Why Reading is the Habit of the Highly Successful (2024)

You want to live an amazing life.

You want to have a happy and healthy romantic relationship. You want to have a fulfilling career that gives you meaning. You want to be financially independent so that you can do what you want, when you want, with who you want.

You’re crystal clear on what you want to achieve in life.

Unfortunately, you’re just not sure how to achieve it.

As a result, you’re constantly working towards your goals, but you never make any progress.

It’s frustrating.

But here’s the good news: achieving the life of your dreams: health, love, career, happiness, etc. doesn’t have to be complicated. It doesn’t have to take years. In fact, you can achieve the life of your dreams 20 times faster than you normally would.

How?

It’s simple. You have to read more.

Somebody once asked Warren Buffett about his secret to success. Buffett simply pointed to a stack of books and said,

“Read 500 pages like this every day. That’s how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest. All of you can do it, but I guarantee not many of you will.”

Early in his career, Buffett would actually read 800 pages a day, not 500. Even now, he still reads for about 8 hours a day.

How does he do it? Easy. He makes reading a priority in his life. And you know what? He’s not the only one.

In an interview with The New York Times, for example, Bill Gates shared that he reads about 50 books a year. Gates will actually take reading vacations for 2 weeks at a time.

Elon Musk has said that he taught himself physics as well as rocket science simply by reading a lot of books.

Mark Cuban will spend up to about 3 hours of his day reading.

Oprah Winfrey has referred to reading as her “path to personal freedom.” She even started her own book club where she talks about her favorite books.