Reading
This Warren Buffett guy is onto something…
It has taken me a while to realize it, but the single most important thing I do each day isn’t taking meetings, sending emails, or even writing — it’s reading. Whether it’s news, tweets, books, or any other form of written word, reading remains the most efficient way of consuming and capturing information. And information is the most valuable asset in the world.
But setting aside time to read takes discipline. It’s too easy to get sucked into email or meetings or basically anything on the internet (which, to be fair, often involves reading as well). Here’s how I try to break out my reading time:
- Morning: Read any pertinent news of the day (or from the day before, since I’m now 5–8 hours ahead of the U.S.).
- Afternoon: Read a few longer “thought” pieces about a topic I’m interested in that is relevent to work.
- Evening: Catch up on the news I missed during the working hours.
- Night: Read a book.
What’s interesting to me is that I tend to associate each of these types of reading with a different device. Morning and evenings at home, I tend to read on my iPad Air (I recently got the new variety, thoughts on that coming soon). In the afternoon, I read on my iPhone. And at night, I read on my Kindle (I recently got the new Kindle Voyage, thoughts on that also coming soon).
The book I’m currently reading is The Snowball by Alice Schroeder. It’s about the life of Warren Buffett and his approach to business. That’s appropriate since it’s Buffett who is perhaps the most outspoken proponent of the same type of reading I’m talking about.
In fact, if anything, Buffet is perhaps a bit too extreme. By his own estimation, 80 percent of his working day is spent reading. But it’s hard to argue with the results.
“I just sit in my office and read all day.”
I’ve been thinking about reading a lot recently in the context of writing. As I try to force myself to write more, I recognize that the easiest way to do that is to simply read more. For me, one has always acted as fuel for the other.
Sadly, I’m a little too busy right now to spend 80 percent of my working day reading. But it’s a goal worth aspiring to. At the end of the day, what matters are results. If you can get those results utilizing only 20 percent of the time many others do with meetings, emails and whatnot, that’s a massive, massive win in my book.
