Read these 12 books every year to maximize your Return on Life

I remember years ago getting hit with one of those ads on Facebook from one of the skeezy internet marketer types saying that the average CEO reads 52 books a year and at that point I was living in the back of the van and just looking for a way to turn my life around so when I heard this I thought well hell CEOs probably have their figured out so I should probably just take a page out of their book and start reading more and I did but I went a little overboard because for the next three

years I read over 100 books every single year and I Justified this insane amount of reading by thinking well the average CEO reads 52 books per year then I'm going to be twice as good if I read 100 but that's not how it works not by a long shot because I've come to realize something after having met literally hundreds of successful entrepreneurs over the years reading more doesn't make you better reading better makes you better wow all right so let's break it down by learning how to actually read better and I break this into four

different steps read reflect integrate repeat all right so step one is to read now a lesson it took me far too long to learn is that it's better to read and understand deeply the 10 best books written on a topic than it is to skin the top 100 which is why it's so important to then make time for step two reflect on what you're reading and the best way I've found to do this is through writing see we read to collect dots and then we write to connect them as Leo Tolstoy said read less think

more our third step in Reading better is to actually put what you've read into action this is the integration step and it maybe is the most important step because without this reading is simply mental masturbation it makes you feel productive but if you don't Implement what you've learned then you've simply wasted your time being busy and not effective the fourth and final step in Reading better is one that I struggled with for a really long time that is repeating the whole process magic occurs when you go back to the beginning and re-read that book reflect

on it even deeper integrate again and then repeat these days I read a lot but I actually read very few books because I just keep going back and rereading the absolute best ones that have had the biggest impact on my life and in doing so I've experienced far more personal growth and business growth than I ever did when I was reading hundreds of books at a time but what exactly are those books worth reading over and over and over again well for all you hyper focused entrepreneurs out there I'm going to save you a lot

of time and energy and just give you the 12 books that I think are worth rereading every single year so let's dive in the first book on this list is not only one of the greatest books ever written but it's also one of a kind in that it's the personal Journal of a guy who thousands of years ago was the most powerful man in the world and the beauty of this book is that this man a Roman Emperor wasn't writing for an audience he never intended for this book to be published in fact you'd probably

be mortified to learn that it was these were simply the internal thoughts of a man wrestling with the question what's it mean to be a good person to live a life of value this was a man who had the world at his fingertips but who understood the only battles actually worth fighting and winning were the ones being waged inside with his temper his ego his pride his place in the universe and perhaps most remarkable of all is just the simple and eloquent way in which this book is written for instance he says this our life

is what our thoughts make it so simple so accessible and so easy to understand which is why meditations by Marcus Aurelius is perhaps one of my favorite books of all time and the one that inspires new wisdom and insight every single time I read it now the second book on this list was written about 2 000 years more recently than the first but it's equally filled with Incredible wisdom that you can instantly start applying to improve your life in business the book is called the almanac of Naval ravacon and it's simply a collection of blogs

tweets and podcast interviews featuring that modern day entrepreneurial philosopher Naval ravacon now if you're not familiar with Naval he's a prolific angel investor in one of the most highly regarded entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley over the past two decades and what makes them so interesting is just his ability to distill complex topics into simple sound bites that you can easily carry with you and apply in all sorts of situations one of my favorites is this play long-term games with long-term people his most famous piece of writing is a tweet storm called how to get rich without

getting lucky and it is in my opinion the absolute best step-by-step guide to building wealth and happiness so go check it out all right so our third book was written by one of my favorite authors which is why he has two books on this list now the reason he's one of my favorite is because he has this incredible ability to take things that we all look at every single day and to turn them on their head to present them in a way that you've maybe never thought about before each of his books creates a paradigm

shift a fundamental change in how you view the world in relation to topics like risk or probability accountability economics or investing but of all those the one that's had the most profound effect on my life happens to be the name of the third book on our list it's called anti-fragile by Nicholas Naseem taleb now the central premise of This Book Is that a fragile system is one that breaks or fails when faced with adversity like when you drop a light bulb on the floor and it meets resistance it shatters a robust system is one step

up from a fragile system that is it has a higher resistance or tolerance to stress so instead of dropping a light bulb on the floor if we drop a rock it's probably not going to hurt at all that much that's not to say that the rock can't be hurt but it's going to require way more adversity and the next level up from that is a resilient system or one that can recover or adapt from failure the example that taleb gives in the book is out of the Phoenix which dies in a fiery Blaze only to

be reborn shortly thereafter From the Ashes now what's important to know about the resilient system is that it bounces back to where it was before the stress not better not worse and this is where we arrive at the anti-fragile system which is one that capitalizes on adversity and chaos to actually come back stronger than before the adversity and sticking with mythology this is the story of the Hydra where for every hedge you chop off another two take its place it actually gets stronger when you hurt it a practical real-life example of an anti-fragile system are

your bones and muscles which only ever get stronger after they've been stressed and damaged an appropriate amount now obviously you can only stress these systems so much but before they ultimately give out your bones break or your muscles tear but the core concept here is still so damn valuable because these types of anti-fragile systems are exactly what we want to design into our lives into our businesses so that we can ultimately Thrive amidst inevitable chaos this book is the best book I've come across to help you do just that all right now the fourth book

on our list has not only made me more money than any other book I've ever read but it's also given me a framework to understand why humans do what humans do which is important because I believe every single one of us has a core desire to be seen to be heard to be valued to connect meaningfully I mean there are very few feelings in the world worse than being in a room full of people you love and respect and yet feeling absolutely invisible feeling like nobody values your ideas or that your words are falling on

deaf ears this book influenced by Robert cialdini gives you the tools necessary for communicating your message to the world both persuasively and with impact in particular it teaches the six weapons of an influence which are reciprocity commitment social proof liking Authority and scarcity truly if you don't understand those six Concepts you will always be at the mercy of the person who does so pick up this book and arm yourself next up is the fifth book on our list and this is maybe the best one I've ever come across for understanding how we make decisions now

that might not seem like a big deal but as Naval says in an age of infinite leverage judgment becomes the most important skill so anything that we can do to help improve the quality of our judgment and therefore our decisions is always worth the time and energy this book is called Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman in it he explains two types of systems that govern our thinking system one is our intuition it's fast automatic emotional stereotypical and most importantly unconscious it's not something we can control In the Heat of the Moment now thankfully

system one thoughts are generally pretty accurate or at least accurate enough to get us through ninety percent of life for that other 10 that's where system two thinking comes in and it's much slower much more effort people and way more deliberate it requires intention and the key to thriving in the modern world is to recognize those moments in life when we need to override our system one intuition and instead turn to the more deliberate system too to help with this Kahneman shares a number of heuristics and cognitive biases that we all unknowingly default to things

like the anchoring effect which show that we can be easily influenced by completely irrelevant numbers or the loss aversion bias which describes why the pain of losing is psychologically twice as powerful as the pleasure of gaining what I find so fascinating about this book is it's like reading the human brain's operating manual which it gives you an incredible advantage in the world of business not to mention just life in general alright moving on our sixth book is about a brutally basic concept that I found to be the main difference between average performers and Elite performers

the reason I reread this book every single year is because its Core lesson is one that I personally struggle with I find it valuable therefore to annually revisit this book and put this concept back at the Forefront of my mind the book is called the one thing by Gary Keller and it can be summarized with these words what is the one thing I can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary until my one thing is done everything else is a distraction now in my personal pursuit of greatness I've come

to realize that the thing holding me back from achieving all my goals is not that I don't have enough time it's simply that I don't have enough Focus specifically enough focus on the right things this book provides a framework that's going to help you figure out what that most important thing is that you can move towards it with clarity now personally I like to reread this book at the beginning of each year when I'm sitting down to set my annual goals because it helps me get into the right mindset for planning what I'm going to

focus on bonus points because it's a super quick and easy read just like our seventh book on this list which comes from the mind of one of History's Greatest investors that most people have never heard of I'm talking about the founder of oak tree Capital Howard marks and his book is called the most important thing one of the things I love about Howard marks is that he's been posting his annual investor memos every year for the past 30 plus years absolutely for free you get to step into the mind of this incredible investor in real

time to see how he navigated the 2000.com boom or the great financial crisis of 2007 which is important because as Howard himself says good times teach only bad lessons that investing is easy now these memos are a master class of investing wisdom in his book The most important thing is simply a collection of some of those most impactful ones this is hands down the best book I've ever read about the psychology and principles of investing most importantly it's written in simple plain language that most of us non-experts can easily understand alright so this is a

good time to revisit our boy Nicholas Nassim taleb who is such a fantastic writer and thinker that he features on this list twice and if I had to sum up this eighth book in a single sentence it would be this nobody accepts Randomness in his own success only as failure or put it another way we blame luck when we lose and skill when we win I actually did a video on this recently where I broke down the four different types of luck and how to Get Lucky by design that video is called the only reason

Alex hermosi is successful I'm going to drop a link in the description below go check it out after you finish this one and while you're down there don't forget to subscribe all right back to this mythical book by taleb which is called Fooled by Randomness the simple premise of This Book Is that everything in life happens along a curve of probability some things are just more likely to occur than others which isn't to say that just because something is unlikely to happen it therefore won't happen the important thing for our purposes is just to understand

that most of life is determined by the consequences of those very few outlier events that were never supposed to happen but did think of things like covid or the great financial crisis or 911. the problem is we humans are absolutely horrible at calculating probabilities in real time which simply means that we tend to skew the likelihood or unlikelihood of a particular event occurring now the reason I find this book so valuable is that it helps us see through that Matrix of probability so we can position ourselves to benefit in life regardless of what does or

does not happen truly Fooled by Randomness is a mind-bending book that's going to give you a new lens through which to look at the world but the ninth book on our list is going to give you dozens of new lenses which is invaluable because as Charlie Munger always says to the man with a hammer every problem looks like a nail so our goal should be to equip ourselves with as many tools as possible so we can be prepared to solve any and every problem that might come our way to do this we want to cultivate

what manga refers to as a latticework of mental models and this is going to empower us to see every problem through a variety of lenses and possible options now the book that's going to give us those tools is called the Great mental models by Farnam Street it actually comes in two different volumes this gives you a ready-made toolbox of mental models you can immediately start applying to your own life and that's the ultimate goal because as this book points out understanding only becomes useful when we adjust our behavior in actions accordingly which is why I

encourage you to get down to the comments once this video is over and share with us your top three takeaways and how you plan to implement those into your life moving forward this is called an implementation intention which Studies have shown again and again increases the likelihood of achieving a goal but without a doubt the single thing that will ultimately determine whether you are successful in achieving a goal or just failing miserably is what you do in this present moment and that brings us to the topic of our 10th book The Power of Now by

Eckhart tollway now this is hands down the most Fufu book on our list and for many many years I resisted reading it despite dozens of recommendations from friends that was a mistake I wish I had read this sooner truly in many ways this book reshaped my perception of reality in particular it Formed my opinion that time is not in fact your most valuable asset your focus is and the reason I came to that conclusion is because as this book points out time is mere really an illusion as totally said nothing has happened in the past

it happened in the now nothing will ever happen in the future it will happen in the now this might seem like a game of semantics but I assure you it's not there's a deep and profound shift that occurs when you realize this singular moment right this instant is all you have and life changes in unimaginable ways when you make the now the primary focus of your life which is it's very easy to say and yet very hard to do so good luck I recommend you pick up this book it's going to help you on that

Journey now this leads us to the 11th book on our list in one of my all-time favorites for all you creators artists and entrepreneurs out there it's called show your work by Austin Cleon this is the shortest book on our list in fact it'd probably take you less than 30 minutes to read but it packs a powerful punch for all of you people out there who have have some kind of message you want to share with the world but for whatever reason you're falling prey to that internal resistance which convinces you that nobody cares what

you have to say and that nobody's going to pay attention but here's the thing right now if if you are not sharing your thoughts your ideas your writings your art or your business with the world and guess what nobody's paying attention anyway so here's how I think about it nobody's remembered for the things they didn't do so you literally have nothing to lose and everything to gain by sharing your work with the world but I do understand this is all easier said than done which is why most people don't do it this book will help

you get out of your way so your work finally has the opportunity to change the world now speaking of changing the world the 12th and final book on our list makes the argument that changing the world begins simply by changing your perspective to find meaning and purpose in your life regardless of circumstance now this is a grand claim that's easily dismissed as hyperbole if not for the fact that Victor Frankel wrote this book Man's Search for meaning after having survived the horrors of the Nazi concentration camp of World War II the core thesis of This

Book Is that the ultimate test for each one of us is to find meaning in our lives and as Frankel says between stimulus and response there is a space and in that space our power to choose our response and in our response lies our growth and our freedom in a very real way our suffering ceases to be suffering the moment it finds a meaning such as the meaning of a sacrifice and I find this book so incredible because I I can't really put myself in Victor's shoes to truly appreciate what he endured it just it

defies comprehension but it puts into perspective that our problems in life are only ever as big or as small as we allow them to be and that at the end of the day it's our responsibility to drive meaning from our lives which is the lesson I don't think any of us can be reminded of too often and because I believe as Samuel Johnson said that we need to be reminded more often than we need to be instructed I do hope that you take this list of 12 books and you revisit them every single year to

uncover the many beautiful lessons each one has to share thank you [Music] [Music] foreign