Most of the successful entrepreneurs we know today are self-made, and most of those successful people made reading a daily habit.
First, I was skeptic about reading books too often.
I preferred spending time on reading/scanning articles and tutorials online, and couldn't understand how reading books will pay off big in the future.
In my opinion, it's impossible to absorb all of a book. It's hard!
However, I gave a try to read more books.
And the result exceeded all expectations!
It helped me to learn something every day, grow personally and professionally, and become a better entrepreneur.
Moreover, I improved the quality of new information by getting at least 3 takeaways after the book reading, writing them down, and reviewing them in a while.
Later I also found that I made it into a solid reading habit.
Because our brain seeks to use the knowledge that is gained.
In fact, we all have unique circumstances and problems along the entrepreneurship journey.
And books unconsciously show us how to deal with the world and how pieces fit together.
They help us face and overcome the internal and external challenges that have the highest likelihood of defeating us on the entrepreneurial path.
Regardless of one's reading choices, it is good to remember that the wise reader can learn a great deal from any book.
Because books help:
Find Mental Strength And Balance
Before and at the beginning of my entrepreneurship journey, my mind was worrying about facing long months of constant setbacks and often great economic panic.
To prepare myself mentally, I started by reading some topic-specific books and articles to reduce my stress and anxieties.
After searching the ways in books on how to motivate myself and stop worrying, I understood that people should learn to take both the good and the bad in stride, and perceive the entrepreneurial path in different colors, not only in black and white.
This is a very useful mental outlook to have when facing the ups and downs of entrepreneurial life.
Provide Insight Into Human Nature
Building a business involves building relationships with people.
If you do not have or do not develop the skill for looking people’s behavior and into their hearts, you might run the risk of being repeatedly fooled.
Challenge The Way We Think
Many entrepreneurs fail because they fall in love with their own ideas or way of thinking and do not challenge their own thought processes and conclusions.
Constantly looking for confirmation of your own thoughts rather than challenging them is often a short path to business destruction.
The entrepreneur must develop the skill of not seeing things as “right” or “wrong” but rather as points of view that have advantages and disadvantages and can lead to different types of consequences.
See Patterns In Existence
We may think that what is happening in the modern world is all new and different.
Still, when you read, for example, the story of the Roman Empire, you see that many things that are occurring today are exact replicas of things that have happened over and over again.
The same thing applies to economics, where market movements that all seem new are things that have happened repeatedly in the past.
Knowledge from books is important, but better to take a faulty action than have a perfect theory.
Only one of those will make an impact in the world, and if you want to be the kind of person who makes a difference, then take action today.
That's we decided to create an ideal place where social exchanges and entrepreneurial books' insights are supposed to happen!
We just launched BizBookClub ❉ on ProductHunt.
It is a Digital Book Club for Entrepreneurs or people who want to become one, which organizes meetings for book club members LIVE and REMOTELY.
And even more!
Connect with other entrepreneurs online with similar goals like personal, professional, or business growth.
Keep your reading accountability. Start to read more in 2020!
Every meeting is facilitated to envoke participation, activity, and support healthy group discussions.
Don't miss our first session, join it now!
We are happy to welcome and see you there 👋
Make your best life,
Ilona Codes
Top comments (5)
I noticed this when I start reading more books. I was seeing patterns everywhere. Just as interesting is when two books contradict each other -- it forces you to form an opinion.
Out of interest, do you recommend any particular books?
Nice article, nice product! :)
I started reading every night in August. Since then I read for at least 30 minutes every night, and it started with Ilona's newsletter (#11: Leader's Duty was the first I got). I saw the
1 Book = 1 Weeksection and I decided to try that as well.After that and 2 books later I found a club which offered summaries of books in written and in audio format. While the summaries were nice, they did not make me feel like the original intent of the author was conveyed to me. However, it certainly made it easier to get a list of good books to read. I have bought some of them and started reading them myself.
Now I buy 2-3 books every month, because I strongly believe, that the best investment is investing in yourself.
Reading every night made me better and made my life better. So I believe I owe you a thank you, Ilona. :)
I cannot do anything but agree with your article! Thanks for the pleasant read.
I'm a developer who is parttime working on his own company (consultancy and remote development for now) and destined to build viable products to get me a steady income and go work on products of my own choosing.
For that reason, I need to get the right mindset. And that is where books came in for me.
I never cared a lot for reading, but after I started to listen to podcasts and discovering AudioBooks, I got hooked!
My golden tip: AudioBooks
Never before was "reading" valuable content and great books as fun and easy!
It saves me time and makes my daily commute so much more useful!
Recently, I did even write a blog post - see the article, here on Dev.To - sharing some of the gems that I read in the last 2 years that helped me getting the right maker mindset and giving me extra tools to use during my endeavors.
For me, reading has changed the way I look at things now - especially non-fiction ones are best in this. Great article!
PS: Really loved the idea for BizBookClub. Good luck with that.
I totally agree. I also prefer to read books rather that taking courses. I can learn faster than the classes go, and also take more time on things I'm not getting right away.