When Elon Musk visited Tsinghua University's School of Economics and Management in China for a talk in 2015, he was asked: "How do you start a business in so many fields, many of which you have no training in?"
Elon Musk's answer is: Maintain an efficient self-study pace and read a lot.
When Elon Musk was a child, his parents divorced. As a result, he became withdrawn and did not like to talk. He often felt that he could not fit into the world. Reading became his best way to fight loneliness.
As a teenager, he read almost every book in the school library and often complained to the principal about why there were no new books available.
"As a teenager, Elon Musk read at least two books on different topics every day. He learned everything very quickly," said his younger brother Kimbal Musk.
Calculated this way, Elon Musk can read at least 60 books per month.
Elon Musk never limited his reading to one area. As a boy, he read books on science fiction, programming, philosophy, and autobiographies of several scientific experts. As he grew older, his reading expanded to physics, engineering, artificial intelligence, and new energy. Reading across genres made him a well-rounded person.
01. Why should we read a lot?
When explaining, Elon Musk himself also said that NON-STOP READING is actually very important, according to the following logic:
1. Artificial Intelligence
Chatgpt has become extremely popular in recent years. The method of training artificial intelligence is to provide a large amount of data. Current artificial intelligence is not very smart but the amount of information received is exponentially higher than each of us, these entrepreneurs read so much that they almost have artificial intelligence themselves.
Before real artificial intelligence came along, these highly literate individuals were little artificial intelligences, plus they were smart and daring, so it was inevitable that they would do something better than the average person.
2. Concept formation
By reading various books and absorbing the crystallization of ideas left by outstanding predecessors, you can effectively change one's ideas and avoid "reinventing the wheel". When you read enough, you will find that many of your problems and ideas have been summarized and refined by your predecessors, which will greatly reduce your reinvestment costs.
In addition, changes in our perceptions will effectively impact our behavior and decision making, thereby creating new variables in life.
3. Input Leverage
I've been reading Naval's book for the past few days, and it says that if you want to get rich, you have to borrow leverage and make the most of the leverage effect. Business leverage comes from capital, labor, and products (code and media) with zero marginal cost of replication, which is why I do media myself.
The maintenance of a huge amount of information itself is a kind of leverage, a kind of cognitive leverage. Honestly, people who read 60, even 200 books or more a year, compared to those who read 3-5 books a year or less, they are like walking intelligence, because the knowledge and information they carry is enough to shrink the multidimensionality of an ordinary person.
02. What kind of books should I read?
1. The genre reshapes the concept
I often wonder, what makes people different? Family background aside, are some people really born rich? Are some people born to be entrepreneurs? Are some people born to be CEOs?
After reading and practicing to a certain extent, I found that it was not so: those people were originally just ordinary people, they may be stronger than others in terms of personal characteristics, but instead, their shortcomings will still be exposed, and they borrow skills from reading books, absorb high-quality information and become a spiritually rich person.
So the first kind of books we should read are books that can reshape our concepts, to put it bluntly, books that can change our three views, such as "The Value Thinking Method" and "The Naval Book" (rough translation).
2. Professional development categories
If society can train you, then one day society can code and replace you with a computer. What we need to develop is our own expertise.
What is a specialty? A specialty is something that you can do in less time but achieve more results: for example, I write very quickly, when inspired, I can write 2,000 words in less than an hour, while some people can't write a paragraph in half a day. By finding your specialty and constantly developing it, specialty itself is a layer of leverage: in a limited amount of time, you can create more leverage to create greater value.
So the first goal after changing your mindset is to find your expertise and then develop it.
3. Content production genre
The Internet has dramatically expanded the career space, but most people are still not fully aware of this.
With the Internet, everyone can find their audience. By expressing yourself in a unique way online, you have the opportunity to spread joy, build wealth, build products, and build your own business.
With the Internet, as long as you are the best at what you do and as long as you can expand the unique content you provide, then a hobby can become a career. The good news is that everyone is unique and therefore everyone is the best at something: no one can be better than you at being yourself.
After these 3 types of books, there are also books on biographies, business management, brand marketing, investment and financial management, etc. for you to choose from.
Finally, we may need to think about how to read accurately, how to improve reading speed and efficiency to achieve double the results with half the effort.
I would like to borrow a sentence from a book I read to conclude: The best jobs have nothing to do with commissions or degrees, the people who earn the most money are lifelong learners in the free market.
