11 ms·

The Reading Obsession

114 points by _ttg 5y ago

pcmaffey 5y ago
It's almost like Buffet was able to master remote work before it became a thing.
- DiggyJohnson 5y ago
  How we spend our time is a very important thing; we ought to spend it thoughtfully and towards what we really want. Time and money … mannn … money and time and what we really want.
- claudiulodro 5y ago
  How so? The article says he was hopping on private jets all over the country most of the time. That seems like the opposite of mastering remote work.
- paulpauper 5y ago
  most deals are done over the phone anyway
ketzo 5y ago
Something that is not explicitly mentioned in this piece, but that I think is probably a large contributor to why Mr. Buffet found success with this path: It is very difficult to be wrong while you're reading. It's much easier for someone who's actually talking to you to show you that an opinion you hold is incorrect. And you can't improve at anything without learning when you're wrong.
- marcellus23 5y ago
  This doesn't make sense to me. You can learn that you're wrong from a book. All it takes is reading a book that holds the opposite opinion you do — much like talking to someone who holds the opposite opinion.
jimbokun 5y ago
Good reminder to balance reading and learning, developing relationships with peers, and taking actions. If you spend the next 50 years just reading, you will realize you missed the opportunity to make an impact on the world, whatever your goals are. If you just act randomly, you probably won't get anywhere either. And if you only read and act alone, you probably are limiting both your opportunities to learn and your opportunities to leverage your efforts by working with others.
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madiator 5y ago
Reading is important, and I have heard this advice many times, yet I never took it to say reading is the only thing that matters. The advice on reading 500 pages a day will not work for most people, indeed! Here is a good succinct and practical advice from Naval: "Reading science, math, and philosophy one hour per day will likely put you at the upper echelon of human success within seven years" (https://mobile.twitter.com/naval/status/871415571551629312?lang=en https://mobile.twitter.com/naval/status/871415571551629312?l...) Just one hour! Doing that consistently can be hard but very beneficial.
- baal80spam 5y ago
  > Just one hour! Doing that consistently can be hard but very beneficial. It might seem as not much, but today - when everyone and everything screams for your attention - devoting one hour for a particular activity and doing it consistently over a long period of time (7 years seems ridiculous) can be a very difficult task indeed.
- Jill_the_Pill 5y ago
  After seven years reading philosophy, your definition of "human success" will likely have changed substantially.
djkivi 5y ago
“Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.” - Albert Einstein https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/38019-reading-after-a-certain-age-diverts-the-mind-too-much https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/38019-reading-after-a-certa...
j7ake 5y ago
Maybe one analogy to professional sports would be something like "Watching film". As a professional athlete, you need to be constant watching film so you know how other players are playing and what they're doing. However, at some point you also need to be on the court practicing and playing games so you can use that knowledge for something productive. Being too obsessed with reading would be like a pro athlete who only watches film and never plays the game. At some point, you have to be playing the game. Otherwise, you're no different than just an obsessive sports fan.
kubb 5y ago
People keep telling me: kubb, go to work; kubb look at this bug; kubb, contribute this new feature; kubb work out; kubb clean your apartment. But I just want to read (and play video games and socialize).
luigi23 5y ago
"Don’t get me wrong: I love to read. But what ticks me off is when a specific behavior gets taken out of context and fetishized." Ha, my hot take - book lovers love to have an item/collectible rather than the content. It's mostly signaling and, for some people, reading is quite fun (a nice bonus!). No wonder - the numbers of active readers are very low, but all those self-help gurus and experts praising books are doing a disservice to the point of reading books - enjoying them, highlighting, making it your own. Later a problem arises - some of my friends complained that they don't remember a lot from read books. Of course, since reading is A RiTuAl! It's amusing when I say that 'I hate books'. But usually I read more (books) than my peers, I just don't like the form factor of the book. It's heavy, making notes is clunky compared to Kindle or any other ereader. I don't care about all that fluff and 'smell of paper'. Reminds me of this funny twitter drama when one author was cutting big books into smaller pieces: https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvgmxd/cutting-books-in-half-tweet https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvgmxd/cutting-books-in-half...
- tomtheelder 5y ago
  > book lovers love to have an item/collectible rather than the content I think it's that they (I guess I'd say we) love to have the item _in addition_ to the content. I read books because I like to read. I will happily acknowledge that I buy physical books for mostly nostalgic reasons, and for the added benefit that I can give/lend them to people easily. Physical books were such a massive part of my childhood that the experience of reading one conjures up decades of positive memories and emotions. That said I don't think it's a signaling thing, really. At least not for most folks. I mean I don't think there are very many people out there accumulating books in the hopes that people who come to their house will see them and think something about them.
  - bena 5y ago
    I have the hopeful notion that one day I can re-read a book. But there are few books I've actually read twice or more.
  - jrussino 5y ago
    I bought a kindle years ago and love the convenience and compactness of having all of my reading material on that little device. Now I have two young children, and I've gradually started to build up a collection of physical books at home - not just children's books, but books for myself as well. I realized at some point that: * I want them to know (I would even say "take for granted") that we value reading * I want them to have easy access to lots of good books at or slightly above their current reading/maturity level * I want them to see the sort of things their parents are interested in (they rarely see me reading for pleasure, even though it's one of my favorite things to do, because I mostly do that when they're asleep). There is definitely an intentional signalling component to this, but it's not about signalling to the outside world for status, it's about signalling to our kids/each other about the kinds of things that we value. In addition: > Physical books were such a massive part of my childhood that the experience of reading one conjures up decades of positive memories and emotions My hope is that we can create an environment for them that is conducive to exactly this sort of experience. As for the third point: when I was a kid I stumbled upon a collection of books at my grandmother's house, mostly sci-fi (Dune, Asimov, some Vonnegut), that my Dad had read when he was young. It introduced me to a whole world of literature that would become very important to me, and also gave me a glimpse into a side of his personality that I wasn't aware of.
AlbertCory 5y ago
"Obsession"? The author is perhaps noticing that some people take this literally: “I just sit in my office and read all day.” - Warren Buffett Are people really taking this literally? Maybe they are, now that you at least get the impression can sit in your office and surf the web all day. You know that a lot of "journalists" actually do that, and that's why they're so shallow and prone to groupthink. A real journalist, and a real investor, goes out and talks to people, and finds the information that hasn't made its way onto paper or the web yet.
- tomtheelder 5y ago
  This is a truly bizarre article. It builds up a complete strawman of like "some people believe/advocate that you should do basically nothing except read," and then tries to knock it down by showing that Warren Buffet... traveled a good amount? And had friends?
  - AlbertCory 5y ago
    That ("strawman") was my first reaction. Then on thinking about it some more, I realized that maybe a lot of folks ("journalists" as I put it) actually DO think you can just read, especially with the pandemic and the internet. Isn't everything on the web nowadays? No it's not. So maybe this is a worthwhile article after all.
    - handrous 5y ago
      > Isn't everything on the web nowadays? > No it's not. So maybe this is a worthwhile article after all. Shit, not even all written material is on the web. Nowhere close! Records and books alike. It's typical to hit a wall when researching on the web, beyond which one cannot progress without actual, paper books, or a visit to some particular physical institution or library, often only one step past Wikipedia's reference list for a topic, to give a sense of how shallow the Web's coverage of many topics is. Sometimes, even those first-tier references are only available on paper, without so much as an e-book available.
  - npsimons 5y ago
gumby 5y ago
I think a “functional” view of reading is self-limiting — a sort of cargo cult. It’s a shame to spend a lot of time just grinding. I read about five hours a day (about a third of my waking hours) but have no illusion that it is of any specific value. It’s just a compulsion I’ve had all my life. I don’t consider it any different from others playing video games — not a virtue and perhaps tending towards vice.
tmountain 5y ago
I've regularly read that the average CEO reads 60 books a year. While I have worked with one CEO that read a lot, most seem far too busy working on business problems to have that kind of free time. Granted, I've been working in smaller (250 people or fewer) companies most of my career, but it seems very difficult to fit in a book per week when you get home at 7:30 or 8:00 and you're playing catch up on the weekends.
- soco 5y ago
  There are also many definitions on what a "book" is. Is a business book a book? Is a self-improvement book a book? Or are there only fiction books? How about e-books? Is there a size limit under which a text is not a "book" anymore? Depending on such points everybody might be already reading 60 books a year without even realizing it.
DantesKite 5y ago
I really enjoyed this perspective on Charlie Munger. It was refreshing and new.
jl6 5y ago
In school, we are drilled into thinking reading is an unqualified good thing. Reading programmes exist to boost the amount of reading children do. Parents chastise their kids for watching TV instead of reading a book. Against this background, we forget that reading is ultimately a form of consumption. It doesn’t inherently make the world a better place. It doesn’t, by itself, produce anything. It matters a lot what you read. Reading can be a gateway to learning and fulfilment, but it can also be an addictive time-sink that leads nowhere. It’s a particular trap for those with an intellectual or introverted bent. I fear that the good intentions of teachers trying to get kids to read more at all costs risks only doing half the job, and leaving a population without the media literacy to choose wisely which books to consume, or without the restraint to know when it’s time to stop reading and start acting.
- jlmcguire 5y ago
  I think you have it right. I study for a lot of certification exams (They are very popular in networking and security), I've found that a lot of content around learning has moved to videos rather than "exam guides" produced by the vendor/company offering the video. It could be styles of learning thing but I much prefer the written content. It strikes me that one advantage of the written word is that the information density is so much higher than in other mediums. I generally watch the videos at 2x speed and still feel like I'm not learning as much when I read for an equivalent time. However your point about "what" you read is well taken. Just as in watching youtube or movies you can read trash just as you can watch trash.
  - Apocryphon 5y ago
    In the digital age, there's so much text being produced that it's possible to both read and write massive amounts of trash.
  - AlanYx 5y ago
    >It strikes me that one advantage of the written word is that the information density is so much higher than in other mediums. This is true, but it also goes beyond density. Long-form written works tend to have more room for breadth, depth and nuance. I find that's where much of the value sometimes comes from, e.g., I didn't get anything much out of the main text of the last non-fiction book I read, but three of the footnotes introduced me to other sources that did turn out to be useful for my work.
madiator 5y ago
It takes me three minutes to read one page. 500 pages per day will take only 25 hours a day. :)
- madiator 5y ago
  Apologies for posting a comment that doesn't add to the discussion. I was trying to show the absurdity of the quote in the article that someone recommended reading 500 pages a day.
  - groby_b 5y ago
    fwiw, I think it does add to the discussion - especially once removed from the realm of pure quip. Reading 500 pages is a large undertaking. Proficient readers manage ~0.8 pages/minute. That is ~6.5 hours just reading, without any time taken to organize the knowledge. And reading at that speed is extremely hard mental effort, you're pretty much exhausted at the end of it. Sure, they could be an extremely fast reader and get it done in 5 hours. Still, without deeper comprehension, or organization. It very much matters to point out that the recommendation is fundamentally self-aggrandizement more than truth.
Zababa 5y ago
I have an article called "Consume less, produce more" (https://www.chrismytton.com/2020/09/24/consume-less-produce-more/ https://www.chrismytton.com/2020/09/24/consume-less-produce-...) in my bookmarks toolbar that's always visible as a reminder of that.
- Anthony-G 5y ago
  Thanks. That’s great advice and I’ve also added it to my Bookmarks Toolbar as a reminder. I also bookmarked the Stoic advice in Book notes: A Guide to the Good Life¹. Over the past few years, I’ve been practising similar techniques but I still need to be more disciplined. I was about to subscribe to Chris’ Atom feed – only to realise that would just add to the excessive consumption anxiety. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ¹ https://www.chrismytton.com/a-guide-to-the-good-life/ https://www.chrismytton.com/a-guide-to-the-good-life/)
npsimons 5y ago
> [Graham] didn’t go to lunch that day—he just sat there and talked to me [Buffet] for four hours like I was the most important person in the world. When he opened that door to me, he opened the door to the insurance world.” The Snowball That's great! Guess what the vast majority of people don't have access to? Really great mentors. Unless, and hear me out here, those mentors wrote down their wisdom, say some great work of philosophy[0] or even a groundbreaking technical work[1]. Even better, you can access these founts of knowledge after their authors have passed on! [0] - https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2680 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2680 [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principia_Mathematica https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principia_Mathematica
- ksdale 5y ago
  I think this is quite clever and it made me chuckle! I think it's plausible that access to a mediocre mentor could actually have better results, though, than reading books by the best mentors. Naturally there is room for both, but I have learned a ton from practitioners (for lack of a better work) who are decidedly average compared to Warren Buffett's mentors (or Isaac Newton).
  - npsimons 5y ago
    > Naturally there is room for both, but I have learned a ton from practitioners (for lack of a better work) who are decidedly average compared to Warren Buffett's mentors (or Isaac Newton). That's fair, and it might even lead to the truism that access to a mediocre mentor could actually have better results than reading books by the best mentors. But we must also take into account that different people learn best differently. Me, I've never really gotten much out of the mentor/mentee model, possibly because I've never had a good mentor. But I feel it goes farther than that - even good lectures have problems holding my attention, and for reasons said elsewhere in the comments, I've found well-developed written sources to be immeasurably beneficial to my learning. One thing that strikes me is I wonder if there's any correlation to those who can work well remotely and those who learn better from books. This whole "in-person is always better" smacks of the chauvinism the corporate world suffers from in regards to work sites. That said, yeah, you have to apply and practice eventually. And having someone to imitate or model after, or better yet impart constructive criticism, is invaluable. But there's a whole heck of a lot that can be imparted from reading a book.
nicodjimenez 5y ago
Reading is excellent cognitive training. Especially reading fiction. It makes you step outside your ordinary reality and truly live in someone else's shoes. You get cognitive benefit as well as spiritual benefit from reading great fiction. Non fiction is also OK but generally less appropriate for reading cover to cover. Non fiction is great for just getting what you need and getting out. The way you learn physics, for example, is not by reading physics books, it's by solving problems. By experiencing the real thing. Reading fiction has self contained benefit. Reading non fiction is only useful to the extent to which you can apply this information in your daily life.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  > It makes you step outside your ordinary reality and truly live in someone else's shoes. One of the biggest emotional hits to me was "Der Untergang", or "Downfall" in English (aka: Angry Hitler Meme movie). Spending 1-week in Hitler's shoes, with an incredible amount of detail / historical accuracy, brought me a huge amount of appreciation for what was going on during WW2, in a way that few other stories (be it reading, anime, movies, TV-series) have ever affected me before. Non-fiction, when done well, can give you a hugely different perspective on life. * Technically, you spend ~1 week in Traudl Junge's shoes, who serves as Hitler's personal secretary. But she was in the room when all major events happened: from Hitler's Birthday (aka: when the Russians started shelling Berlin), to the final defense plans, to the Goring Telegram, to helping Hitler write his final will / testament. To the planning of Hitler's suicide (which wasn't easy in the circumstances). To helping write the last will/testament to Goebbel + those events. To the escape from the bunker while surrounded by Russian troops. ----------- Since this story is "real", it just hits differently. Even though Hitler + Goebbel were probably the most evil people on Earth at that time... the perspective of "Downfall" was incredibly human. There's a story to be told here about the expectations of leadership, the stress of losing, the worries about your worldview going extinct, etc. etc. > Reading non fiction is only useful to the extent to which you can apply this information in your daily life. I hope I'll never be trapped in a bunker contemplating angry Soviet capture/torture vs Suicide. But the story that contemplates the two choices really gives you an understanding of the final WW2 events much better.
paulpauper 5y ago
reading is good, but doing is even better, or a combination of both.. "“I just sit in my office and read all day.” - Warren Buffett" I think they get the causality wrong. It's not like he became so rich by reading, same for bill gates. He had to actually do the thing that which made him rich. Once you get billions then I guess you can spend all day reading.
spicyramen 5y ago
In foreign languages such as Spanish, ortography is very important: reading helps you get better at it. This is true normally pre-college years.
- groby_b 5y ago
  While English speakers on the internet don't seem to believe it, the same holds for English. Choosing your words precisely matters. I am less certain that pure reading is the best way to get better at it. In general, using skills matters. If you just know the theory, you're already at a disadvantage. If you only know the basic ideas via indirect observation, it's worse. All of these things - practice, theory, observation in the wild - reinforce each other.
mfrankel 5y ago
Why lectures don't work. "Lectures don’t work because the medium lacks a functioning cognitive model. It’s (implicitly) built on a faulty idea about how people learn—transmissionism—which we can caricaturize as “lecturer says words describing an idea; students hear words; then they understand.” When lectures do work, it’s generally as part of a broader learning context (e.g. projects, problem sets) with a better cognitive model. But the lectures aren’t pulling their weight. If we really wanted to adopt the better model, we’d ditch the lectures, and indeed, that’s what’s been happening in US K–12 education." Why books don't work "In this section we’ve seen that, like lectures, non-fiction books don’t work because they lack a functioning cognitive model. Instead, like lectures, they’re (accidentally, invisibly) built on a faulty idea about how people learn: transmissionism. When books do work, it’s generally for readers who deploy skillful metacognition to engage effectively with the book’s ideas. This kind of metacognition is unavailable to many readers and taxing for the rest. Books aren’t pulling their weight. Textbooks do more to help, but they still foist most of the metacognition onto the reader, and they ignore many important ideas about how people learn." Worth reading: https://andymatuschak.org/books/ https://andymatuschak.org/books/
syngrog66 5y ago
lectures dont work on me because you're pushing things into my brain whether I care or not, whether I already know or not, whether I'm ready or focused, and don't give me a chance to pause or ask questions, or crosscheck terms or go off on fractal pseudo-tangents to fill in the blanks in my mental map, etc. therefore, for me, reading is soooo much better. though video lectures at least allow you to pause, its still too little signal density with too much noise, usually. Also I am a very visual learner, and I use mental maps & 3D/4D system models inside my mind, and build/run little simulations in there as part of understanding and leveraging that knowledge. reading text & diagram inputs "fit" with that brain style better than traditional classroom lectures pull (on demand, when ready) rather than push
- npsimons 5y ago
  Your comment is down at the bottom because you got here late, but everything you said is true. In order to get any truly deep thinking (or masterful practice of anything for that matter) done, you need to have focus and that almost always means alone without interruptions, at your own pace. Yeah, yeah, you need input to correct mistakes, but that's mostly at the beginning anyway, before one develops the mental model to self-correct. And I learned that by reading Ericsson's "Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise". > Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius. - Edward Gibbon
mensetmanusman 5y ago
This reminds me of an investment banker who told us that they would have had a much better year if they had just sat on their hands and read for 12 months. If you are a dividend (re)investor for 90 years, you too could be rich one day!
devlife 5y ago
I wonder if the 500 page comment Buffett made was ever meant to be taken seriously. Maybe he just said for the sake of motivating students.

114 points by _ttg 5y ago

pcmaffey 5y ago

It's almost like Buffet was able to master remote work before it became a thing.

DiggyJohnson 5y ago
How we spend our time is a very important thing; we ought to spend it thoughtfully and towards what we really want. Time and money … mannn … money and time and what we really want.
claudiulodro 5y ago
How so? The article says he was hopping on private jets all over the country most of the time. That seems like the opposite of mastering remote work.
paulpauper 5y ago
most deals are done over the phone anyway

ketzo 5y ago

Something that is not explicitly mentioned in this piece, but that I think is probably a large contributor to why Mr. Buffet found success with this path: It is very difficult to be wrong while you're reading. It's much easier for someone who's actually talking to you to show you that an opinion you hold is incorrect. And you can't improve at anything without learning when you're wrong.

marcellus23 5y ago
This doesn't make sense to me. You can learn that you're wrong from a book. All it takes is reading a book that holds the opposite opinion you do — much like talking to someone who holds the opposite opinion.

jimbokun 5y ago

Good reminder to balance reading and learning, developing relationships with peers, and taking actions. If you spend the next 50 years just reading, you will realize you missed the opportunity to make an impact on the world, whatever your goals are. If you just act randomly, you probably won't get anywhere either. And if you only read and act alone, you probably are limiting both your opportunities to learn and your opportunities to leverage your efforts by working with others.

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madiator 5y ago

Reading is important, and I have heard this advice many times, yet I never took it to say reading is the only thing that matters. The advice on reading 500 pages a day will not work for most people, indeed! Here is a good succinct and practical advice from Naval: "Reading science, math, and philosophy one hour per day will likely put you at the upper echelon of human success within seven years" (https://mobile.twitter.com/naval/status/871415571551629312?lang=en https://mobile.twitter.com/naval/status/871415571551629312?l...) Just one hour! Doing that consistently can be hard but very beneficial.

baal80spam 5y ago
> Just one hour! Doing that consistently can be hard but very beneficial. It might seem as not much, but today - when everyone and everything screams for your attention - devoting one hour for a particular activity and doing it consistently over a long period of time (7 years seems ridiculous) can be a very difficult task indeed.
Jill_the_Pill 5y ago
After seven years reading philosophy, your definition of "human success" will likely have changed substantially.

djkivi 5y ago

“Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.” - Albert Einstein https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/38019-reading-after-a-certain-age-diverts-the-mind-too-much https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/38019-reading-after-a-certa...

j7ake 5y ago

Maybe one analogy to professional sports would be something like "Watching film". As a professional athlete, you need to be constant watching film so you know how other players are playing and what they're doing. However, at some point you also need to be on the court practicing and playing games so you can use that knowledge for something productive. Being too obsessed with reading would be like a pro athlete who only watches film and never plays the game. At some point, you have to be playing the game. Otherwise, you're no different than just an obsessive sports fan.

kubb 5y ago

People keep telling me: kubb, go to work; kubb look at this bug; kubb, contribute this new feature; kubb work out; kubb clean your apartment. But I just want to read (and play video games and socialize).

luigi23 5y ago

"Don’t get me wrong: I love to read. But what ticks me off is when a specific behavior gets taken out of context and fetishized." Ha, my hot take - book lovers love to have an item/collectible rather than the content. It's mostly signaling and, for some people, reading is quite fun (a nice bonus!). No wonder - the numbers of active readers are very low, but all those self-help gurus and experts praising books are doing a disservice to the point of reading books - enjoying them, highlighting, making it your own. Later a problem arises - some of my friends complained that they don't remember a lot from read books. Of course, since reading is A RiTuAl! It's amusing when I say that 'I hate books'. But usually I read more (books) than my peers, I just don't like the form factor of the book. It's heavy, making notes is clunky compared to Kindle or any other ereader. I don't care about all that fluff and 'smell of paper'. Reminds me of this funny twitter drama when one author was cutting big books into smaller pieces: https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvgmxd/cutting-books-in-half-tweet https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvgmxd/cutting-books-in-half...

tomtheelder 5y ago
> book lovers love to have an item/collectible rather than the content I think it's that they (I guess I'd say we) love to have the item _in addition_ to the content. I read books because I like to read. I will happily acknowledge that I buy physical books for mostly nostalgic reasons, and for the added benefit that I can give/lend them to people easily. Physical books were such a massive part of my childhood that the experience of reading one conjures up decades of positive memories and emotions. That said I don't think it's a signaling thing, really. At least not for most folks. I mean I don't think there are very many people out there accumulating books in the hopes that people who come to their house will see them and think something about them.
- bena 5y ago
  I have the hopeful notion that one day I can re-read a book. But there are few books I've actually read twice or more.
- jrussino 5y ago
  I bought a kindle years ago and love the convenience and compactness of having all of my reading material on that little device. Now I have two young children, and I've gradually started to build up a collection of physical books at home - not just children's books, but books for myself as well. I realized at some point that: * I want them to know (I would even say "take for granted") that we value reading * I want them to have easy access to lots of good books at or slightly above their current reading/maturity level * I want them to see the sort of things their parents are interested in (they rarely see me reading for pleasure, even though it's one of my favorite things to do, because I mostly do that when they're asleep). There is definitely an intentional signalling component to this, but it's not about signalling to the outside world for status, it's about signalling to our kids/each other about the kinds of things that we value. In addition: > Physical books were such a massive part of my childhood that the experience of reading one conjures up decades of positive memories and emotions My hope is that we can create an environment for them that is conducive to exactly this sort of experience. As for the third point: when I was a kid I stumbled upon a collection of books at my grandmother's house, mostly sci-fi (Dune, Asimov, some Vonnegut), that my Dad had read when he was young. It introduced me to a whole world of literature that would become very important to me, and also gave me a glimpse into a side of his personality that I wasn't aware of.

AlbertCory 5y ago

"Obsession"? The author is perhaps noticing that some people take this literally: “I just sit in my office and read all day.” - Warren Buffett Are people really taking this literally? Maybe they are, now that you at least get the impression can sit in your office and surf the web all day. You know that a lot of "journalists" actually do that, and that's why they're so shallow and prone to groupthink. A real journalist, and a real investor, goes out and talks to people, and finds the information that hasn't made its way onto paper or the web yet.

tomtheelder 5y ago
This is a truly bizarre article. It builds up a complete strawman of like "some people believe/advocate that you should do basically nothing except read," and then tries to knock it down by showing that Warren Buffet... traveled a good amount? And had friends?
- AlbertCory 5y ago
  That ("strawman") was my first reaction. Then on thinking about it some more, I realized that maybe a lot of folks ("journalists" as I put it) actually DO think you can just read, especially with the pandemic and the internet. Isn't everything on the web nowadays? No it's not. So maybe this is a worthwhile article after all.
  - handrous 5y ago
    > Isn't everything on the web nowadays? > No it's not. So maybe this is a worthwhile article after all. Shit, not even all written material is on the web. Nowhere close! Records and books alike. It's typical to hit a wall when researching on the web, beyond which one cannot progress without actual, paper books, or a visit to some particular physical institution or library, often only one step past Wikipedia's reference list for a topic, to give a sense of how shallow the Web's coverage of many topics is. Sometimes, even those first-tier references are only available on paper, without so much as an e-book available.
- npsimons 5y ago

gumby 5y ago

I think a “functional” view of reading is self-limiting — a sort of cargo cult. It’s a shame to spend a lot of time just grinding. I read about five hours a day (about a third of my waking hours) but have no illusion that it is of any specific value. It’s just a compulsion I’ve had all my life. I don’t consider it any different from others playing video games — not a virtue and perhaps tending towards vice.

tmountain 5y ago

I've regularly read that the average CEO reads 60 books a year. While I have worked with one CEO that read a lot, most seem far too busy working on business problems to have that kind of free time. Granted, I've been working in smaller (250 people or fewer) companies most of my career, but it seems very difficult to fit in a book per week when you get home at 7:30 or 8:00 and you're playing catch up on the weekends.

soco 5y ago
There are also many definitions on what a "book" is. Is a business book a book? Is a self-improvement book a book? Or are there only fiction books? How about e-books? Is there a size limit under which a text is not a "book" anymore? Depending on such points everybody might be already reading 60 books a year without even realizing it.

DantesKite 5y ago

I really enjoyed this perspective on Charlie Munger. It was refreshing and new.

jl6 5y ago

In school, we are drilled into thinking reading is an unqualified good thing. Reading programmes exist to boost the amount of reading children do. Parents chastise their kids for watching TV instead of reading a book. Against this background, we forget that reading is ultimately a form of consumption. It doesn’t inherently make the world a better place. It doesn’t, by itself, produce anything. It matters a lot what you read. Reading can be a gateway to learning and fulfilment, but it can also be an addictive time-sink that leads nowhere. It’s a particular trap for those with an intellectual or introverted bent. I fear that the good intentions of teachers trying to get kids to read more at all costs risks only doing half the job, and leaving a population without the media literacy to choose wisely which books to consume, or without the restraint to know when it’s time to stop reading and start acting.

jlmcguire 5y ago
I think you have it right. I study for a lot of certification exams (They are very popular in networking and security), I've found that a lot of content around learning has moved to videos rather than "exam guides" produced by the vendor/company offering the video. It could be styles of learning thing but I much prefer the written content. It strikes me that one advantage of the written word is that the information density is so much higher than in other mediums. I generally watch the videos at 2x speed and still feel like I'm not learning as much when I read for an equivalent time. However your point about "what" you read is well taken. Just as in watching youtube or movies you can read trash just as you can watch trash.
- Apocryphon 5y ago
  In the digital age, there's so much text being produced that it's possible to both read and write massive amounts of trash.
- AlanYx 5y ago
  >It strikes me that one advantage of the written word is that the information density is so much higher than in other mediums. This is true, but it also goes beyond density. Long-form written works tend to have more room for breadth, depth and nuance. I find that's where much of the value sometimes comes from, e.g., I didn't get anything much out of the main text of the last non-fiction book I read, but three of the footnotes introduced me to other sources that did turn out to be useful for my work.

madiator 5y ago

It takes me three minutes to read one page. 500 pages per day will take only 25 hours a day. :)

madiator 5y ago
Apologies for posting a comment that doesn't add to the discussion. I was trying to show the absurdity of the quote in the article that someone recommended reading 500 pages a day.
- groby_b 5y ago
  fwiw, I think it does add to the discussion - especially once removed from the realm of pure quip. Reading 500 pages is a large undertaking. Proficient readers manage ~0.8 pages/minute. That is ~6.5 hours just reading, without any time taken to organize the knowledge. And reading at that speed is extremely hard mental effort, you're pretty much exhausted at the end of it. Sure, they could be an extremely fast reader and get it done in 5 hours. Still, without deeper comprehension, or organization. It very much matters to point out that the recommendation is fundamentally self-aggrandizement more than truth.

Zababa 5y ago

I have an article called "Consume less, produce more" (https://www.chrismytton.com/2020/09/24/consume-less-produce-more/ https://www.chrismytton.com/2020/09/24/consume-less-produce-...) in my bookmarks toolbar that's always visible as a reminder of that.

Anthony-G 5y ago
Thanks. That’s great advice and I’ve also added it to my Bookmarks Toolbar as a reminder. I also bookmarked the Stoic advice in Book notes: A Guide to the Good Life¹. Over the past few years, I’ve been practising similar techniques but I still need to be more disciplined. I was about to subscribe to Chris’ Atom feed – only to realise that would just add to the excessive consumption anxiety. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ¹ https://www.chrismytton.com/a-guide-to-the-good-life/ https://www.chrismytton.com/a-guide-to-the-good-life/)

npsimons 5y ago

> [Graham] didn’t go to lunch that day—he just sat there and talked to me [Buffet] for four hours like I was the most important person in the world. When he opened that door to me, he opened the door to the insurance world.” The Snowball That's great! Guess what the vast majority of people don't have access to? Really great mentors. Unless, and hear me out here, those mentors wrote down their wisdom, say some great work of philosophy[0] or even a groundbreaking technical work[1]. Even better, you can access these founts of knowledge after their authors have passed on! [0] - https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2680 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2680 [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principia_Mathematica https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principia_Mathematica

ksdale 5y ago
I think this is quite clever and it made me chuckle! I think it's plausible that access to a mediocre mentor could actually have better results, though, than reading books by the best mentors. Naturally there is room for both, but I have learned a ton from practitioners (for lack of a better work) who are decidedly average compared to Warren Buffett's mentors (or Isaac Newton).
- npsimons 5y ago
  > Naturally there is room for both, but I have learned a ton from practitioners (for lack of a better work) who are decidedly average compared to Warren Buffett's mentors (or Isaac Newton). That's fair, and it might even lead to the truism that access to a mediocre mentor could actually have better results than reading books by the best mentors. But we must also take into account that different people learn best differently. Me, I've never really gotten much out of the mentor/mentee model, possibly because I've never had a good mentor. But I feel it goes farther than that - even good lectures have problems holding my attention, and for reasons said elsewhere in the comments, I've found well-developed written sources to be immeasurably beneficial to my learning. One thing that strikes me is I wonder if there's any correlation to those who can work well remotely and those who learn better from books. This whole "in-person is always better" smacks of the chauvinism the corporate world suffers from in regards to work sites. That said, yeah, you have to apply and practice eventually. And having someone to imitate or model after, or better yet impart constructive criticism, is invaluable. But there's a whole heck of a lot that can be imparted from reading a book.

nicodjimenez 5y ago

Reading is excellent cognitive training. Especially reading fiction. It makes you step outside your ordinary reality and truly live in someone else's shoes. You get cognitive benefit as well as spiritual benefit from reading great fiction. Non fiction is also OK but generally less appropriate for reading cover to cover. Non fiction is great for just getting what you need and getting out. The way you learn physics, for example, is not by reading physics books, it's by solving problems. By experiencing the real thing. Reading fiction has self contained benefit. Reading non fiction is only useful to the extent to which you can apply this information in your daily life.

dragontamer 5y ago
> It makes you step outside your ordinary reality and truly live in someone else's shoes. One of the biggest emotional hits to me was "Der Untergang", or "Downfall" in English (aka: Angry Hitler Meme movie). Spending 1-week in Hitler's shoes, with an incredible amount of detail / historical accuracy, brought me a huge amount of appreciation for what was going on during WW2, in a way that few other stories (be it reading, anime, movies, TV-series) have ever affected me before. Non-fiction, when done well, can give you a hugely different perspective on life. * Technically, you spend ~1 week in Traudl Junge's shoes, who serves as Hitler's personal secretary. But she was in the room when all major events happened: from Hitler's Birthday (aka: when the Russians started shelling Berlin), to the final defense plans, to the Goring Telegram, to helping Hitler write his final will / testament. To the planning of Hitler's suicide (which wasn't easy in the circumstances). To helping write the last will/testament to Goebbel + those events. To the escape from the bunker while surrounded by Russian troops. ----------- Since this story is "real", it just hits differently. Even though Hitler + Goebbel were probably the most evil people on Earth at that time... the perspective of "Downfall" was incredibly human. There's a story to be told here about the expectations of leadership, the stress of losing, the worries about your worldview going extinct, etc. etc. > Reading non fiction is only useful to the extent to which you can apply this information in your daily life. I hope I'll never be trapped in a bunker contemplating angry Soviet capture/torture vs Suicide. But the story that contemplates the two choices really gives you an understanding of the final WW2 events much better.

paulpauper 5y ago

reading is good, but doing is even better, or a combination of both.. "“I just sit in my office and read all day.” - Warren Buffett" I think they get the causality wrong. It's not like he became so rich by reading, same for bill gates. He had to actually do the thing that which made him rich. Once you get billions then I guess you can spend all day reading.

spicyramen 5y ago

In foreign languages such as Spanish, ortography is very important: reading helps you get better at it. This is true normally pre-college years.

groby_b 5y ago
While English speakers on the internet don't seem to believe it, the same holds for English. Choosing your words precisely matters. I am less certain that pure reading is the best way to get better at it. In general, using skills matters. If you just know the theory, you're already at a disadvantage. If you only know the basic ideas via indirect observation, it's worse. All of these things - practice, theory, observation in the wild - reinforce each other.

mfrankel 5y ago

Why lectures don't work. "Lectures don’t work because the medium lacks a functioning cognitive model. It’s (implicitly) built on a faulty idea about how people learn—transmissionism—which we can caricaturize as “lecturer says words describing an idea; students hear words; then they understand.” When lectures do work, it’s generally as part of a broader learning context (e.g. projects, problem sets) with a better cognitive model. But the lectures aren’t pulling their weight. If we really wanted to adopt the better model, we’d ditch the lectures, and indeed, that’s what’s been happening in US K–12 education." Why books don't work "In this section we’ve seen that, like lectures, non-fiction books don’t work because they lack a functioning cognitive model. Instead, like lectures, they’re (accidentally, invisibly) built on a faulty idea about how people learn: transmissionism. When books do work, it’s generally for readers who deploy skillful metacognition to engage effectively with the book’s ideas. This kind of metacognition is unavailable to many readers and taxing for the rest. Books aren’t pulling their weight. Textbooks do more to help, but they still foist most of the metacognition onto the reader, and they ignore many important ideas about how people learn." Worth reading: https://andymatuschak.org/books/ https://andymatuschak.org/books/

syngrog66 5y ago

lectures dont work on me because you're pushing things into my brain whether I care or not, whether I already know or not, whether I'm ready or focused, and don't give me a chance to pause or ask questions, or crosscheck terms or go off on fractal pseudo-tangents to fill in the blanks in my mental map, etc. therefore, for me, reading is soooo much better. though video lectures at least allow you to pause, its still too little signal density with too much noise, usually. Also I am a very visual learner, and I use mental maps & 3D/4D system models inside my mind, and build/run little simulations in there as part of understanding and leveraging that knowledge. reading text & diagram inputs "fit" with that brain style better than traditional classroom lectures pull (on demand, when ready) rather than push

npsimons 5y ago
Your comment is down at the bottom because you got here late, but everything you said is true. In order to get any truly deep thinking (or masterful practice of anything for that matter) done, you need to have focus and that almost always means alone without interruptions, at your own pace. Yeah, yeah, you need input to correct mistakes, but that's mostly at the beginning anyway, before one develops the mental model to self-correct. And I learned that by reading Ericsson's "Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise". > Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius. - Edward Gibbon

mensetmanusman 5y ago

This reminds me of an investment banker who told us that they would have had a much better year if they had just sat on their hands and read for 12 months. If you are a dividend (re)investor for 90 years, you too could be rich one day!

devlife 5y ago

I wonder if the 500 page comment Buffett made was ever meant to be taken seriously. Maybe he just said for the sake of motivating students.