read it and write everythingyou learn from it I vividly remember driving to my local Barnes & Noble bookstore for the first time.

A few weeks earlier, I’d discovered that there was a massive gap between the person I was—insecure and self-centered—and the person I wanted to be— secure and focused on serving others. That realization initially frightened me, but I am grateful that I chose to confront the discomfort head-on instead of avoiding it. A veil was lifted, and I felt fully awake for the first time.

It was 2015, and I had just secured a summer sales internship with a small software firm, and with just a year remaining before graduation, I was eager to gain some work experience before I graduated and was forced into a nine-to-five lifestyle.

My new boss Kyle became a mentor. He was an avid podcast listener and would put on personal development and business podcasts whenever we had long car rides together.

He explained to me that while he enjoyed listening to music, he realized that replaying a song for the 300th time wasn’t going to get him closer to his dream life. He understood that, on the other hand, the right personal development podcast might.

Growing up, I wasn’t receptive to this kind of educational content. After observing the positive impact these shows were having on Kyle, I decided to incorporate them into my daily commute routine. Up until that point, I held a belief that business podcasts were solely meant for dull and boring businesspeople. Yet, Kyle was a personable guy who loved to party and have a good time. I soon realized that investing in personal growth was a predictor for success and should be discussed confidently.

Those first couple of weeks were eye-opening to me. I tried many different podcast formats, but I found the most value in those where the host interviewed successful people and talked with them about what they had done to become successful. The advice was always very practical and so, in no time at all, I had a laundry list of subjects that I wanted to learn more about.

This is where my initial interest in personal development books came from. So many of these podcasters and their guests were recommending titles, and I began to hear some of the same ones over and over. These people made it seem like I was missing out on the world’s best kept secrets by choosing not to read.

In one podcast, the guest said that successful people often condense decades of their life experience into mere days by writing books. As readers, we can consume that information quickly and use it to navigate future obstacles, saving us a boatload of time and headaches. Personal experience is a great teacher, but another person’s experience can be even better because you can learn the lesson without feeling the pain.

Time to hit the bookstore and find out what the hype was all about! Little did I know that the books I was about to purchase would dramatically change my life.

My First Books

Armed with the shopping list I’d compiled from the podcasts I’d listened to, I cautiously entered Barnes & Noble. This first trip took place during my internship lunch hour, so I didn’t have too much time to shop around before I had to return to the office.

I remember being in awe of how many personal development books were available. So. Many. Options. I was equally overwhelmed and excited at the same time. As I browsed the endless shelves, there seemed to be a book for just about every problem in my life.

Consulting my list, I grabbed copies of Rich Dad Poor Dad and Cashflow Quadrant by Robert T. Kiyosaki and Sharon Lechter; The Art of War by Sun Tzu; The Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clayson; and The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey. I was delighted to find everything I was looking for, and I even grabbed a handful of other titles that caught my attention on the way to the cashier.

As I went to pay, I experienced a moment of uncertainty as I thought about my bank account. Should a college student without much money be spending what little he has on books? At around $20 per book, I was about to spend almost $200. Thankfully, I remembered another lesson I had learned during one of my podcast sessions:

The best investment you can make is in yourself. The most cost-effective investment in yourself is not a formal education, a week-long retreat, or an online course…it’s a book. Why? Books only cost $20 and take just a few hours to consume, yet they hold the same power to change your life as any of those other resources. The potential return on investment (ROI) is insane!

At the checkout, I signed up for a store membership card. I knew that to really shift my identity from a non-reader to a reader, I had to commit. Carrying the membership card around in my wallet seemed like something a reader would do. Plus, I got a good discount for signing up, which made me feel better. By simply buying a few books, I could already feel my potential starting to grow. It was as if instantly, a switch had been flipped, and I was now on a very different path in life.

Since my responsibilities during that internship weren’t particularly time-consuming, I spent a fair amount of that afternoon and the rest of that summer reading those books. My reading speed was slow, and I wasn’t sure how to take effective notes or implement what I was learning, but I was hooked. I began with Rich Dad Poor Dad—I still have that copy today.

I am so grateful that I chose to read it first. Rich Dad Poor Dad was actionable, easy to understand, educational, and short enough for a new reader like me to get through in a few days. If I had started with a different book, I might have disliked it, given up, and shelved the rest of the books I’d purchased. Unfortunately, that happens to a lot of new readers.

A book is not valuable to a reader unless it gives them something to implement, an action that will change their lives for the better. Yet the truth is, we as readers get to choose what to implement and for most readers, they choose to implement nothing. I know many people who have read Rich Dad Poor Dad and found it useless. For me, it changed everything.

Being a business student who didn’t yet know much about money, something amazing happened after reading these initial books, most of which were about personal finance and investing. In a matter of weeks, I went from someone who withdrew from conversations about money to someone who frequently led them. I went from someone who shied away from setting a post-graduation earnings goal to someone who was looking at multiple six-figure opportunities.

If that could happen after reading just a few books, I began thinking about other areas of my life to which I could apply this new superpower. This obvious solution to every problem I was facing was hiding in plain sight— and for only $20 a pop. Was I really on track to level up in every area of my life?

Growing Up

I had the best childhood. My parents worked hard to give my younger brothers and me that ‘white picket fence’ type family experience. I had friends in the neighborhood, trees to climb, and I played a lot of sports. I was always healthy and ate well, I received tons of love from my parents, and we had plenty of presents under the Christmas tree every year. Outside of some social anxiety, I was always very happy.

Not much changed as I got a bit older. I played football and was the captain of our high school wrestling team. Having three younger brothers, all close in age, I developed a love for competition that I still hold today. I could find a way to turn just about anything, physical or intellectual, into a competition. The upside was that I gained confidence in certain areas of my life, but the downside was that my confidence eventually developed into an ego and sense of entitlement. I wasn’t always the most fun to be around and I spent a lot of time focusing on myself, sometimes at the expense of others.

The one area where I lacked confidence was in my ability to communicate in front of new people. When I was in a small group of friends that I felt comfortable with, I thrived when all eyes were on me—it felt great. However, the moment I had to present in front of the class or go outside of my comfort zone, anxiety would punch me in the face. You know that feeling? Heart thumping and a pit in your stomach? I didn’t understand the benefits of embracing discomfort back then, which meant that I did anything I could to avoid those public-speaking situations.

I suppose this form of social anxiety is why I was never a reader growing up. Most class presentations happened in the reading-intensive classes like English, Spanish, or history. I remember being above average in critical thinking and private test-taking subjects like math, but way below average in oral communication and presentation-based subjects like the ones mentioned above.

Unfortunately, the public education system and classroom dynamics I grew up in taught students to avoid failure at all costs. The thought of stuttering or misreading something in front of the entire class and having everyone laugh terrified me.

There were times where I would pretend to be sick on presentation days so that my parents would let me stay home. That way, I could work with teachers one-on-one after school instead of speaking in front of my peers. I even used to get up and head to the bathroom before it was my turn to read out loud in English class. My social anxiety was crippling, but because I cared way too much about what people thought of me, I did a great job at hiding it.

That was my reality back then, and I put in a lot of hard work over the years to change it. I know now that failure leads to progress, and it should not be discouraged. In fact, I believe that embracing failure is one of the first building blocks for success.

Since I disliked school and spent a lot of time playing sports, I was always looking for shortcuts. I would read book summaries online instead of the actual books and rely on other students to help me get by. That same behavior followed me into college. I didn’t realize it then, but I had some major problems to fix. On one hand, I was self-centered and full of ego. On the other, I was doing anything I could to navigate my social anxiety, causing me to live with a lot of fear.

Since my mom worked in retail management and my dad in athletic footwear sales, I decided that the business world was where I belonged. I was accepted into the University of New Hampshire and took entry-level business classes during my first semester. My early professors encouraged me to find a summer internship where I could explore the different areas of business and discover something that I liked. Throughout my years at school, I secured two placements that totally changed my life.

The first was in a company that helped college students run their own house painting businesses during the summer. Focused on the earning potential, I totally missed the fact that I would have to generate my own sales by knocking on doors every weekend and then hire college students to complete the jobs I sold.

I could fill this whole book with the mistakes I made during that first summer. However, those same mistakes resulted in me facing some of my social anxiety—and my ego.

Through my experiences door-to-door selling, I was starting to learn how to communicate more effectively. I was constantly humbled by the rejection. The biggest lesson of all? You can become comfortable with anything. Remember those social anxiety nerves that caused me to stay home from school? They were showing up less frequently. All it took was a bit of courage and some basic repetition.

In fact, out of every aspect of the job, which included marketing, selling, operations, management, and finance, I found the most enjoyment in selling. After two full summers of running a house painting business, I realized that I needed to get more sales experience and improve my communication skills in order to secure a great job after graduation. I enrolled in some public-speaking classes and spent my final summer at the software internship I mentioned above, where I discovered my passion for books.

My social anxiety from high school had created certain barriers to my learning. Thankfully, I was still open enough to take my boss Kyle’s suggestions and begin exploring podcasts. Having a fixed mindset where you believe that you’re already the best and that there is nothing out there to learn is a very dangerous place to be.

Did I come out of the womb reading books? No. Not even close. For years, I was able to read but actively chose not to. I was living under my potential. Now, I embrace the universal truth that we are all capable of becoming more and designing our dream life.

The ability to read these books and apply their teachings is one of the most underutilized skills we have today.

Reading Time

I can’t even imagine what my life would be like if I hadn’t started reading personal development books. I can guarantee, though, that it wouldn’t be nearly as fulfilling. I am now in my late 20s and have read hundreds of books. The math is mind-boggling to me:

 
400+ books
Average of 250 pages/book
400+ books * 250 pages = 100,000+ pages
If you had tapped me on the shoulder in high school and told me that I was going to read and digest 100,000 pages of information before I was 30, I would have called you crazy.

When I started my reading journey, I was a very slow reader. We will discuss reading speed later, but for now, know that reading can be broken down into a set of individual skills. Each of these skills can be improved with time, repetition, and better strategies. For the sake of simplicity, let’s say that I read at an average of .67 pages (two thirds of a page) per minute:

 
100,000 pages = 150,000 minutes
150,000 minutes / 60 minutes = 2,500 hours of reading
Is that a lot of time? I am not sure. It’s not the 10,000 hours that Malcolm Gladwell talks about in his blockbuster book Outliers, but I am sure when you include the time I have spent implementing everything I have read, I would be close to 10,000 hours. Take that, Malcolm!

My life has been completely transformed, and I owe just about everything I have now to those 2,500 hours of reading. I am healthier, wealthier, and happier than I have ever been, and I am continuing to make more progress.

For years now, I have worked in the book industry and my businesses have given me access to tens of thousands of non-fiction readers on a weekly basis. I receive all sorts of questions, and I am going to address dozens of the most common ones throughout this book: How do I choose the right book? How should I take notes? How can I apply what I’m learning?

My promise to you is that by the time you’re done reading the first half of this book, you’ll have the strategies and framework to effectively retain and implement more from the books you read. The right book at the right time can change your life…especially if you implement what they teach you effectively.

The second half will introduce over 100 habits that I’ve implemented in my own life from the books I’ve read. I’ll take you through my experiences of implementing them—the good, the bad, and the ugly—and they will, in turn, be motivators for you too.

I wrote this book because I wish I’d had access to this information when I was starting my reading journey back in 2015. It took hundreds of books and countless failed attempts at implementing them before I came up with the strategies and best practices that I share with you here.

Do you have to read 400+ books to design your dream life? Absolutely not. I have condensed many of my favorite life lessons from the books I’ve read into this one so that you can accelerate your journey. Consider this book a cheat code, giving you the tools to navigate the world of personal development with ease.

This book is not designed to entertain you; this book is designed to educate you.

Nowadays, I am focused on helping as many people as possible bridge the gap between who they are today and who they can become. I see books as the vehicle to bridge that gap because that is how I was able to do it.

Back in 2018, I started sharing the books that I was reading on social media and writing short book reviews. Eventually, my following grew to a point where authors were reaching out and asking if they could pay me to review their books. Get paid to read? That sounded like a dream. Fast forward a few years and my business, BookThinkers, is helping hundreds of authors connect with more readers and helping thousands of readers find the right authors to guide and inform them. This work makes me very happy.

This is my world, and I can’t wait to walk you through it.

Living Under Your potential

Early in my reading journey, someone recommended The Top Five Regrets of the Dying by Bronnie Ware to me. Reading that book changed my perspective on life and death.

As an end-of-life caretaker, Bronnie spent a lot of time with the dying. She found that most people on their deathbed wish they’d had the courage to live a life true to themselves, not the life others expected of them. It was heartbreaking to read about these people who had finally achieved a sense of clarity about what truly mattered to them but couldn’t act on it because they were near the end of their life. They were prisoners of their own regret.

Regret is poison. Living below your potential will poison you. As human beings, we have a finite amount of time here—you don’t want to be on your deathbed wishing you had done more with your life.

There are two deathbed visualizations that really drive this point home for me. I encourage you to spend a few minutes reflecting on each of them now:

Deathbed Visualization #1

Picture yourself at Heaven’s Gate, ready to look back on your life and receive judgment. As you’re standing there, you look to your right and see other versions of yourself. Those versions of you talk about a life of no regrets. They speak of pursuing their passions relentlessly, facing each opportunity with unwavering faith. They talk about striving to be the best version of themselves for their family and friends. In life, they were truly healthy, wealthy, and happy. Then they turn to you and ask, “How about you? Did you take advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and explore all of what life has to offer?”

Given your current life trajectory, how would you answer? Let it sink in.

At any given moment, we have an infinite number of choices in front of us, which means there are infinite future versions of ourselves out there. Some decisions will get us closer to happiness and fulfillment whereas others won’t. The beautiful (and scary) thing is that we are in control of those choices.

Deathbed Visualization #2

Picture yourself on your deathbed, alone, unable to get up and realize your unfulfilled dreams. An angel appears and calmly asks, “How much would you be willing to spend to magically go back in time to (insert the year you’re reading this) and experience a few days with your family and friends?”

Really think about it for a moment. I bet you’d be willing to spend anything, right? You’d go back in time and live life to the fullest, taking nothing for granted, especially your time. The sad part is that no amount of money will allow you to travel back in time, regain mobility, and spend time with your loved ones.

We all admire the wealth that Warren Buffett has accumulated, but I’ll bet that none of us would trade places with him. At the time of this writing, Warren is 92 years old. Our youth, whether we’re 18 or 80, is everything. We can’t buy back time.

Now, snap back to reality and experience the present moment with old eyes.

What is stopping you from living up to your full potential right now? Fear of judgment? Fear of failure? The author Steven Pressfield calls the forces that hold us back “resistance.”

The strangest part about the resistance we face is that it comes from within. We create our own resistance. The fears that push us to live under our potential are nothing more than figments of our own imagination. They are not forced upon us, and they don’t exist when we are gone.

Don’t fall prey to the idea that you are going to live forever.

According to the CDC, the average lifespan for someone living in the US is 77.3 That means that by 38.5, you’re already halfway there. Focus on this and let the magic of mortality guide your actions.

The beautiful thing is that this heightened awareness of your own mortality also creates vulnerability, reflection, and an openness to learn.

Do not ignore the moments of your life that offer you the opportunity to learn the most.

This book is one of those moments.

The good news is that if you are reading this, you’re already on the way to changing your life. Most people buy books like this and then ignore them. Stick with it, because as this book progresses, so does its value.

The world needs more thinkers.