Depending on whose statistics you trust, somewhere between 300,000 and 1,000,000 books are published each year in America alone. The exact number might be in doubt, but the truth is clear: when it comes to what to read next, you have an OVERWHELMING amount of choice.
Or as the late, great physicist Stephen Hawking memorably put it:
“If you stacked the new books being published next to each other, at the present rate of production you would have to move at ninety miles an hour just to keep up with the end of the line.”
Let’s be honest, you are not going to keep up.
So how do you manage the inescapable fact that you’re always going to have way more good books to read than you have time?
Many smart voices offer the exact same advice — give up on more books.
Here's why...
1. You'll enjoy life more
Many of us developed the habit of always (or nearly always) finishing entire books back in school. You weren’t going to get credit if you didn’t know Moby Dick sinks the Pequod after all. But while persistence may have helped you get an A in English class, it isn’t helping you get the maximum value out of all the books in the professional world.
First and most simply, if you push yourself to keep reading a book that hasn’t fully captured your interest, you’re going to miss out on much of the joy of books.
As Argentine poet Jorge Luis Borges puts it...
“I believe that the phrase ‘obligatory reading’ is a contradiction in terms; reading should not be obligatory… If a book bores you, leave it… that book was not written for you.”
Or if you’re more likely to listen to innovators than poets, then take the word of Stripe co-founder Patrick Collison who once declared...
“Life is too short to not read the very best book you know of right now.”
Or legendary angel investor Naval Ravikant who tweeted...
“Read what you love until you love to read,”
2. The more you quit, the more books you’ll read
But there are good reasons beyond just pleasure to give up more books in the middle. For starters, you’ll read more overall if you only read books you really want to read — there is nothing that slows up your reading more than battling boredom.
“When you are limited to the school material and you get bored, you have a tendency to give up and do nothing or play hooky out of discouragement,” notes statistician and author Nassim Nicholas Taleb. That’s why, then as now, “the minute I was bored with a book or a subject I moved to another one, instead of giving up on reading altogether.”
Naval Ravikant captures the situation beautifully with the following quote...
“It’s not about educated vs. un-educated. It’s about likes to read and doesn’t like to read.”
In other words, loving to read leads to putting more time into reading, which leads to being educated.
3. You'll learn faster
Think about what it's like to read a book that bores you...
- You have to use tons of will-power just to get started and stay in the game
- Your mind wanders off every 20 seconds
- You read slower
- You remember less
It's hard to look at the list above and not come to the conclusion that reading a book that bores you is equivalent to giving yourself a learning disability.
4. You'll read 1,000x better books
All books aren't created equal. The 80/20 Rule applies.
In other words, the best books aren't just 10% better. They are 1,000x better.
Thus giving up on 10 mediocre books is worth it if it helps you find the 1,000x better book faster.
Artist Austin Kleon agrees...
“Every hour you spend inching through a boring book is an hour you could’ve spent plowing through a brilliant one.”
The 80/20 Rule also applies INSIDE books
Finally, you should stop beating yourself up and put down more books because you often don’t need to read the whole thing to extract the most valuable nuggets.
The famous 80/20 Rule applies between books— 20 percent of the books you encounter will give you 80 percent of the benefits of reading. A few books will change your life. Most will be quickly forgotten. Quitting more helps you land on those life-changing titles more efficiently.
But the 80/20 Rule also applies within books. For non-fiction titles at least, 20 percent of the content within the book will often give you 80 percent of the actionable insight. The rest may be...
- Irrelevant to your goals
- Excess supporting detail that’s excess
- Information you already know
So feel free not only to give up books in the middle, but also to read them piecemeal, searching for the sections that help and interest you and skipping parts that are less useful. And don’t be shy about utilizing book summaries. You’ll get more out of each hour you devote to reading. I call this approach Fractal Reading...
Author and blogger James Clear advises...
"Most people should probably start more books than they do. You can skim the table of contents, chapter titles, and subheadings. Pick an interesting section and dive in for a few pages."
Bottom line
If you only read what you love to read, you knock over a whole chain of dominos that ultimately lead to a happier and more successful life...
- You'll spend more time reading
- You'll learn faster (reading faster and remembering more of what you read)
- You'll read better books
Furthermore, the 80/20 Rule won’t just help you choose which books to read, it can also help you zero in on the sections within the book which offer the biggest benefits in other areas of your life, from health to relationships to your career.
I explain exactly how I use the 80/20 Rule to learn faster and to optimize my money, relationships, goals, productivity, happiness and career in my 80/20 Rule Manual. In my opinion, the 80/20 Rule is the most useful and universal mental model. And, to my knowledge, this manual is the most condensed and comprehensive treatment on the 80/20 Rule that has ever been created...