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Why Reading Book Summaries Won’t Turn You Into Warren Buffett
Reading is about much more than information uptake
Every culture has certain verbal rituals that you go through as a matter of politeness. When I lived in Taiwan 20 years ago, a standard greeting among strangers and acquaintances was “你吃飽了嗎?”(Have you eaten?)
Today in America, and much of the rest of the world, we must constantly broadcast that we are busy and acknowledge the busyness of others. Simple emails often start or end with, “I know you are busy, but…”
Because our culture is so focused on hustle and being busy, several ambitious entrepreneurs have created services that help you digest the information in important books without having to take the time to read these books.
Among many elite hustlers, there is an entire sub-culture devoted to unleashing a firehose of information into their brains, desperately hoping that some of the more salient factoids and strategies remain behind once the torrent is turned off and the majority of the information drains away.
These entrepreneurs and scions of productivity listen to podcasts and 5X speeds and consume book summaries delivered via apps or email. Some even get audiobook summaries and listen to those at 5X speed.
