Back in the early 2000s, my family used to take 3-week road trips across Europe.
Those trips are some of the fondest memories I have. I would walk around, book in hand, no matter where we went.
We would usually eat at restaurants we happened to stumble upon. In between chats with my parents and sisters, I would try to read a few pages.
My dad used to joke with me: “Son, you need to read a little less. All this reading can’t be good for you!”
I would go on the defensive: “But dad, all my friends get told by THEIR parents that they should read MORE, not LESS! I don’t get it.” I would then promptly go back to my book.
You can imagine this anecdote gets told very often in family gatherings.
In many ways, I’m still that little kid.
I read and study for 3 or more hours per day.
Whether it be physics, entrepreneurship or productivity, I always dedicate a few hours to learning.
And yes, I still carry a book around everywhere I go.
But if you asked me, I couldn’t tell you exactly why I do all of this. I don’t know what the end goal is. Not specifically at least.
The best answer I have is that it comes down to faith.
I’m a firm believer in playing to your strengths.
It’s the secret behind designing a remarkable career.
We’re often told to fix our weaknesses. But the real opportunity is developing our strong points instead. Acquire a minimum competence level for key weaknesses, yes, but use most of your time and energy to develop your talents.
If you were lucky enough to be Lionel Messi’s coach, you wouldn’t tell him to spend hours every day learning defensive play. No, you would want him to focus on dribbling and shooting instead. Yet we frequently tell ourselves the exact opposite.
As the author Robert Greene says: you need to tap into your uniqueness. It’s what can make you great. Don’t waste time trying to emulate others when all the skills and knowledge you’ll ever need can come from cultivating what’s inside of you.
The tricky thing about strengths, though, is that we don’t usually know how we’ll end up using them.
No one knows what will happen in 30 years.
Maybe you’ll become a respected CEO. Maybe you’ll be a stay-at-home parent. Maybe you’ll become a hermit.
Who knows.
But wherever you end up, you’ll probably need to use your strengths if you want to succeed. And you first need to develop these strengths before you can apply them.
That requires faith.
Faith that fulfilling your potential will prove decisive down the road, even if you don’t know how.
Faith that listening to your inner compass will lead you where you need to go.
So why do I study for 3 hours per day?
Maybe it’ll inform books I write in the future.
Maybe it’ll give me the thinking tools to be a successful entrepreneur.
Maybe it’ll play some part I can’t even imagine.
I don’t know.
What I do know is that it will be fundamental in any future success I have.
So I keep reading.
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