back to your question about how to build a reading habit. So you need to be very honest with yourself about what you're interested in and starting from having an idea of what what piques your interest. I think if you can choose topics and books and authors that are focused on those interests, that is the best way to build a reading habit because then it does not feel like a chore. It really just feels like a leisure activity.
Jim Malane, how are you, my friend? Pleasant, doing well, enjoying my lockdown and style here in my sweatpants in my sweatshirt, doing well. Enjoying that new massage? It's not new.
Unfortunately, it's all I can grow. That's a serious tash going on there. Yeah, so I like to tell people I'm a little follically challenged, so I like to overcompensate with a mustache because it grabs people's attention and then it veers the attention away from the fact that's all I can grow. So focus on your strength.
I get it by peacocking, but only above the lip. Yes. Eyes up here. Yeah.
Up top. Up top. So your Instagram account, which is what a lot of people listening might know you for, get better with books. How would you describe?
What is that? What is get better with books? Yeah, better with books is currently the fastest growing Instagram page focused specifically on self-help, personal development, business-related books. It really just started as a creative endeavor where I could combine my interest in photography and my interest in reading and have something to do with my day job.
But I've been doing it for almost two years now. May 15th will be my two-year anniversary running the page. And I think as of today, I'm a little over 85,000 followers. So I'm a little dumbfounded quickly.
It's grown in the fact that people enjoy seeing content specifically around books, but it's been a fun journey so far. Why do you think it is popular? I think it for a couple of different reasons. Number one, it speaks to the attitudes of a lot of people out there, not just in the US, but internationally speaking, if you take a look at some of the data that I get to pull from the Instagram account, I'd say a third of my audience is US-based, but the thirds in Europe, I'd say over one majority of people from India.
And I think it speaks to the psychographic of certain people who are just focused on developing themselves as an individual. They use books as a tool to better themselves. I think it speaks to a lot of people who love reading, but more importantly, improving themselves. Yeah, for sure.
How many books have you read? Do you know? I haven't kept count, unfortunately. You know, one of these people that's religious on Goodreads or anything?
No, I don't keep an active Goodreads account. But if I would estimate how many books that I've read in my lifetime, I'd say probably like 150, 160 books. And I think last year, in the year before, we're really the first two years that I've actually kept track of how many books I've read. So last year, I think I got up to 50 for the course of the year and the year before, I was at a little over 30.
And it's important to also acknowledge the fact that these metrics, like how many books that you read or how quickly you read books, I think that can be a distraction for a lot of people, where they see books as almost like a vanity metric, like how many books have you read in total. And I have this conversation with a lot of other book Instagram accounts that I see as cohorts. And we almost see that as a disdain, right? Like if you read 100 books in a month, but you don't, you don't retain anything, right?
Is it worth it? Or are you just using that metric to you know, as a feather in your cap, if you will? Yeah, I mean, in this age now, this sort of burgeoning underground movement, the new aphorists that are coming out that like the maxim, you know, this show is called modern wisdom. I am part of the fucking problem as far as that bit's concerned, you know, like, but there is, there is like a, there is an ongoing subculture now of people that I think are kind of re-patriating wisdom, you know, like kind of falling back into the timeless understandings of the principles that we should live our life by trying to uncover uncover what we are, who we are, why we like the things we like, why the world operates the way that it does.
And you're totally correct as well that by reading a lot, or by saying that you read a lot, you never know if someone actually does read two books that we got, by either saying that you read a lot or reading a lot, you get to have the proxy, you get to have the veneer of looking wise, whilst not ever having to deploy any wisdom. It's an interesting juxtaposition of the two, right? Because you have the short morsels of wisdom that you get from social media, and you overlay that with the long form content, which is inherently in books, right? And comparing the two on the surface, it almost seems like it doesn't mix, right?
Like, how can you surmise a 300 and 400 page book, you know, like 12 rules of life, right? Jordan Peterson, for example, right? And you see, he's very popular in social media, but it's hard to distill wisdom in a book like that in, you know, an Instagram post, right? So it's an interesting dynamic between the two.
But I also think it's a good opportunity to just expose more people to the benefits of reading, because there are a lot of people who come to my account, and they ask me questions. They're like, I just started reading a couple months ago, like, what books would you recommend to a beginner? And for someone like me, I don't see myself as an expert. Like, I'm just someone who likes reading, and I have an Instagram page, like apparently that makes me an expert.
But at the end of the day, there are a handful of books that I always go to as, hey, you're new to reading here that you should consider reading. So I guess I am somewhat a book expert if you follow my Instagram page. I get it. Yeah, we are going to get into that.
We've got all of the recommendations, and that will be coming in a little bit. But first, what I wanted to ask was, what are the common mistakes that you think people make or perhaps the ones that you made as well when building a reading habit? Because before you read the books that you might recommend to people, there has to be a habit to be able to actually get through them. Absolutely.
I think the first mistake that I come across from a lot of new people is they feel like you have to finish a book, right? If you come across a book that was highly recommended, and maybe you just don't find it interesting, it doesn't pick your nerve or doesn't strike a nerve at all, you feel like you are forced to finish it from end to end, right? And that's one of the biggest mistakes, because if you are not interested in a book, it's going to feel like a chore, right? It's not going to feel like something that you're actually getting a lot of benefit from.
So if you don't like a book, please do not waste the time. I mean, it's kind of like watching a movie. If you're sitting at home watching Netflix and you come across a movie in 10, 15 minutes into it, you just don't like it. You don't sit through the next 45, 50 minutes, right?
So it should be anything different than reading a book, and I think a lot of people just have this attitude. I have to finish a book. Yeah, is it just some cost fallacy? Is it that people see it as a badge of honor to get through a difficult book?
Sometimes there's a lot of public relations when it comes to, hey, I'm going to read this book, and I need to say it face by actually finishing it from start to end, where having a little bit of self-confidence to say, like, you know, I did not like this book. I wanted to put it down, and I wanted to start something that I'm interested in. So it's really just being comfortable with your self-sick, not digging this. I'm going to put it down.
Yeah, it's the other thing as well. This came from Kamal Rabakant, a conversation I had with him. And he said, 90% of self-development books should have been, sorry, 50% of self-development books should have been an article, and 49% should have been a tweet. Yeah, absolutely.
1%, which actually needed 300 pages, 400 pages to pad out the concept. John Peterson's is a good example of anything by talent. Like, it's not really, it's not about that, the one thing, you know, like digital minimalism by Cal Newport should have been an article. Now, don't get me wrong, you can have this.
Here's a strategy in it to workbook a course or whatever you want to sit on the side. But that could have been long blog post. Right, and if you read a lot more books, you come to that realization that's most of the books that you read, they're either similar in a lot of ways, or just like you said, they probably could have been summarized in a page, or maybe in a YouTube video. And I think one of the books in a hot, hot take here, and I actually get a lot of flack on Instagram for this, is there's a book Start Why by Simon Sineck.
It's widely popular in the books of Grandphere, and people say, this is a life-changing book, and I came across the book, and I said, this is mildly interesting, but I think it's very superficial. I think it's very redundant, and I wasn't a huge fan of this, and I've been very public about my stance about that book, and that just goes to your fact that not everyone has the same opinions on popular books. And I think it's very important to be upfront with yourself, to not pretend that you enjoy books just because it's popular, but it's your point about these books that could be maybe summarized in a blog post. I think there's a four or five minute video on YouTube about the Start With Why concept, by him talking in a TED talk.
So anyone who has not read Start With Why, I would say just check out his YouTube video, and if it's something that peaks your interest a little bit more, then maybe pick up the book. So hopefully I see a couple days of reading that. Yeah, for sure. Mark Manson, the subtle art, just didn't get it, man.
I'm like, okay, Mark, you keep swearing, cool. That's where you draw the line. You just kept on swearing? I was like, I get it.
Like, this is a book that's about swearing. And that was it. But then models by him, how to attract him in through honesty, is amazing. And that couldn't have been a tweet.
That couldn't have been a blog post or an article. Any guys listening who want to kind of open their game, especially as we're about to re-release ourselves back out of lockdown, models by Mark Manson is like the pick up artistry book for people that don't want to be CD pick up artists. It's about how to maximize your confidence, how to actually be a fuller version of you and the basics and attraction between men and women. And I think it's great.
But sort of long, I was like, all right, Mark, cool. And I think it's important to understand that you don't, again, you don't have to like every book that's popular on social media. And when it comes to enjoying books, I think a lot of it has to do with not only the content, but the author's writing style. You can come across an author that you just truly vibe with how they write.
And regardless of what the content is, you could sit down for hours and hours at a day just because of the writing style. It's so enjoyable. There's some of those offers for you. Number one that comes to mind is David Brooks.
He wrote a couple books, The Roto Character, which is easily in my top 10 books. It's more that self-help book, but it's more emphasizing true virtues, right? Like living with chivalry and just living with honor and as opposed to focusing on the external virtues, right, of commerce and status, right? It's more important to be upfront with yourself and what you truly believe in.
So the Roto character, David Brooks, I think he was a columnist in the New York Times, so just a tremendous writer, someone that I truly enjoy. But another writer that I'm starting to absolutely adore, Robin Sharma, I'm sure you guys are all familiar with the 5M Club, this little dandy right here at the 5M Club. So this was one of the books that I came across just because I saw it all over Instagram, right? Like I'm human too.
I pick up my future reads just based off what I've seen on social media and social proof, right? If people are raving about a book, there's probably a reason why it's so popular and that was one of the books and so far I just started reading it a couple days ago. There's a certain storytelling guide, right? And you come across a writer who can easily detail certain intricate parts of a relationship or certain nuances and body language, right?
When you can read how a writer is detailing a whole scene in an atmosphere and a mood, you almost forget that you're reading, right? Like it's almost like you're watching a movie and it's those types of books that are more of story focused as opposed to the point-by-point-by-point self-help books that sometimes aren't as enjoyable to read. These are the types of stories that I've definitely been a lot more accustomed to recently. I love that.
Okay, so we know that you're not supposed to think that you need to finish a book. That is a bad habit. What else? Before we get on to how to build a reading habit, are there any other like common errors that people are making when they start out?
I think another common error is just focusing on the metrics, right? You get in this idea that I have to read 50 books this year or I have to read two books a month because the latest business insider article said the most successful people are reading X amount of books per month and I think I'm successful. So I need to live up to that metric, right? So I think beholding in yourself to some of those external metrics and I call vanity metrics, it almost you lose sight of why you're reading the first place, right?
Like at the end of the day, you want to pick up a book to either learn something new, to expand your wisdom, expand your perspective, and if those ideas, those thoughts are clouded by simply, I need to finish this book faster so I can get to my next one, it's counter-productive. So I think it's more important to just remind yourself why you're reading the first place as opposed to like you just mentioned like having a tally mark next to how many books you read just for vanity purposes. Yeah, I think I love the analogy and it's not one I've thought of before about if you were watching a bad movie. No, I'm ruthless on Netflix, man.
I'm so ruthless, I'm straight out of there, I'm pressing the back button, telling everyone I'm sat with it, it's absolutely terrible. So I need to say, you know, with books, I think I'm around holiday when he reverse interviewed Tim Ferriss on The Tim Ferriss Show, they talked about reading quite a lot, might be an interesting one for you. And I think his heuristic is if you are whatever 100 pages minus your age into a book and you haven't wanted to send a photo of one of the passages to a buddy going like, Oh my God, dude, like you've got to see this. That's like that's the rule that he uses.
And I really, I really like that. And I thinking back to some of the stuff that's got me recently, so Robert writes the moral animal, just plain took my head off. I was like two pages in and I just on my highlights, I'm kind of like just the whole page was highlighted. I'm like, Ryan, you know what you're running about, man, I get it.
So yeah, you totally correct having the courage to put a book down despite what everybody says, despite whether it's supposed to be cool. Despite whether you loved their first book, I love Mark Ronson's models. So I've not given a fuck couldn't give a fuck. So I was going to say that.
Okay, so that's how we don't build a reading habit. How do we build a reading habit? What do we start? It starts with just being upfront about what your interests are.
So if you take a look at the get better with books page, there's an obvious emphasis on self-help personal development business, right? Maybe personal finance books. It's it's unintended, but I've catered towards a specific demographic of 18 to 34 males, right? College educated males, people who either have a state career or either getting into the workforce and are interested in upping their game, right?
That's again, unintended about how I started and where I'm catered to. But at the end of the day, that's not the interest of everybody out there, right? There are people who follow my page that are at the 45-year-old woman from Pakistan, right? She may not give a fuck about what Dave Ramsey says about total money makeovers, right?
And that's okay, right? And back to your question about how to build a reading habit. So you need to be very honest with yourself about what you're interested in and starting from having an idea of what piques your interest. I think if you can choose topics and books and authors that are focused on those interests, that is the best way to build a reading habit, because then it does not feel like a chore.
It really just feels like a leisure activity. And once you can start building up a couple books specifically focusing on a topic that you're interested in, and you get that reading habit, then you can start peering into the periphery about, okay, well, what's this, you know, this business stuff, zero to one peer tale, like what's that about or a radio, a principal? It's like, I see that all the time. And then reading starts to feel like less like a chore, but you can also expand your knowledge by reading stuff that you're not normally reading.
Yeah, no one goes into the gym and looks at like the big buff guy in the corner and says, yeah, gonna what you lifting there, mate, right? Okay, I'll put that on my barbell, and I'll have a crack. I've fucked my shit up. Like, yeah, that's what happened.
So again, with that, like, it's common sense. And the neval quote, the neval quote about reading, read what you love until you love to read. And David Perelle piggy backed off the back of that the other day with his writing course, he's got going at the moment, he says, write what you love until you love to write. And the same could be done for exercise.
It's doing the exercise that you love until you love to exercise as well. Like the easiest training plan is the one that doesn't feel like you've got to go and train. Exactly. So okay, so we know that we need to pick books like in terms of topic-wise, what do I do next?
Next, and if you're really serious about building the read having, it's just like anything else, like you need to set aside time that you want to dedicate towards building that habit, right? So I think you use the gym analogy all the time. And I like to equate reading to building a strong habit in the gym, right? Like, you don't start bench pressing 315 pounds overnight, right?
You have to work your way towards it. But at the same time, you don't do chest exercises seven days in a row, right? You need to have some sort of balance when it comes to your reading habit. So a lot of people that are asking for book recommendations, a lot of time, and just telling me be open about exploring new topics that you're not normally accustomed to.
And here's an example from me. So I obviously read a lot of personal development, self-help, business type books. And a couple months ago, at my sister's wedding, my uncle, who had no idea I was running this page, I told him, I was like, hey, Frank, I would like you to know that I run a semi-successful book page on Instagram. You know, a couple drinks in, a spell on my confidence there.
And he's like, okay, I got a couple book recommendations for you. And these two books could not have been farther off the beaten path from the shit that I usually read. One of them was the Zen Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, right? It's one of those legendary, I don't even know how to begin to describe that type of book.
But I remember just reading the book and to the point about getting into the book early, I was so just dumbfounded. What the fuck this book was about? I had no idea what was it about, but I can stop reading it. So I think it's super important to time in and time out to just expose yourself to stuff that you're not accustomed to reading, because that will spark some interest in that periphery.
You're like, huh, that actually is interesting. I don't know why I would come across metaphysics and the reason of meaning, you know, and you can get lost in chapters and chapters in that book about what is meaning. What is the definition of meaning? I had never thought about that in my 32 years, but that did spark a little bit of curiosity.
And I would not have come across that question if I was not open to taking a recommendation from someone and just open up my perspective a little bit. What was the second book? The second book was called Thunder at Twilight. I forget the name of the author, but it was a historical work based off of Vienna pre-World War I.
So it's a lot to do with Austrian politics, Austrian economy. There's a lot of historical features. If you're familiar with Austrian and Vienna pre-World War I, I'm sure Chris, you're very up to date on that specific time. That's literally my wheelhouse man.
I go sometimes I wake up on a morning and just start thinking about you. And that's one of those books where the writing completely lost me. I was not into it. There's a lot of historical references, a lot of geological references, certain areas of Austria that they're just ripping off like you're in a conversation with somebody new and I'm like, what am I doing here?
What am I reading? But to my earlier point as to why I actually read it, there was a lot of social pressure as to why I force myself to finish it because I was a part in part of a book club with my sister and my dad and my uncle who actually recommended that book. So I felt a lot of pressure to finish this book because if I didn't, they'd be like, well, I just recommend this book and you didn't even read it at all. So there are some times when I do succumb to social pressure in terms of finishing a book, even though I hate it.
Yeah, I understand completely. So we need to set time aside for it. My suggestion, I don't know how you do it, but as someone again who's I'm total noob as far as the reading journey goes, but my best way is part of the morning routine. Put it in the morning routine, set timer for 20 minutes, read for 20 minutes.
And because I like to go back over stuff quite a lot, I'm concerned about retention. That can sometimes maybe even only be like 15 pages. And then sometimes it may be more like it's like fiction or something might be 30. Actually, it tends to not be fiction on a morning.
Another habit as well, another suggestion for people is to read nonfiction by day and read fiction by night. I tend to find that, or not necessarily fiction, but like nonfiction story or biographies by night, basically not personal development by night. You know, if you're trying to really get your mind going about how to upgrade your personal finances or this psychological strategy for building a business or working on yourself, sending yourself to sleep with that, to me, doesn't always put me in the quite the right sort of mood, whereas if I'm just imagining this world or this story or this journal of something that's going on, that can make a bit of a difference. Yeah, and I've heard similar talk tracks about combining both audio books and physical books in the same manner, right?
Like you use physical books for self-help business and personal development, and you use audio books for one of those biographies, memoirs, fiction, things that are easier to digest. And at the end of the day, it's whatever works best for you. There's no one right way to consume books, whether it's audio books or reading at night, reading in the morning, as long as you were doing it, you're going to see some benefit from it. How do we retain what we read?
It's a good question. And I think that's one of the biggest challenges that I often have too. And I make some references to this and I might get better with books page and I kind of joke at it that retaining books is very challenging, right? Like so often that you come across a book that you're like, damn, that was awesome.
I love that book. And then two weeks later, someone's like, hey, Jim, like, how's that book? And you're like, um, so, you know, it was good. There's a guy.
It's good. I recommend it. So I mean, it's natural. It happens to everyone, to people who don't admit it.
It's very challenging to retain the stuff that you read. That being said, you do have to be very proactive about making sure there are key concepts that you want to keep with you in the process that I go through. It's just three simple steps. Number one is I always read with a pencil or a highlight or some sort of writing apparatus with me.
So every single time I come across something that makes me pause that makes me go home or, you know, that's interesting. Let me let me expand on that something that just comes on that, talks on that string of curiosity, underline it, write it down and make sure I fold a page down on the corner. So at the end of each chapter or the end of the book, and it kind of depends on the book, how I want to parse that out. But I always go back to the important parts every single time I finish a book, make sure that I'm taking the time to digest the important parts.
So I can retain that. That's a whole goal here. So if I can take everything that I underlined or jotted down, I either put it in a notebook or use no cards. So I'll take maybe a stack of like three or four no cards.
I did this for Ego as the enemy if I run all day and I have them right on the corner of my windowsill over there and I try to read them at least once a week. And that's the important part is you underline everything. You write it down in some sort of notebook or no card. But I think the most important thing is you have to revisit them constantly.
There's no way that you're going to remember something if you don't constantly remind yourself of the importance of it. So for me personally, what I do is I keep those stack of no cards. And once or twice a week, if I have a little free time, I'll just like to cycle through them and reread them. That is interesting.
I need to focus more on that. Or you know, based off of what I know now, maybe that's not as important as I thought. Maybe I'll put it in the back of the pile. But it's very important to constantly keep it top of mind.
It's an interesting analog approach that you've got. So book decision or read-wise or bookly, or you know, any of these different apps that either integrate with an iOS reading app, integrate with Kindle, integrate with the paper white that allow you to export your highlights automatically, and then they'll email them to you every day and all this sort of stuff. Is that just a disposition of yours that you've preferred to go analog rather than digital with both the books you get and the way that you do your highlighting? Yeah, it's just my preference.
And I think a lot of that has to do with the physical aspect of writing it down just helps doing green those messages that much more, right? If I'm just simply highlighting something on Kindle, and I don't use a Kindle at all the most of my book reading is these are through audiobook or physical book, right? So if I can physically underline something, if I can physically write it down and go through that process, I think it helps ingrain that message that much more as opposed to just doing everything digitally. Yeah, your retention or the way that you find audiobooks versus normal books reading, how did you stick to what you said before, where you've got more story narrative style stuff on audio and more personal development stuff on books.
I have to say like having developed reading, having worked real hard to develop whatever semblance of reading I've got over the last three or four years, my retention from reading something physically versus listening to it isn't even in the same universe. Right. Yeah, I think a lot of that has to do with having more of an active or passive approach to the reading process itself, right? If you're just listening to an audiobook and maybe you're doing some chores, you're doing some yard work or something like that, it's really passive.
But if you are reading a physical book, and again, this is just this is my personal preference, there's no one right way to do this. But me personally having to be proactive about what I pick and choose to put in my book and being proactive to physically pick up these no cards, I think just being more active in that process helps to retain at least in my opinion. I think as well we need to, so much of this is individual, right? It might be someone listening who's got perfect retention of what they consume on audio.
And I have fantastic retention what I can assume through podcasts. I can tell you like the type of fire hydrant outside of Christopher Lee's house, like, you know, all the total useless information, which I actually, what kind of fire hydrant was it? It's a silver one because he lives in Beverly Hills. And in Beverly Hills, you get silver fire hydrants.
Some day, some day we'll have a nice start. So, you know, just like random stuff. And it's like, I can pick that up through podcasts. Yeah, all your books, retention is a little bit less.
I feel less involved. There's less energy going on, in my opinion. But if I'm not so bothered about retention and it's more the overall feel, and again, that relates to the type of book, right? If there's a core lesson, which is the whole book trying to give it to you with a number of different stories, perhaps an audio book would be great for that.
Whereas if it's like, you know, if it's the 10 things you need to do to complete your ex, you're only going to get like maybe one or two if that's not the style that you learn it. Yeah, exactly. And you do a good job at reminding people that there is no one right way to do it. But also at the point that certain books out there are just so much harder to retain, right?
Like if you've read Robert Greene's 48 Laws of Power, right, there's so many different laws and a lot of them are contradictory. You're like, yeah, Law 13, you told me what's something else, and Law 17, it's completely different. So I think it's important to distill what type of book it is. But also at the same time, just cut yourself some slack and I can remember it.
I'll tell you what is a terrible audio book to listen to, thinking fast and slow. It's a challenging read if you actually sit down and read it too. It's challenging regardless how you consume it. Yeah, because there's so many mental exercises and it's like, look at these list of letters on either side of the page and if they're listening to it and you're like, and someone told me, someone had said, bro, you don't want to try and listen to that book.
And I was like, fuck you, it's 20 hours plus. Like, I'm listening to this. I'm not reading it. And then sure enough, an hour into it and I was like, I don't know what's going on.
I don't know who anybody is. I think he got married to her. Like, I don't know. So, okay.
We're into the meat of it. This is what everybody came for. So let's say I'm getting into reading personal development. What gets me through the door?
What's the entrance ticket into the world of personal development? Where do I start? I think the first book that I always recommend people is Atomic Habits by James Clear. For a lot of reasons.
It's one of those books that's easy to read. It's not convoluted in the messaging, but also the language to convey the lessons. But there's actionable insights. I gauge a lot of how I see a book based off of how easy it is to consume, but also how easy it is to implement.
Atomic Habits is just an A plus in both of those regards. I mean, it's something, and I was actually just thinking about this today because a little plug for Get Better with Books on Building Out a YouTube Account. My first video that I'm playing right now is all about the five life-changing books that I've come across in Atomic Habits. It was one of them.
And one of the key components that I always remind myself about Atomic Habits is having an identity-based habit system. And you see, you're nodding your head because this is something that if you're in that personal development sphere, it's something you take very serious, right? Like, if you want to build a better reading habit, rather than just being like, I need to do this and this to become a better reader, rather than doing that, you should just focus on seeing yourself as a reader, identifying yourself as a reader, but then also taking it one step further and thinking, what would a reader do, right? So almost reverse engineering that habit by identifying yourself as someone who's already had that and then going forward with small little wins, right?
And that's just a quick snippet of Atomic Habits. And it's just one of those books that every single person I've come across has come back universally saying this was a fucking awesome, awesome book. Thank you for recommending this. The fact that it's so new, does it induce service, I think?
The Lindy argument that you should be reading books that are the classics. And that is the antidote to the fact that there is a lot of self-development books that come out all the time, and you need to be careful in what you would invest in your time. But obviously, that puts new classics on the back foot. Atomic Habits are going to be read in 20, 30 years' time, 100%.
Yep. So that's always near the top of the list for me. And to add on top of that, in terms of easy takeaways, the number two book that I always recommend, it is a classic back to that, how long has this book been available for? Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People.
So this is a staple in that self-development, personal self-help regiment, right, if you will. That book's been around for close to 100 years now, and it is still on the top of the bestsellers list because of how, again, easy it is to digest, and easy it is to implement into your daily life. How it came across this book was an interesting story. So I just graduated college.
It was, you know, gosh, almost eight, nine years ago. I had no idea what I was doing with my future, right? It was just aimlessly wandering around in my early 20-year-old existence, right? And I was puttering around at my house, and I was walking through my dad's old office.
He used to run his own business from the basement of my parents' house. So when he moved out, he left all his books there. So I was just going through some of his old books, and I came across this book, how to win Friends and Influence People. And I was like, oh, that sounds interesting, right?
I just based a book by its cover, quite literally there. So I picked it up. I read it in probably a couple of days' time, and it really changed my perspective mainly on how you communicate with people, number one, but number two, having the perspective to see how your message is perceived by the other person's eyes, right? If you can communicate with someone and not be all about me, me, me, me, but rather look from their perspective as to why would this person even want to talk to me?
Well, most likely they want to talk about themselves, right? People are inherently selfish, and they want to talk about themselves, right? This is the nature of people. So if you can use that to your advantage, one of the key addages that always use from how to win Friends and Influence People is to be interesting, be interested.
So if you were talking to someone and you can genuinely be interested in what they're saying and you say, hey, tell me a little bit more about that. That's fascinating. How is that impacting your life and really just having that perspective of how is this conversation beneficial to that person? People will come away from that conversation being like, holy shit, Jim is a great conversationalist, even though that person just talked 45 minutes about themselves.
Yeah, I can't remember the book that this is in, oh, this is going to kill me. You might be able to tell me there was a study done where they put a guy on a plane and they said we need you to sit. I need to speak to the person next to you for the entire flight and it's like an eight hour flight. Don't let them, they're not allowed to look at the screen, they're not allowed to look out, just get their attention.
You're not allowed to tell them anything about you, not even your name, not allowed to tell anything about you. Anyway, we get off and they do a little survey afterwards and they're going up to all of the passengers, but it's this particular guy that they're looking for. They get the person he was speaking to and they say hello, so we're just going around today, just doing a little bit of a survey just to ask how your flight was and who you were sat next to and what you talked about. He said, oh, I was sat next to this amazing guy.
He's such a phenomenal guy, you know, it's just classic conversation. Oh, that's brilliant. Would you be able to tell us his name? And the guy's like, no, and that just drills it home, right?
You know, people like to talk about themselves. I think as well, like, it's not often that people are interested. Like, this is a catastrophe that plays off the back of something which is real pervasive that you don't often get people that are interested. So when you do, you're like, Oh, yeah, I get to, I can open myself up and I can talk.
They're not staring at their phone. Well, I can play with ideas. Okay. How when friends and influence people, atomic habits, where are we going next?
Third, it's a combination of two, because there's really two modes of thought here. One is if you want to go down a motivational route, book can't hurt me by David Goggins. It's just one of those books that just kicks you in the ass, right? This dude, if you've heard him on the Joe Rogan podcast, or if you've heard his audiobook, like he is just that raw motherfucker.
That's, you know, fuck this guy. You're listening to this guy and you're like, you don't even realize about your fists are clenched and you're like, your jaws clenched and you're like, yeah, you're about to rip off some flesh, but that's just one of those motivational books where you listen to someone's story and you can really understand how far the human potential can take and just based off of your own mental limitations, right? So if you can distill someone's personal journey, just based off of pushing those boundaries, it starts to open up your eyes as to, you know, maybe I'm being a little bit of bitch in this area in my life, or, you know, maybe I gave up a little bit of easier there. So it's those types of motivational stories that I actually made a post about it on my Instagram yesterday about Goggins has this unique capability of calling out your bullshit while motivating you at the same time.
And I think it's those types of books that keep you accountable to look yourself in the mirror. Like he uses the accountability mirror, right? He emphasized that just making sure that you're doing everything that you can day in and day out to push that potential. But the second book, and this is a little bit away from from that motivational is to Cal Newport.
Like you were saying about digital minimalism, one of my favorite books, especially right now, given the state of the world, state of the events is deep work, right? If you are creative, if you are an entrepreneur, if you are doing anything where you want your work to speak for itself, I think it's never been more important than it is right now to set aside some time where you are uninterrupted, where you can take long periods of time to focus on your work at hand. And I think Cal Newport does a great job at outlining why deep work, given the state of events right now, is one of the most important skills that you can, you can work on. It's a, it's a term all of its own now, right?
You know, like people talk about doing deep work, and it's a reference to him. I couldn't agree more to antithesis is the, it's the antidote to the always on million projects, million tabs open at once catastrophe that we find ourselves in. Okay, so we've got, we've got a foundation for self development, this is we're in, we're in the door now. And why don't we do some books that you think people may not have either heard of or not read some undiscovered gems still staying in at the self development space?
And then we'll go into more like a biography and then maybe a couple of fictions as well. Sure. So if we want to start with a book that's a little bit under the radar that is equally as important when it comes to the personal development self help is a book by James Allen called as a man thinketh. It's a very simple read.
I think it's, it's no more than 150 pages, but the basis of that is it's very similar to Napoleon's Hill, you know, concept about thinking good thoughts and making sure that you're proactive about the way that you're thinking, right? Using thinking as a model for success. And it's similar to Marcus Aurelius, right? When he says control your thoughts, control your life, the basis of this book as a man thinketh is just being very proactive about your thoughts as an entity, right?
So if you go about your day being very pessimistic, very cautious, you know, being overall doom and gloom, right? Like that's going to manifest itself in your actions and the way that you pursue your ambitions and life. But if you're overall optimistic, if you're overall energetic, and if you believe in yourself, if you tell yourself, you're constantly reminding yourself that you're capable of doing powerful things. And this is just based off of having that initial thought process that you can.
It's just something that you can constantly use to cultivate a lot of that positive energy in your life. And I think one of the key takeaways and the key quotes that I got from that is he compares your mind to a garden, right? And if you're constantly cultivating your mind in a way that you're cultivating a lot of good thoughts, it's going, it's going to yield a lot of positive things, right? It's going to yield a bound before fruit or vegetables, things that's going to be nourishing to your life.
Whereas if you're, if you're neglecting your thoughts, if you're neglecting your mind, similar to a garden, it's going to yield a lot of weeds, a lot of things that are going to clutter your vision, right? So I think it's very important to be very proactive about how you think, because that in self-manifest into your life. Yeah, and also not a very nice place to be, an ugly garden, as I, as my garden youth, four years old now, it's beautiful, I've got flower wall and everything. But, yeah, 10 to 10 to your garden.
What's next? What else? We got, let's go another unknown in the right, self-development. Actually an interesting book that you may know well aware of, I was kind of the truth by Dizzy Andrey.
Have you got the second version? Have you got the new version? I haven't got the new version yet. What are you doing, man?
So he's done an expanded, an expanded version. I have a couple of copies over there that's literally just now, I don't think he can get it to himself. So he's in Romania. Amazon isn't delivering his own book to him.
So he sent it to me and he was like, yo, bro, can you just have to go through and see if there's any printing errors and stuff like that, which is hilarious. But, yeah, economy of truth by Dizzy, tell us why. Yeah, so it's another one of those books we were talking about this earlier in the conversation about distilling wisdom into that bite-sized, manageable format and content. And I think Dizzy is someone who I interacted mainly off of my Instagram page that he hit me up.
I had actually been following him on my personal account for almost a year before I started my page and he'd reached out to me. So I was almost like, Starstruck, I'm like, shit, Dizzy, it reached out to me. I made it. But it's just one of those books that's just parsed down wisdom.
It covers everything from philosophy and just daily personal development. It's just one of those books that's easy to consume, but at the same time gets you to think. And I think at the end of the day, if you can read a book that actually creates that opportunity to pause and think, I think you're on something good there. It's a unique type of book.
It's short, aphorisms. You could pick it up and put it down in a page, as long as you gave yourself three or four minutes to think about what was on that page and how it relates to your life. It's a very unique way of reading. And as we mentioned earlier, you're on much more active, you know?
So okay, let's get into perhaps some more not necessarily personal development, but still nonfiction, just some either some favorites, some unknown ones, whatever you think. Yeah, so there's a recent trend that I've been encountering. It's the memoir type of book where it's an individual who is not writing about their whole life story, but more so, just like a very specific focus and experience that happened, of course, in life. And one of the books that I just encountered a memoir style was educated by Tara Westover.
It was a phenomenal story, and it was just based off of this girl who grew up in Bumfuck, Idaho. This was a recent story, true story too. She was part of a family that was deeply religious, but also fiercely separatist. So her father was one of those guys that says, you know, school is a devil, school is a government Illuminati, like, distrust everything.
So she came from a family that was very rarely home school, no formal education, but she got to a point in her adolescence where she said, you know, I want to go to school. And the book was all about her trajectory from basically being having no education to getting into BYU, getting honors, going to grad school, getting her doctorate from Harvard University, and this transition from having no education to having the most education, some of the key tenets there are all about your identity, right? Like, how do you see yourself throughout the course of your transition, your adolescence, and through your life? And for her, her family always harped on having an education as something that was untrustworthy, right?
Like, oh, you're one of them, you're one of those educated folks. And it's one of those books where you have this identity of who you think you are and how you see yourself, but also in relation to your closest, you know, friends and family, right? So how does my family perceive me? How does that affect how I see myself?
But it's also about just having the confidence in your own identity to say, hey, this may piss people off, this may run people wrong way, but I have enough convictions in myself that this is who I truly am, regardless of the consequences. So I can't recommend that one enough. It's one of those page turners where you come across an author who's just a fantastic writer and storyteller. So educated, Tara Westover.
I highly recommend it. Amazing. What's next? Shootdog.
For those who have followed my page, and obviously I do a lot of personal development, you know, business type books, but shootdog falls into one of those books that is just one of absolute page turners. So if anyone who has not read Shootdog, it's a personal memoir by Phil Knight, who was the founder of a little company called Nike, right? And it goes through his upbringing from how he was a little track star in Oregon to how he started this fledgling company into a multi-billion dollar enterprise, right? And that itself is an interesting story.
But if we talk about what makes a book interesting and what really gravitates you, it's that writing style. And Phil Knight has one of those unique writing styles where it's almost like a vapor, right? It's like he's going off in every single direction, but it's so eloquent in the essence where you can get what he's saying, but there's so much style and charisma to the way that he writes. So Shootdog, definitely add that one to your list, though.
I love it. And then one that might be a little bit less well known from that similar sort of genre before we do a bit fiction. Yeah, one thing that I would also add to that list, it's another recent book similar to that vein about business and personal memoirs was The Right of a Life Time by Bob Iger, who was actually just recently stepped down as the CEO and chairman of Disney, right? So one of these business titans that talks a lot about his upbringing.
And this is an interesting point when you read a lot of these, these business and memoir type books, you see a lot of commonalities, you see a lot of similarities between these people who have so much success. And The Right of a Life Time is one of those books where these guys just have an insatiable work ethic. They have the confidence, they have the vision, but they also have to wear with help when they come across failures and they come across life, just kick them down and pick, having a lot of confidence in yourself to drug dust yourself off and keep going. So Right of a Life Time, Bob Iger, Rise of Disney as a company, definitely a great read tip.
That's sick. And now finishing up a couple of fiction books. We've got a daytime read, so it maybe got a couple of nighttime reads as well. What are some fiction books that you read recently that you've enjoyed?
So there's one fiction book that I will always recommend, and this one was given to me by an old colleague of mine was a book called Watership Down. I'm not sure if you're familiar with that. It's a story about rabbits. So it's a book about how a flock of rabbits was displaced due to deforestation and their trek across on Chartered Land.
And you're thinking, okay, a book about rabbits. How is that relevant? But I think it talks a lot about key tenants of camaraderie, shared mission, courage. A lot of these key tenants that virtue that you like to see in the hero's journey.
And it's seeing it's unveiled in these cute cuddly rabbits and the constant threat of predators like foxes and cree horned owls, the things that you don't see as better by looking at perspective of a rabbit. I think, oh shit, life is a rabbit. It's pretty hard these days. But it's just one of those stories that's very easy to follow along.
But at the same time, you get some inspiration and personal reflection from reading about rabbits. I like the idea of using fiction as a way to learn lessons that some personal development books can't teach us. I always use the example about 1984 that it taught me more about appreciating the power of my thoughts than pretty much any other self-development book could have done. I mean, it's delivered in this allegorical weird sort of symbolic way.
It's an odd one. But look, man, Jim, it has been so fun. I implore everybody to go and check out at Get Better With Books on Instagram. When's the YouTube channel going to be live?
When is that Get Better With Books as well? That's also Get Better With Books. Yeah, I got my microphone being shipped from Amazon.com this weekend. So I plan on filming, editing, and posting my first video this weekend.
So yeah, it will be in the show notes below. Anything else that you want to plug? Any other things people should go and check out of yours? No, that's it.
Right now, I just got the Instagram handle, get the YouTube coming out. So working on and just creating good content and appreciate everybody for the time and attention. Bro, it's an absolute pleasure. You need to go and check this out.
I also have to give a shout out to how patient you are to align books perfectly straight. Like the ability to put books in completely neat lines with all the gaps being exactly the same way is just, you know, that's a little bit OCD, but at the same time, got to put good content out there. IG is very competitive. So take the time to post good pics, baby.
Yeah, I get it, man. Look, Jim, thank you so much. Everyone that's been listening, all of the books that we've just gone through will be linked below in the show notes, every single one of them. So I'm going to go check that out, all linked in the show notes below.
You need to go and give Jim a follow at Get Better With Books. But for now, thanks, man. Thank you so much. Likewise, Chris, good chatting with you.
Be well.