercising, nutrition, and having good habits, I have an idea of how my day should look in order to remain healthy. Do I need another book that explains how to improve my everyday life? Well, I don’t think so.

How I’m Approaching Reading Now

Oliver Burkeman put it best in one of his articles by stating:

… treating your “to read” pile like a river (a stream that flows past you, and from which you pluck a few choice items, here and there) instead of a bucket (which demands that you empty it).

When I was committing to 40 books per year, or 20 books per year, or whatever random number you can imagine, I was committing to something else as well. Subconsciously, as strange as it might sound, I was making a vow to not take action on what I learned from the book.

Let’s unpack this…

If we do some basic math, we’ll find that 40 books per year means around 3 books per month. This means that I have around 10 days to finish a book. Since I’m not a fast reader, nor do I plan to become one, this will mean that as soon as I finish one book, I have to start the next one.

This approach to book reading suggests the following premise: that the act of finishing a book should also be the act of fully understanding the contents of the book.

But if you are anything like me, you know how faulty this statement is. After a book is finished, you’re left with mere breadcrumbs of the ideas discussed in the title. Sure, you might pick one or two theories and try to implement them in your life, but that’s not what usually happens.

We enthusiastically update our profile with yet another finished book, but we have little idea of how to apply the gathered knowledge in real life.

This realization led me to shift the way I read books.

Instead of focusing on finishing a bunch of books on random topics, I focus on this:

Figure out the type of river I want to dip my toes in – i.e., find a topic I want to master and read materials related to this topic – and then figure out ways to implement what I’ve learned into my life.

For years, I was a “read and move on” reader.

I read books, and I quickly moved on to new ones without doing much with the information I’ve gathered.

Now, I try to be more a “read, study and implement” type of reader.

I pick a topic, find materials – not only books – on the decided topic, and I study them. By studying them, I don’t mean reading them only once. But going through them multiple times while taking notes and while trying to find ways to integrate the information gathered in my relationships, business, and daily routine in general.

The core concept here is to not move towards another topic until I feel confident that I’ve done enough updates in my life and/or business with the current topic.

For instance, in the beginning of 2024, I decided to become better at experience design. This led to reading two books on the topic: Designing Experiences by J. Robert Rossman and The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman. Yet, what really piqued my interest was the jobs-to-be-done method (JTBD).

Now, several months later, I’m still re-reading materials related to JTBD.

Based on where I currently stand, I believe it will take me a couple of more months until I finish the topic and move on to something else.

Why Reading Less Can Be The Answer

For many people, the act of reading is an elegant way to avoid doing something worthy with their lives.

I know this because I’ve been like that for years.

You tell yourself, “I need to read just one more book to start a business. I’m still not skilled enough on the topic.” However, after reading the book you supposedly have left, you’re introduced to some other unfamiliar concepts and this repeats the cycle – always preparing, never actually doing.

Instead of taking action, you hoard even more information without applying anything you’ve learned.

On the surface, it looks like you are doing a lot. You take notes, you create strategies, and you even share your insights on your social media profile, so others can marvel at your glamorous vision about where your life is headed. But can all of this help you lose weight or start that dream business?

Well, probably not.

Sure, reading books is 100% better than dipping your head in the endless algorithmically infused social media content that makes you feel like you are an unworthy sawdust compared to the successful people online. But if you only read books, you won’t be much better than the people who don’t read at all.

We can present the above concept as follows: Imagine that you watch a workout video. Watching the video can introduce you to a new way to exercise that can help you gain muscle and/or lose weight. However, do you think that solely watching the video will actually help you gain muscle? Of course not, only by doing can you reap the benefits of the information you’ve gathered.

And if this exercise really helps, do we need to seek another workout regime?

We might, but we also might repeat the workout for a couple of months – allowing our muscles to grow.

As I currently focus on one topic at a time, I realize how nuanced my understanding becomes. I feel more confident in my knowledge of what I’m studying, and I start to see how the information can be implemented in my life. All things that weren’t previously available, simply because I was switching to new topics almost non-stop.

Of course, I also realize the following: The concept of staying with a single topic is contrary to our modern world.

These days, influenced by mass media, we are more interested in the constant exploration of a new terrain than quietly gazing at familiar landmarks.

The world “moves fast and breaks things.” And typically, we want to have a front seat and watch how things are getting destroyed.

Yet, if we have no fixed point of view. If we are not committed to any specific topic. What ends up happening is endless wandering in our world of constant flux.

Personally, I’m now convinced that picking a topic and sticking with it until you’ve fully understood it is the better alternative.

I just sit down, and I concentrate on one idea. One concept. One book. I listen. I take notes. I experiment with how this idea can be implemented in my life. And while I’m doing all of this, I actively dismiss all the other topics trying to hijack my attention – which, to be honest, is quite difficult to accomplish.

I learned that only by standing aside from all the other available topics will I have a chance at mastering the one in front of me.

Some Closing Thoughts

I no longer see more as a benefit.

I think one of the main reasons many of us feel overwhelmed these days is because we have instant access to more resources – books, videos, articles, etc. – than ever before. Yet, precisely because we have access to everything, we don’t do anything with the insights we gather. Rather, influenced by our consumerism society instilling that more of everything is always better, we simply hoard.  

What if, instead of reading 100 books this year, we read one but study it extensively?

Great books have the power to change your life, but only if you take the time to digest the information inside – not actively amass more books in the process.

The problem with sites like Goodreads is that instead of suggesting mastering a topic, they push us towards focusing on more and more topics.

Of course, the reason is simple: Reading more books means purchasing more books.

But instead of being a victim of the goals of random online sites, I decided to create my own rules.

Instead of setting a goal to read X number of books this year, I plan to focus on studying one particular book per year.

I fully realize that this is not particularly fancy. I won’t earn arbitrary points offered by whatever gamified nonsense is trending these days, and my social media won’t be bombarded with some random awards. But I will gain something else: the luxury of fully understanding a topic I personally selected for myself.