Warren Buffett advises to read 500 pages every day (2024)

FAQs

Warren Buffett advises to read 500 pages every day? ›

In response to a question about how to prepare for an investing career, Buffett told the students, “Read 500 pages like this every day,” while reaching toward a stack of manuals and papers. “That's how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest.

Buffett spends 80% of his day reading

Supposedly, in the early days of Buffett's investment career, he would read 600-1000 pages in a single day. Nowadays, he still dedicates 80% of his day to reading. “Read 500 pages… every day.

Buffett takes this habit to the extreme — he read between 600 and 1000 pages per day when he was beginning his investing career, and still devotes about 80% of each day to reading.

You might take more or less time than 13.9 hours to read 500 pages, depending on your reading speed and the difficulty of your text. The average person's reading speed is around 300 words per minute (WPM).

Buffett doesn't limit building up his knowledge to books alone. He reads six newspapers a day, including The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, The New York Times, USA Today, Omaha World-Herald, and American Banker. Whether or not you have time for such an ambitious goal is largely irrelevant.

How many books does Elon Musk read a day? Elon Musk used to read two books a day, according to his brother. He probably reads much less now since SpaceX and other projects take up most of his time.

Gates won't begin reading a book that he won't finish. According to his wife Melinda, Bill reads approximately 150 pages per hour, a staggering speed, especially given that he takes in and understands the vast majority of what he reads (his comprehension level is off the charts).

Consider the extreme reading habits of other billionaire entrepreneurs: Warren Buffett spends five to six hours a day reading five newspapers and 500 pages of corporate reports. Bill Gates reads 50 books a year. Mark Zuckerberg aimed to read at least one book every two weeks.

"I just had a housekeeper who was there to make sure I didn't break anything," Musk details. "I was off making explosives and reading books and building rockets." It is even said that he read the entirety of the Encyclopedia Britannica at age 9, and would read science fiction novels for more than 10 hours a day.

Renowned, successful businessman Warren Buffet recommends that, for people seeking success, we should be reading 500 pages every day. As reported in Inc., “Buffett reportedly spends as much as six hours a day reading books.

Is reading 100 pages in 4 hours good? ›

Depending on your reading speed, it should take you between two and three hours to go through 100 pages. It takes an average reader approximately 2.8 hours to read 100 pages.

Reading is good for you because it improves your focus, memory, empathy, and communication skills. It can reduce stress, improve your mental health, and help you live longer. Reading also allows you to learn new things to help you succeed in your work and relationships.

“I read and think,” Buffett once said. “So I do more reading and thinking, and make less impulse decisions than most people in business. I do it because I like this kind of life.” Turns out, science shows that a Buffett-inspired reading habit could benefit you in several ways.

It's speculated that Bill Gates reads at a speed of approximately 750 wpm, which allows him to go through 150 pages in an hour.

He's said before that he drinks five cans of co*ke a day and told Fortune in 2015 that he's "one-quarter Coca-Cola." Buffett has also said he frequents McDonald's daily for breakfast, always getting one of three items: two sausage patties; a sausage, egg, and cheese McMuffin; or a bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit.

Warren Buffett has a reputation for being a prodigious reader, spending as much as six hours per day reading books and newspapers.

How does the 5-hour rule work? The main premise of the 5-hour rule is that regardless of how successful or knowledgeable you are, spending at least five hours every week deliberately learning something new can have exponential long-term benefits.

The 5-hour rule advocates actively learning something new or engaging in a variety of activities for at least one hour each workday. You can progress both personally and professionally by doing this as you pick up new abilities and information.

The rule is that you dedicate at least one hour every day- five hours a week to learning and reading. This one hour can be at any time of the day. You can wake up in the morning and read a book while sipping hot coffee or just listen to an audiobook while commuting to work.

The average reader can see about 7,500 words with just 30 minutes of daily reading. That's over 50,000 in just a week, and some of these words can be new.

Did Mark Zuckerberg read a lot? ›

Mark Zuckerberg

In 2015, the Facebook CEO vowed to read one book every other week "with an emphasis on learning about different cultures, beliefs, histories and technologies," he wrote in a Facebook post. "Books allow you to fully explore a topic and immerse yourself in a deeper way than most media today," he wrote.

The five-hour rule's three buckets

Today's successful leaders have embraced Franklin's five-hour rule by breaking the rule into three buckets. Read: Self-made millionaires including Mark Cuban and Dan Gilbert, owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers, read between one and three hours daily.

Corley says that rich people (annual income of $160,000 or more and a liquid net worth of $3.2 million-plus) read for self-improvement, education, and success. Whereas less well-off people (annual income of $35,000 or less and a liquid net worth of $5,000 or less) read primarily to be entertained.

“Corley wrote that 88% of rich people “devote thirty minutes or more each day to self-education or self-improvement reading” and that “most did not read for entertainment,” writes Tanza Loudenback of Business Insider.

Many successful people have time to read because they choose to. They don't have to; they are voracious readers because that's what they want to do. They love to read, and they make time for books. They may be interested in specific topics or industries, but they tend to be avid readers in almost every area.

Even before buying Twitter, Mr. Musk wasn't a “chill, normal dude,” as he once joked on “Saturday Night Live.” Mr. Musk has said he usually goes to sleep around 3 a.m. and typically gets six hours of shut-eye before waking and immediately checking his phone for any new emergencies.

It improves your ability to focus and concentrate on the task at hand. It increases your attention span, so you can get more work done without getting distracted.

Hernando Colón's bibliomania took him back and forth across Europe for three decades. 129,864,880.

Both Gates and Buffett are well-known speed readers who are no strangers to reading hundreds of books every year.

Can I read 600 pages in a day? ›

Answer: the average reader takes about 16.7 hours to read 600 pages. You might take more or less time than 16.7 hours to read 600 pages, depending on your reading speed and the difficulty of your text. The average person's reading speed is around 300 words per minute (WPM).

The average reading speed typically ranges between 250 and 300 words per minute (WPM). Many experts agree that those who read fewer than 200 words per minute are considered slow readers.

If you're a fast reader, you may read at closer to 400 words per minute. This means reading 200 pages will take you around 4.2 hours.

Reading doesn't need to take up all of your time. The most effective way to read more is to start with 25 pages a day. Twenty-five pages a day is almost 10,000 pages a year. The number of pages you read is not as important as the fact that you enjoy it.

Even though you will not lose your eyesight or damage it in any way through doing too much reading, you can cause some eye strain if your reading sessions run for too long. The symptoms are quite easy to identify: your eyes may be itchy, watering, or you might even get blurry vision.

Reading has a positive effect on our mental health, while watching TV has the exact opposite effect. Reading can reduce stress, lower our blood pressure, our heart rate and muscle tension. On top of the knowledge boost reading provides us with, it also has a healing effect on our mental state.

Millionaires spend more time reading than the general population, about 5.5 hours per week compared to 2 hours for everyone else.

"Buffett, for example, is vastly better than any govt at allocating capital," Musk tweeted in June 2018. "He's doing a useful job for the economy, and he's very skilled at it and should probably keep doing it," he said in December 2021.

“Price is what you pay, value is what you get.” This famous Buffett quote strikes at the heart of the “value investor” approach and reveals the secret of how Buffett made his fortune.

How did Elon Musk read so fast? ›

Musk's “learning transfer” superpower

Starting from his early teenage years, Musk would read through two books per day in various disciplines according to his brother, Kimbal Musk. To put that context, if you read one book a month, Musk would read 60 times as many books as you.

John F. Kennedy could read at 5000 words per minute (wpm) and Jimmy Carter could read at 3000.

He munches on McDonald's for breakfast, guzzles five cans of co*ke every day, and demolishes cookies and chocolates. Fittingly, Berkshire owns See's Candies and Dairy Queen, while Coca-Cola and Kraft Heinz are among the largest holdings in its $300 billion stock portfolio.

In his HBO documentary Becoming Warren Buffett, the 92-year-old revealed that for the past nearly six decades he has stopped by McDonald's on his five-minute drive to the office every morning to indulge in one of the chain's three signature menu offerings: a sausage with egg and cheese, a bacon with egg and cheese or ...

Warren Buffett, one of the world's richest people, lives a modest life. He drinks five co*kes a day and eats McDonald's for breakfast every morning.

It is said that Buffet himself apparently has an IQ over 150 (160 is considered a genius), the influential investor doesn't believe it's the sole reason for his success.

Born, raised and still living in Omaha, Buffet continues to reside in the same house he bought in 1958 for a little over $30,000. Warren Buffet's daily routine typically starts at 6.45am, after getting 8 hours of sleep a night.

Contrast this with the fact that CEOs of Fortune 500 companies read an average of four to five books a month. Even more impressive is that some of the most successful leaders throughout history were known to read one book every single day. Bottom line… If you're a leader and not an avid reader, you're wrong.

Consider the extreme reading habits of other billionaire entrepreneurs: Warren Buffett spends five to six hours a day reading five newspapers and 500 pages of corporate reports.

The Reading Habits of Ultra Successful People

“Read 500 pages like this every day. That's how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest.

How many pages does Bill Gates read an hour? ›

It's speculated that Bill Gates reads at a speed of approximately 750 wpm, which allows him to go through 150 pages in an hour.

Millionaires spend more time reading than the general population, about 5.5 hours per week compared to 2 hours for everyone else.

The three books that gave him this wisdom are: The Wealth of Nations (pub. 1776) by Adam Smith, Security Analysis (pub. 1934) by Benjamin Graham, and The Intelligent Investor (pub. 1949), also by Benjamin Graham.

Long before he became the CEO of Tesla, and even before he cofounded PayPal, a young Elon Musk was reading science-fiction novels for up to 10 hours a day. He also reportedly read through the entire Encyclopedia Britannica when he was 9 years old. He still credits a love of books for his vast knowledge about rockets.

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However, numerous studies have defined that 15-30 minutes is a minimum interval we should dedicate to reading each day. Neuroscientists agree that even simple lifestyle changes, like daily 15 minutes with a nose in a book, will support your brain health for a lifetime.

Bill Gates, Barack Obama, Jack Ma, Elon Musk, Oprah Winfrey – they are all successful in their respective careers, and they have one thing in common – all of them follow the 5-hour rule. This means allotting one hour per weekday for reading and learning (e.g. online courses).