29 Oct I read 45 books this year

Reading was never a hobby of mine.

I remember reading textbooks and thinking about how it bored the life out of me. It was a stultifying process. But hey, I needed that B.A. degree so I sucked it up like other millions of Americans who graduate from college every year. I’m not knocking on education. It was probably one of the most transformative periods in my life.

What I’m getting at is that reading when done well can be fun and educational. I only wished I could have learned that earlier in my adulthood or perhaps even childhood.

It’s better late than never, so here’s to how I read 45 books this year.

When I was in college, I used to take 4 classes every quarter and that was 12 classes per year. Each class always required 1 textbook so that’s at least 12 textbooks a year. Some classes required more (Eng Lit required at times 3~5 books per class). The crazy thing is that I’ve read more books this year than my 4 years of college combined. What changed was my attitude towards reading. I no longer think of it as a chore.

Of course, people like Bill Gates read over 50 books a year consistently for many years and I hope I don’t come off as bragging. What I do want to point out is that it took me 3 years to get to 45 books a year. It took 3 years to build a habit of reading books. It took 3 years to learn reading is fun. And I’ve learned so much in the last 3 years both in business and self-growth.

There are too many books out there for me to read them all. If I were to read 45 books a year for the rest of my life, the total number of books add up to 2250 books (45*50, assuming I live until 80). The trick to reading more was to read what you love until you love to read. I made the decision to read more in 2018. In 2018, I read a total of 26 books. I keep track of all the books I read in a Google Sheet. In 2019, I read 39 books. And my goal for 2020 was to read 40 books.

I’m writing this blog post in October so I have two more months to read before the year’s end. I think I’ll end 2020 with around 50 books.

Why Am I telling you this?

Everything takes time. Building a business. Learning something new. Reading. The only currency that you and I have is time. What I think most people get wrong in our modern society is that they buy money with their time – slowly killing themselves in the process. What I want you to know is that money is just a concept – an abstraction. The only real thing in life is our time.

Imagine this for a second…

If you had 10 million dollars in your bank account right now, would you still slave away and work 40 to 50 hours a week? I doubt it. The point of having money is to buy back your time.

Why do people go on vacation? Is it to get away from their job? That was how I looked at ‘vacationing.’ So, when you do have the financial freedom, what are you going to do with your time? I use my money to pay for more time to myself. When you make a decision whether in business or life next time, think about the trade-offs. Are you trading time or money? What do you value more?

I hope 2021 will be the year of change for you. I hope you can build a profitable business (doesn’t matter if it’s an Airbnb business or something else). I’m going to end it with this: just remember, everything takes time and time is all that you got.