Reading is a SUPERPOWER!

I used to avoid reading as much as possible growing up. However, I trained myself to love reading as I grew older and realized the power of books.

Reading is a superpower because you can teach yourself how to do anything. When Elon Musk is asked about how he learned to build electric cars and rockets to go to Mars he says he reads books.

“I was raised by books. Books, and then my parents.” – Elon Musk

If you don’t know what to read that means you aren’t reading books. Virtually every book you read will have references and recommendations of other books to read. Start out by reading what you love.

“Read what you love until you love to read. Everybody I know who reads a lot loves to read, and they love to read because they read books that they loved. It’s a little bit of a catch-22, but you basically want to start off just reading wherever you are and then keep building up from there until reading becomes a habit. And then eventually, you will just get bored of the simple stuff.” – Naval Ravikant

When I read biographies the most common thing among the people I read about is that they all read books voraciously. Winston Churchill, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln all loved to read books.

Make it a habit to read for 30 minutes per day. If you can’t do that start with one page per day.

Don’t have time?

Rather than scrolling through social media open up your Kindle app and read for 2 minutes.

Below are all books I’ve read that have impacted my life.

Mindset / Personal Development

• The Greatest Salesman in The World, by Og Mandino

• Awaken the Giant Within, by Tony Robbins

• The Success Principles, by Jack Canfield

• Live It, by Jairek Robbins

• As A Man Thinketh, by James Allen

• The Values Factor, by John DeMartini

• Psycho-cybernetics, by Maxwell Maltz

• Becoming Supernatural, by Joe Dispenza

• The Gap and the Gain, by Dan Sullivan

• Dopamine Nation, by Anne Lembke

• Mastering Fear: A Navy Seal’s Guide, by Brandon Webb

Body and Health

• Blue Mind, by Wallace Nichols

• Breath, by James Nestor

• Why We Sleep, by Matthew Walker

• The Molecule of More, by Daniel Lieberman

• Lifespan, by David Sinclair

• Boundless, by Ben Greenfield

• Life Force, by Tony Robbins

Love and Relationship

• Keys to the Kingdom, by Allison Armstrong

• The Amazing Development of Men, by Allison Armstrong

• Conscious Loving, by Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks

• The Man’s Guide to Women, by John and Julie Gottman

• Getting the Love You Want, by Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt

Leadership

• Radical Candor, by Kim Scott

• Legacy, by James Kerr

• Tribal Leadership, by Dave Logan

• Relentless, by Tim Grover

• The Trillion Dollar Coach, by Eric Schmidt

• Wooden On Leadership, by John Wooden

• Start with Why, by Simon Sinek

• Eleven Rings, by Phil Jackson

Habit Building and Productivity

• Total Focus: Making Better Decisions Under Pressure, by Brandon Webb

• Atomic Habits by James Clear

• Grit, by Angela Duckworth

• Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

• The Art Of Learning, by Josh Waitzkin

• Deep Work, by Cal Newport

• Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, by Greg McKeown

• Daily Rituals: How Artists Work, by Mason Currey

• The War of Art, Steven Pressfield

• Bumpers, by Nic Peterson

Science / Technology

• Danielle, by Ray Kurzweil

• The Inevitable, by Kevin Kelly

• Abundance, by Peter Diamandis

• Bold, by Peter Diamandis

• SuperIntelligence, by Nick Bostrom

• The Selfish Gene, by Richard Dawkins

• Genome, by Matt Ridley

• Six Easy Pieces, by Richard Feynman

• The Singularity is Near, by Ray Kurzweil

Business

• Measure What Matters, by John Doerr

• Zero to One, by Peter Thiel

• Who Not How, by Dan Sullivan

• Traction, by Gino Wickman

• Poor Charlie’s Almanack, by Charlie Munger

• Seeking Wisdom, by Peter Bevelin

• The Lean Startup, by Eric Ries

• Principles, by Ray Dalio

• Fooled by Randomness, by Nassim Taleb

• The Black Swan, by Nassim Taleb

• Blue Ocean Strategy, by Chan Kim

• The Slight Edge, by Jeff Olson

Sales/Influence

• Influence, by Robert Cialdini

• Fanatical Prospecting, by Jeb Blount

• Spin Selling, by Neil Rackham

• Never Split the Difference, by Chris Voss

• To Sell is Human, by Daniel Pink

• Flip the Script, by Oren Klaff

Investing

• The Intelligent Investor, by Benjamin Graham

• Money: Master the Game, by Tony Robbins

• Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits, Philip Fisher

• Berkshire Hathaway Letters to Shareholders, by Warren Buffett

Biography / Autobiography

• Benjamin Franklin, by Walter Isaacson

• Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination, by Neal Gabler

• Open, by Andre Agassi

• The Diary of a Young Girl, by Anne Frank

• Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard Feynman

• Einstein: His Life and Universe, by Walter Isaacson

• Long Walk To Freedom, by Nelson Mandela

• Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson

• Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse

• Iacocca, An Autobiography, by Lee Iacocca

• A. Lincoln, by Ronald White

• Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, by Ron Chernow

Writing

• Bird By Bird, by Ann Lamont

• On Writing, by Stephen King

• The Elements of Style, by William Strunk

• On Writing Well, by William Zinsser

• The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron

Fiction

• Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card

• Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline

• The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand

• The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho

• 1984, by George Orwell

• Shantaram, by Gregory David Roberts

• Bonfire of the Vanities, by Tom Wolfe

• Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson

• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams

Spiritual

• Man’s Search For Meaning, by Viktor Frankl

• The Top 5 Regrets of the Dying, by Bronnie Ware

• Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius

• Awareness, by Anthony DeMello

• A New Earth, by Eckhart Tolle

Extra Credit

• Guns, Germs, and Steel, by Jared Diamond

• Factfulness, by Hans Rosling

• The Hero With A Thousand Faces, by Joseph Campbell

• Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, by Yuval Noah Harari

• Homo Deus, by Yuval Noah Harari

• Collapse, by Jared Diamond

• The Beginning of Infinity, by David Deutsch

• Deep Simplicity, by John Gribbin

• Thinking Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman

• Flow, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

• The Future is Faster than you Think, by Peter Diamandis

• Stealing Fire, by Steven Kotler

Articles / Papers / Essays

• The Case for a Small Allocation to Bitcoin, by Wences Cesares

• Why Software is Eating the World, by Marc Andreessen

• 1,000 True Fans, by Kevin Kelly

• Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System, by Satoshi Nakamoto

• The Changing World Order, by Ray Dalio

• The Great Online Game, by Packy McCormick

• The Great Monetary Inflation, by Paul Tudor Jones

• How To Get Rich, by Naval Ravikant

• Do Things that Don’t Scale, by Paul Graham

• Spiky Point of View: Let’s Get a Little Controversial, by Wes Kao

• Bitcoin Obsoletes All Other Money, by Parker Lewis

• Positioning: The Difference Between Painkillers and Vitamins, by Sean D’Souza

• Amazon’s original 1997 letter to shareholders, by Jeff Bezos

• Day One Manifesto, by Jeff Bezos