Many successful people commit a significant part of their achievements to a consistent and useful habit__reading. From Warren Buffet to Oprah Winfrey, they develop a habit of reading to enhance their cognitive skills, expand their perspectives, improve empathy and growth. But the tech entrepreneurs stand out among all by their dedicated and consistent habit of reading. They do reading just not to get knowledge or time pass but to sharpen problem solving skills, enhancing critical and analytical thinking.
The Reading habit of Tech Visioners
Reading is crucial for entrepreneurs in these fast-evolving industries in the world. They rely on reading because it helps to maintain a broader perspective of business, provide deep insights to the leadership and an ability to adapt to the changing world.
Elon Musk: One of the most inspirational entrepreneurs, famous for SpaceX, Tesla, SolarCity credits most of his success to his habit of reading. Elon was once asked how he managed to build a rocket and got all these ideas from, he replied, “I read books”. Reading nurtured his imagination and technical understanding.
He often says “I was raised by books”. But what books he used to read and how they inspired and influenced his thinking will be discussed briefly.
Science Fiction: As a child, Musk was interested in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series, Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and Robert Heinlein’s novels.
Science fiction fueled his imagination and vision and mission.
Engineering and Physics: When planning SpaceX, he read college-level textbooks on rocket propulsion and orbital mechanics, such as Rocket Propulsion Elements by George P. Sutton and Structures: Or Why Things Don’t Fall Down by J.E. Gordon. These engineering books gave him the technical foundation to act.
Biographies: Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson, Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson, Howard Hughes: His Life and Madness by Donald Bartlett and James Steele. Biographies helped him to learn resilience and leadership.
Together, they create a mindset that blends imagination with execution, turning his visionary ideas into the real world-revolution.
Bill Gates: according to Bill gates, his life-long habit of reading has a significant and major role in his success. He reads roughly 50 books a year, about science, business and global issues. His reading led to a career pivot to philanthropy after reading about global health issues.
Reading provides his deep insight to innovation, fuels his curiosity and helps him go beyond his perspective and empathy.
“The World Until Yesterday by Jared Diamond”, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth and the Origins of Inequality, by Angus Deaton”, “Mountains beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder” and “How to Avoid a Climate Diaster–his own writing journey” are some books he used to read that has influenced his thinking and shaped his worldview.
These books transform him from a technology-driven entrepreneur to a great humanitarian. Books like Mountains Beyond Mountains and The Great Escape helped him to understand that global health isn’t a moral cause–but a most effective strategy for reducing poverty and inequality and promoting human progress.
Mark Zuckerberg: Similarly Mark Zuckerberg launched the “A Year of Books” project in 2015 and encouraged his facebook followers to read along with him. He used to read a book every other week to learn from different perspectives. He used to read “Creativity”, Inc. by Ed Catmull and “The end of Power by Moises Naim”, which helped him to explore leadership, innovation, and adaptability in modern organization.
Through “Creativity, Inc.”, he was able to create a healthy and efficient workplace culture, fostering innovation through “hackathons”. The Principles of “Creativity,Inc.” refined Zuckerberg to manage creativity and organizational culture.
“The end of power” shared the theme of decentralizing power and connecting the world.
The decision-making lesson he learnt from the book is that power in the digital age lies in enabling others not controlling them–a vision that transforms Facebook from a social network to a global ecosystem.
These all books shaped him to focus on innovation through openness and power through empowerment.
Importance of Reading
Reading is important because it enhances mental stimulation, reduces stress, improves cognitive skills and expands knowledge. Following are the key benefits of reading:
- Critical thinking: Reading complex books help you to improve your critical thinking and analytical analysis. For example, reading biographies like Steve Job by Walter Isaacson provide deep knowledge about how to improve your decision-making abilities.A decision-making lesson learnt from biography is to prioritise your deepest intuition and vision over market strategies.
- When Apple was developing the first Iphone, Job refused to conduct intensive focused group or customer surveys. He believed that “customers have no idea what they want until you show it to them”. Instead of relying on customer surveys he trusted his vision, principles and intuition to launch a revolutionary product like Iphone.
Jobs showed that great leaders often need to trust deep insight and internal vision rather than survey data. The exceptional decision-making lesson is to trust in intuition, clarity of focus and balancing perfection with practicality.
- Empathy: Reading about different characters and their experiences helps you to build empathy, enhance communication and understand different emotions. Studies from Yale and Harvard show that the people who read literary fiction score high in emotional intelligence.
- Mental-Stimulation and increased Knowledge: Reading is an exercise of mind keeping it healthy, active and productive. The habit of reading offers you a treasure of knowledge, expanding your understanding about different cultures, history and science. “Thinking Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kannemann and “A Brief History of Time” are outstanding choices to vast your knowledge and to sharpen your cognitive, creative and behavioural abilities.
- Problem-solving: Reading case studies and biographies help to understand the real word problems.
In addition to reading, it will help you to remember better and to relax better. It will give your brain a little mental rest, but not shut off completely. It is during the mental rest that the best ideas pop up in your head.
In my opinion, successful people read not only to pass the time or as a habit but to explore the deep insights of various topics, problems and perspectives.
What Successful Entrepreneurs Read
The most successful people in the world read. In fact, they read a lot. According to Inc.com, everyone from Warren Buffett to Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates are more than ordinary readers. Buffett even said that he spends 80 percent of the day reading.
Following are the examples of what they read and how those choices fuel their success.
Warren Buffet: Warren reads 500 pages a day, mainly the newspapers, the financial reports, classical investments books such as Benjamin Graham’s The Intelligence Investor, Security Analysis and “The Business Adventure” by John Brooks. Reading the books helped him shape financial philosophy and made him an influential figure.
Oprah Winfrey: Oprah Winfrey praises books like “The Seat of the Soul” by Gary Zukav, “Finding me: Memoir” and “The Power of Now” for transforming perception of success and purpose.
Bill Gates: He often shares his reading list publicly. He read a wide range of topics from science, fiction, global issues to memoirs and climate change. His top pick includes Factfulness by Hans Rosling and Enlightenment Now by Steve Pinker. His reading habit directly influences how he funds global health and education projects.
Normally, it is very important what you are reading too. The most successful people in the world read fiction, and most often educational books and publications, or biographies of people whose lives are inspiring and motivating for further progress.
It doesn’t matter what they read, they just read, and they do it a lot. You should start too.
How to Incorporate Reading in Daily Life
Incorporating reading into your daily life doesn’t require hours, it is just a matter of consistency and dedication. Here are some steps you can follow to adopt this habit most effectively.
- Finding time to Read:
- Wake up 15 minutes before your actual time.
- Use your phone 10 minutes less than regular use.
- Keep the book or e-reader with you while enjoying a coffee or lunch break.
By following this step you can easily manage or plan time to read.
- Choosing the Right Books:
- Select the topics that align your goals and career such as finance, business, creativity and literature.
- Follow the recommendations of successful people for example: “The Intelligent Investors by Benjamin Graham”.
- Switch between fiction and non-fiction to balance knowledge and relaxation.
- Apps like Goodbook can help you track your progress and find recommendations.
In this way readers will not be overwhelmed by a lot of options.
- Making Reading a Habit:
These are step by step tips to adopt this habit.
- Start with 5 or 10 pages a day.
- Set a daily goal to read for a few minutes..
- Join a book-club or a friend for discussion.
- Keep the books in your reach as a reminder.
- Keep a notebook or digital journal to note down key points. Reflection transforms reading into learning.
By following these easy small steps with consistency can change your one time activity into a life-long habit.
Bottomline
The stories of successful people give us a lesson that reading is a non-negotiable for growth. It is a mindset that shapes thinking, builds character, enhances creativity and potential. Start with a simple step to read a book for 10 minutes with a topic of your choice that aligns your goal, highlight the ideas that are useful and apply one insight to your professional or personal life. Over time this short-term activity will transform your knowledge and learning into bigger achievement.
As Barren buffet once said, “The more you learn, the more you earn”.So open a book today, maybe that page is a start of your win.
Thanks for reading this post! – MyPlugin