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make the most of your mind

Eva Keiffenheim

How Better Non-Fiction Books Would Look Like

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By inventing the printing press in 1440, Johannes Gutenberg made books scalable. Since then, our means to record, store, and access text information haven’t changed much. The 1993 invention of PDFs and the 2010s commercialization of e-books didn’t innovate the medium itself. Books still consist of words forming paragraphs and chapters.

I love reading. In the past months, I explored evidence-based reading strategies and avid readers’ habits like Bill Gates, Richard Feynman, and Ali Abdaal. It wasn’t until I discovered Andy Matuschak’s blog that I grasped the limited nature of the medium itself.

Andy Matuschak is a software engineer, designer, and researcher who helped build iOS at Apple and led R&D at Khan Academy. He works on technologies that expand what people can think and do. After reading his evergreen note systems and his exploratory ed-tech solutions, you might agree with me on his humble brilliancy. The quotes in this article are from his essay on books.

Why Books Don’t Work

Books are designed on the flawed assumption that people absorb knowledge by reading sentences. Your own experience might show learning doesn’t work that way.

How much can you truly remember from your last read non-fiction book? What can you recall from ‘Thinking Fast and Slow,’ ‘Sapiens,’ or ‘Good Economics for Hard Times’? Andy describes what we often recognize in conversations about non-fiction books.

“But just as often, as I grasp about, I’ll realize I had never really understood the idea in question, though I’d certainly thought I understood when I read the book. Indeed, I’ll realize that I had barely noticed how little I’d absorbed until that very moment. “

He describes what cognitive scientists call the illusion of knowledge. Often, we feel like we understood something, while in truth, we barely grasped a concept. Many of us fail to connect the dots to facilitate deep understanding. Reflecting on his inability to remember content from non-fiction books, Andy writes:

“All this suggests a peculiar conclusion: as a medium, books are surprisingly bad at conveying knowledge, and readers mostly don’t realize it.”

So, Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett, Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey are wrong when they praise books’ power? Don’t we expand our minds by reading through pearls of wisdom of philosophers, business leaders, and humble geniuses?

We might. But we aren’t as effective as we wish.

When we look at how humans learn, we find books don’t work in our favor. Words on paper build on a concept called transmission — the idea that knowledge can be directly transmitted from pages to the reader’s mind.

No idea could be further from the truth. Our brains don’t work like recording devices, and we barely learn through consumption.

This isn’t the mistake of authors who don’t write great content — it’s the nature of the book medium itself. What helps us better understand and remember what we read?

How to Make Books Work For You

Thinking about thinking helps readers understand and better remember new knowledge. Here’s how meta-cognition while reading would look and sound like according to Andy:

“The process is often invisible. These readers’ inner monologues have sounds like: “This idea reminds me of
,” “This point conflicts with
,” “I don’t really understand how
,” etc. If they take some notes, they’re not simply transcribing the author’s words: they’re summarizing, synthesizing, analyzing.”

He describes a truth we often forget. Learning is not visible and works best when it feels slow and difficult.

Non-fiction books don’t have built-in learning mechanisms. Readers need to plan, execute, and monitor how they think and engage with the book’s ideas and principles. They have to do the meta-learning work on their own.

Thinking about thinking is challenging. It tasks time, practice, and effort. And as this peer-reviewed study shows, many people struggle to meta-learn while reading. Adults overestimate their reading comprehension. Andy states:

“When books do work, it’s generally for readers who deploy skillful metacognition to engage effectively with the book’s ideas.”

How Better Books Would Look Like

Books that work for us would build on existing insights from learning theory and cognitive science. How can we design mediums to nudge us into meta-learning habits?

We know that effective learning strategies include retrieval, elaboration, spaced repetition, interleaving, self-testing, and reflection. A better medium would design the user’s journey around it.

Andy’s book “Quantum computing for the very curious” is the first effort towards a better composition. Reading his medium doesn’t feel like reading a book. The explanatory text is tightly woven with brief interactive review sessions to exploit the ideas they introduced.

“Reading it means reading a few minutes of text, then quickly testing your memory about everything you’ve just read, then reading for a few more minutes, or perhaps scrolling back to reread certain details, and so on.

Here we have self-testing, a tool that helps you overcome the illusion of knowledge. Spaced repetition is also part of the book’s design:

Reading Quantum Country also means repeating those quick memory tests in expanding intervals over the following days, weeks, and months. If you read the first chapter, then engage with the memory tests in your inbox over the following days, we expect your working memory will be substantially less taxed when reading the second chapter.

Lastly, Andy’s book also includes the practice of interleaving — a switch of a topic before a completed task. Alternate working on different problems feels more difficult as it facilitates forgetting, a process needed to make information stick to our long-term memories.

What’s more, the interleaved review sessions lighten the metacognitive burden normally foisted onto the reader: they help readers see where they’re absorbing the material and where they’re not.”

While this is an interesting idea towards improving written information, the future of books is still unresolved. Current books don’t work in favor of human memory and learning. So, how do you change your reading game to make non-fiction books stick?

Evidence-Based Strategies to Better Remember What You Learn

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Many people waste their time relying on outdated learning techniques. They use ineffective strategies like rereading and highlighting. By following these techniques, learning becomes pointless entertainment.

A research group around neuroscientist Henry Roediger and psychologist Mark McDaniel spent ten years exploring learning strategies. Their goal was to bridge the gap between cognitive science and educational science. The result of their work is ‘Make it stick.’

Reading more than 15 books on learning, I’ve noticed a recurring pattern: 
it’s less important what kind of brain you have — what matters is how you use it.

Or, as the researchers of ‘Make it Stick’ put it:

“Elements that shape your intellectual ability lie to a surprising extent within your own control.”

Howwe learn changes our brain’s neural network. This concept, neuroplasticity, is the enabler for lifelong-learning. Whether you’re a life-long learner, a trainer, teacher, student, or a parent who wants to best help your kids, effective learning strategies can make new knowledge stick.

Here are five evidence-based strategies that help you learn better and store new knowledge in your long-term memory.

1.) Retrieval Practice

With retrieval, you try to recall something you’ve learned in the past from your memory. For example, you might ask yourself what you remembered from the book you finished two weeks ago.

The more time has gone since your information consumption, the more difficult time you’ll have to retrieve it. Naturally, a few days after we learn something, forgetting sets in. And that’s why retrieval is so powerful. In the words of the authors:

“Retrieval strengthens the memory and interrupts forgetting.”

While retrieval practice can take many forms — take a test, write an essay, do a multiple-choice test, practice with flashcards — some forms are better than others:

“While any kind of retrieval practice generally benefits learning, the implication seems to be that where more cognitive effort is required for retrieval, greater retention results.”

2.) Spaced Repetition

With spaced repetition, you repeat the same piece of information across increasing intervals. Again, our natural forgetting curve kicks in. But the harder it feels to recall the information, the stronger the learning effect:

“Spaced practice, which allows some forgetting to occur between sessions, strengthens both the learning and the cues and routes for fast retrieval.”

It might sound counterintuitive, but forgetting is essential for learning. Spacing out practice might feel less productive than rereading a text because you’ll realize what you forgot. To retrieve your knowledge, your brain has to work harder. And it should work hard.

As a rule of thumb: learning works best when it feels hard.

3.) Interleaving

Imagine you had to remember 100 paintings from five different epochs. Would you prefer studying one epoch after another or mixing all five?

While our intuition tells us blocking to be more effective, researchers pointed towards the benefits of interleaving:

“If your intuition tells you to block, you should probably interleave.”

Here’s what interleaving means:

“In interleaving, you don’t move from a complete practice set of one topic to go to another. You switch before each practice is complete.”

Alternate working on different problems feels more difficult as it facilitates forgetting. But as you will know by now, that’s the desired effect you want to achieve.

“If learners spread out their study of a topic, returning to it periodically over time, they remember it better.”

4.) Elaboration

Elaborating means you explain and describe an idea in your own words. You consciously associate material you want to learn with what you’ve previously learned. In the words of the book’s authors:

“Elaboration is the process of giving new material meaning by expressing it in your own words and connecting it with what you already know.”

The more details and the stronger you connect new knowledge to what you already know, the better. By doing so, you’re generating more cues.

Elaborative rehearsal is a method to encode information into your long-term memory more effectively. It can be advantageous to relate the material to a personal experience or to something you already know, explaining the idea to someone else, and explaining how it relates to your life.

5.) Reflection

Reflection is a combination of retrieval practice and elaboration that adds new layers to your learning materials. Here are a few questions the authors suggest to reflect upon:

What went well?

What could have gone better?

What might you need to learn for better mastery, or what strategies might you use the next time to get better results?

By reflecting, you’re retrieving what you learned and connecting it to existing memories. In the words of Roediger and McDaniel:

“Reflection can involve several cognitive activities that lead to stronger learning: retrieving knowledge and earlier training from memory, connecting these new experiences and visualizing and mentally rehearsing what you might do differently next time.”

6.) (Self)-Testing & Calibration

While reading often falsely tricks us into perceived mastery, testing shows us whether we truly mastered the subject at hand. Self-testing helps you identify knowledge gaps and bring weak areas to the light. In their book, the scientists conclude:

“It’s better to solve a problem than to memorize a solution.”

To answer a question or solve a problem before looking at the answer is what learning scientists also call experiential learning. Even if you don’t get the right answer, the process facilitates remembering the correct answer.

Plus, objective instruments, like testing, or self-testing, help you adjust your sense of what you know and don’t know:

“One of the best habits a learner can instill in herself is regular self-quizzing to recalibrate her understanding of what she does and does not know.”

Takeaway

If you only remember one thing, pick the following:

“Learning that’s easy is like writing in sand, here today and gone tomorrow.”

Effective learning strategies include retrieval, elaboration, spaced repetition, interleaving, self-testing, and reflection.

Plus, once you’ve mastered new material, you can use mnemonic devices and build memory places to help you retrieve what you’ve learned.

These 3 Practices by Bill Gates Will Change How You Read

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Reading gives you access to the smartest brains on earth. Learning from the greatest people is the fastest way to become healthy, wealthy, and wise.

Charlie Munger, self-made billionaire, and Warren Buffett’s longtime business partner, once said that he hadn’t known any wise person who didn’t read all the time. None, zero.

Yet, reading per se doesn’t make you a better person. You can read 52 books a year without changing at all.

It’s about what and how you read that will improve your life’s quality and enhance your mind.

I read a book a week for more than two years now and continue to look for ways to improve my reading. Recently, I listened to Bill Gates sharing his free, yet priceless lessons on how he reads books.

Here are his top three reading practices and how to apply them:

1. Take side notes

In our distracting world, it’s tempting to shift focus at light speed. When phones are within a hand reach, it’s easy to switch tasks without even realizing it.

Taking side notes in the margins is a simple yet effective way to stay present. With a pen in your hand, it’s your default option to engage with the book in front of you. You’ll find it easier to focus on the thoughts at hand.

Moreover, scribbling on the pages will make it easier for you to remember what you’ve read. You ensure you link the new knowledge to what you already know. This helps you to think hard about what’s in the book.

Gates always aims to connect new knowledge to what he already knows. If he disagrees with the written word, he will take even more side notes:

“If I disagree with a book it sometimes takes a lot of time to read the book because I am writing so much in the margins. It’s actually kind of frustrating. Please say something I agree with so I can get through with this book.”

How to do it:

Take a pen in your hand before opening your next book. Cross out what you don’t like and write down what to do instead. Jot down a question if lines are unclear. Scribble your thoughts on the margins and connect what you learn with what you already know.

How can you link the words in front of you to your own experiences?

Which example can you add to the page that contradicts this claim?

Do you have any memory that proves the point at hand?

Soon you’ll realize that taking notes not only helps you to concentrate but also to remember what you read. The more you write in the margins, the more you’ll remember.

In learning theory, this way to remember things is called elaborative rehearsal. You make an association between the new information in the book and the information you already know. The more you elaborate, or try to understand something, the more likely you‘ll keep this new information in your long-term memory.

2. Finish every book you read

Gate’s second principle is simple: get to the end.

Read books cover to cover. He says:

“It’s my rule to get to the end.”

Huh? Seriously? It’s tempting to skip this principle since productivity coaches advise you not to complete bad books. We have to be careful here.

Bill doesn’t sayyou should complete a lousy book.

Instead, his rule indicates to decide what you read before you start. Consider whether a book is worth your time before you open it.

By doing so, you’ll become as intentional on reading as Bill Gates. Because it’s his rule always to finish what he starts, he’ll think twice before he starts a book.

Finishing every book you read doesn’t mean you should force yourself through a bad book. Instead, pick carefully and then commit to complete the book. Even if it turns out to be hard, contradicting, or daunting.

How to do it:

The internet allows us to access the libraries of smart minds. For example, Obama’s tweeted his favorite books from 2019, and Bill shares his recommendations once a year.

Start a want-to-read list with every book you intend to read. To do so, you can use listing apps like Google Keep, Wunderlist, or ToDoist, or create a profile on Goodreads.

I love using Goodreads for my want-to-reads as I see the covers and the overall rating. Before bulk-ordering, I’d browse through my list to pick the next books.

3. Read for at least one hour at a time

To get your mind around a book, Bill says, you should block an hour at a time every time you read. Here’s what he says:

“If you read books you want to sit down an hour at a time. Every night I’m reading, I’m reading a little bit over an hour so I can take my current book and make some progress.”

While Bill’s advice is applicable for retired billionaires, I’d recommend adapting his rule to: â€œAim for one uninterrupted reading hour a day and also take every additional minute you get.”

How to do it:

Make it non-negotiable to read before you sleep. To do so, replace your smartphone with an alarm clock and go to bed an hour earlier.

Schedule a smartphone alarm every evening at 9 PM, which reminds you to switch off all your digital devices. Schedule a second alarm for 9:20 PM as a hard deadline and stick to it.

My bedtime ritual is reading. In bed, I can either sleep or read. That’s how I read one book per week for two years. The sooner you shut off your devices in the evening, the more you’ll learn.

Bottom Line

Following Bill’s principles isn’t complex, long, or exhausting.

On the contrary: These principles make reading fun and worthwhile.

  • Take side notes to engage with what you read.
  • Pick intentionally, and finish all the great books you read.
  • Make reading a bedtime ritual to have an undistracted reading hour.

Instead of feeling discouraged by all the ideas about what you could do to improve your reading, enjoy experimenting at your own pace. Keep the principles that work for you and screw the rest.

Choose one or two new reading habits until you find a pattern that helps you on your journey to health, wealth, and wisdom.

4 Steps To Transform Your Kindle Into A Learning Device

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Most people are e-reading enemies until they truly read their first e-book. I remained an enemy fifteen books in.

Building on my education expertise, I’d argue you can’t interact with your Kindle as you can with your physical book. You can’t dog-ear your favorite pages, scribble your questions in the margins, or sketch out the concept you just learned.

And while these arguments still hold true, technology-assisted learning makes most of them irrelevant. Now that I discovered how to use my Kindle as a learning device, I wouldn’t trade it for a paper book anymore.

Here are the four steps it takes to enrich your e-reading experience.

1. Highlight Everything You Want To Remember

No worries, I know researchers proved highlighting to be an ineffective learning tool. In fact, I join the canon against highlighting as a learning technique.

And yet, highlighting your e-book’s phrases is the necessary first step to create your learning experience. Here’s why.

First, highlighting will slow down your reading speed. This is a good thing, as researchers from San Jose State University have shown that people tend to skim through the pages when reading from a screen. But you don’t want to skim. You want to deep read the words in front of you.

Plus, your highlights form the original material for your learning experience. And this is also why, against common wisdom, you shouldn’t limit your highlights to a specific number. Instead, move your fingers over any piece of content you find worth remembering.

2. Cut Down Your Highlights In Your Browser

After you finished reading the book, you want to reduce your highlights to the essential part. Visit your Kindle Notes page to find a list of all your highlights. Using your desktop browser is faster and more convenient than editing your highlights on your e-reading device.

Now, browse through your highlights, delete what you no longer need, and add notes to the ones you really like. By adding notes to the highlights, you’ll connect the new information to your existing knowledge. You’re engaging in what learning theory calls elaborative rehearsal.

Using the Kindle Notes browser app saved me about an hour per book. Before, I browsed through all physical book pages to locate the pages where I added my thoughts. While this practice was fun, it didn’t add up to my learning experience.

3. Write a Quick Review To Summarize Your Insights

Now, trimmed down your highlights and elaborated on the best ones. Ideally, you only have the quintessence with some personal notes left. You’re all set for the learning fun.

The first thing you want to do is writing a quick review, for example, on Goodreads. While it’s nice to show you’re friends what you’ve read, this exercise is about testing what you remember.

Here are the three questions you want to recall from your memory:

  • How would you summarize the book in three sentences?
  • Which three things do you want to keep in mind?
  • Which concepts will you apply in your life based on your new knowledge?

Watch out to not copy/paste your highlights or building on other user’s reviews. If you don’t do the brain work yourself, you’ll skip the learning benefits of self-testing.

What you want to do instead is to retrieve the concepts and ideas from your own memory. By thinking about the concepts, testing yourself, you’re creating an effective learning experience.

4. Use Spaced Repetition to Remember What You Read

This part is the main reason for e-books beating printed books. While you can do all of the above with a little extra time on your physical books, there’s no way to systemize your repetition praxis.

But before I show you how you can connect your Kindle to a spaced repetition software, allow me to explain why this learning technique is so powerful.

Spaced repetition helps you prevent your brain from forgetting. Research has shown that repeating the same information ten times over different days is a better way to remember things than repeating the same information twenty times on a single day.

By revisiting the same things regularly at set intervals over time, you make the new information stick to your long-term memory. And that’s what makes spaced repetition one of the most effective learning methods there is.

Readwise (no affiliate, no partnership) is the best software to combine spaced repetition with your e-books. It’s an online service that connects to your Kindle account and imports all your Kindle highlights. Then, it creates flashcards of your highlights and allows you to export your highlights to your favorite note-taking app.

Buy Your Next E-Book While Reading A Great Book

All of the above is only useful if you read the right book at the right times. Books that hold the potential to improve your understanding of self, the world, or your entire existence.

And to find these kinds of books, you need to plan what you e-read.

Buying a book on your Kindle when you just finished a book and desperately need a new one is like going into a grocery store while starving. Everything will look delicious, and you will end up buying shit.

Out of the 129,864,880 books, there are, most will be, not worth your time.

So instead of following your Kindle book recommendations and compulsively buying a bestseller, keep ownership of your book selection. Goodreads, Gatesnotes, Ryan Holiday’s booklist, and Mortimer J. Adler’s appendix are a great place to start.

In Conclusion

While many people use e-readers these days, only very few turn them into learning devices. By following these steps, you’ll enrich your e-reading experience and get the most from what you read.

  1. Highlight everything you want to remember.
  2. Use the kindle notes page to cut down your highlights to their essentials.
  3. Write a quick Goodreads review to summarize your key learnings.
  4. Use Readwise to remember what you read.
  5. Buy your next e-book before finishing your current one.

Instead of feeling discouraged by all the ideas about how you can improve your learning experience, enjoy experimenting at your own pace. Keep the steps that work for you and screw the rest.

Choose one or two new e-reading habits until you find a pattern that helps you on your journey to health, wealth, and wisdom.

The Feynman Technique Can Help You Remember Everything You Read

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Books give you access to the smartest brains on our planet. And learning from the greatest thinkers and doers is your fast track to health, wealth, and wisdom.

Yet, reading per se doesn’t elevate your life. You can read 52 books a year without changing at all.

Social climber Dale Carnegie used to say knowledge isn’t power until it’s applied.And to apply what you read, you must first remember what you learned.

Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman (1918–1988) was an expert for remembering what he learned. Bill Gates was so inspired by his pedagogy that he named Feynman, “the greatest teacher I never had.”

Why Most People Forget What They Read

Most people confuse consumption with learning. They think reading, watching, or hearing information will make the information stick with them.

Unless you’ve got a photographic memory, no idea could be further from the truth.

To protect ourselves from overstimulation, our brains filter and forget most of what we consume. If we remembered everything we absorb, we wouldn’t be able to operate in our world.

But most people act like their brains would keep everything. They focus on reading a specific number of books a year. By focusing on quantity, instead of learning, they forget anything they read. Ultimately, for them, reading is mere entertainment.

It was Schopenhauer who already stated in the 1850s, â€œWhen we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process.” So to learn, we need to think by ourselves.

A person who reads without pausing to think and reflect won’t remember nor apply anything they read.

You can spot these people easily. For example, they say they’ve read a book, but lack the words to explain their takeaways. Likely, they haven’t learned a thing from reading it.

Mortimer Adler put it best when he wrote: â€œThe person who says he knows what he thinks but cannot express it usually does not know what he thinks.”

Luckily, there’s a way out of it. We can indeed learn from what we read. And we’ve known so for a long time.

How You Can Remember What You Read

Teaching is the most effective way to embed information in your mind. Plus, it’s an easy way to check whether you’ve remembered what you read. Because before you teach, you have to take several steps: filter relevant information, organize this information, and articulate them using your own vocabulary.

Feynman mastered this process like no other. The people of his time knew him for being able to explain the most complex processes in the simplest language. They nicknamed Feynman “The Great Explainer.”

If you’re after a way to supercharge your learning and become smarter, The Feynman Technique might just be the best way to learn absolutely anything. You can think of it as an algorithm for guaranteed learning.

The Feynman Technique is one method to make us remember what we read by using elaboration and association concepts. It’s a tool for remembering what you read by explaining it in plain, simple language.

Not only is the Feynman Technique a wonderful recipe for learning, but it’s also a window into a different way of thinking that allows you to tear ideas apart and reconstruct them from the ground up.

What I love about this concept is that the approach intuitively believes that intelligence is a process of growth, which dovetails nicely with the work of Carol Dweck, who beautifully describes the difference between a fixed and growth mindset. Here’s how it works.

The 4 Steps You Need To Take

In essence, the Feynman technique consists of four steps: identify the subject, explain the content, identify your knowledge gaps, simplify your explanation. Here’s how it works for any book you read:

#1 Choose the book you want to remember

After you’ve finished a book worth remembering, take out a blank sheet. Title it with the book’s name.

Then, mentally recall all principles and main points you want to keep in mind. Here, many people make the mistake to simply copy the table of content or their highlights. By not recalling the information, they skip the learning part.

What you want to do instead, is to retrieve the concepts and ideas from your own memory. Yes, this requires your brainpower. But by thinking about the concepts, you’re creating an effective learning experience.

While writing your key points, try to use the simplest language you can. Often, we use complicated jargon to mask our unknowingness. Big words and fluffy “expert words” stop us from getting to the point.

“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”

— Albert Einstein

#2 Pretend you are explaining the content to a 12-year old

This sounds simpler than it is. In fact, explaining a concept as plain as possible requires deep understanding.

Because when you explain an idea from start to finish to a 12-year old, you force yourself to simplify relationships and connections between concepts.

If you don’t have a 12-year old around, find an interested friend, record a voice message for a mastermind group, or write down your explanation as a review on Amazon, Goodreads, or Quora.

#3 Identify your knowledge gaps and reread

Explaining a book’s key points helps you find out what you didn’t understand. There will be passages you’re crystal clear about. At other points, you will struggle. These are the valuable hints to dig deeper.

Only when you find knowledge gaps — where you omit an important aspect, search for words, or have trouble linking ideas to each other — can you really start learning.

When you know where you’re stuck go back to your book and re-read the passage until you can explain it in your own simple language.

Filling your knowledge gaps is the extra step required to really remember what you read and skipping it leads to an illusion of knowledge.

#4 Simplify Your Explanation (optional)

Depending on a book’s complexity, you might be able to explain and remember the ideas after the previous. If you feel unsure, however, you can add an additional simplification layer.

Read your notes out loud and organize them into the simplest narrative possible. Once the explanation sounds simple, it’s a great indicator that you’ve done the proper work.

It’s only when you can explain in plain language what you read that you’ll know you truly understood the content.

The Takeaway

We all know from our own experiences that knowledge is useless unless applied. But by forgetting what we read, there’s no way to apply it to our lives.

Montaigne pointed to this fact in one of his Essays where he wrote:

We take other men’s knowledge and opinions upon trust; which is an idle and superficial learning. We must make them our own. We are just like a man who, needing fire, went to a neighbor’s house to fetch it, and finding a very good one there, sat down to warm himself without remembering to carry any back home. What good does it do us to have our belly full of meat if it is not digested, if it is not transformed into us, if it does not nourish and support us?

The Feynman Technique is an excellent way to make the wisdom from books your own. It’s a way to tear ideas apart and rebuild them from the ground up.

Here are the four steps you want to remember:

  • choose a book, get a blank page and title it
  • teach it to a 12-year old in plain, simple language
  • identify knowledge gaps and reread what you forgot
  • review and simplify your explanation (optional)

Do you want to connect with other learners? Join my E-Mail List.

Five Principles By Naval Ravikant That Will Teach You True Wealth

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When was the last time you came across a person that excited you so much you had to consume all their content?

Until this Sunday in my bathtub, I hadn’t read anything from Naval Ravikant. But after the first pages of the ‘Almanack of Naval Ravikant,’ I realized I just book-met one of the most interesting people alive.

The e-book kept me awake late that night. Monday, I spent half the day reading a 45-page interview and contemplating on his tweetstorms. Here are his key principles that will help you become wealthy.

“You’re never going to get rich renting out your time.”

What do you have in common with Oprah Winfrey, Elon Musk, and all the other billionaires on the planet?

Right, you live your life within the same time scale. No matter how wealthy you are, you can’t make a single day have 26 hours.

That’s why the most successful people on this planet say no to almost everything. Plus, truly rich people didn’t build their wealth by renting out their time.

Rich people got wealthy by establishing systems that make money independent from time.

Many people could live better lives if they made their time work for them, but continue to sell their limited hours. What they receive in return are limited rewards.

So, the questions are: How can you decouple money and time to create limitless wealth? How can you earn with your mind, not your time?

Build and sell products with no marginal cost of replication—things like books, media, movies, and code. You can multiply your returns without working more.

Owning your share of a scalable product is the ultimate goal.

Or, as Naval put it:

“You must own equity — a piece of a business — to gain your financial freedom.”

“Making money isn’t a thing you do — it’s a skill you learn.”

Most people aren’t smart about their finances and will never understand the fundamentals of money management.

It’s not because these people are too dumb to become smart investors. They’re just too lazy to learn.

Maybe you’ve built an emergency fund.

Maybe you know and track your net worth.

Maybe you automated your ETF savings plan.

And maybe you’ve done none of the above.

The thing is, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is whether you decide to learn about your financials. Because money management is a skill, anybody can learn. And once you get the fundamentals right, not much can go wrong.

Yes, financial Literacy is inherited. If your parents aren’t smart about money, the chances are high that you don’t know essential investing principles.

My parents don’t know much about investing. But I took masterclasses, asked smart people how they manage their money, and read finance books. I know from experience that money management is a skill anybody can learn.

No matter how far you’ve come on your financial journey, you can take your money management from good to great by reading applicable finance books, like ‘I will teach you to be rich’ by Ramit Sethi, or ‘The total money makeover’ by Dave Ramsey.

Like most things in life — when you commit to learning, you can master almost anything. Like Naval says,

“Getting rich is about knowing what to do, who to do it with, and when to do it. It is much more about understanding than purely hard work.”

“Seek wealth, not money or status.”

Money is just a means to transfer wealth and status just a label in our social hierarchy. You want neither of them.

I used to join the money and status game. Here’s what happened.

I bought the newest iPhone. But an expensive phone comes with the fear of a broken screen. So I also bought a fancy case and overpriced insurance. And yet, I worried about theft while traveling.

By focusing on money and status, we purchase things that add burdens to our lives. Ryan Holiday put it best; writing, “Mental and spiritual independence matters little if the things we own in the physical world end up owning us.”

You don’t want money or status. What you want is wealth because wealth is the ultimate freedom.

Here’s how Naval summarized it in one of his tweets:

“The purpose of wealth is freedom; it’s nothing more than that. It’s not to buy fur coats, or to drive Ferraris, or to sail yachts, or to jet around the world in a Gulf Stream. That stuff gets really boring and stupid, really fast. It’s about being your own sovereign individual.”

“The most important skill for getting rich is becoming a perpetual learner. You have to know how to learn anything you want to learn.”

No life skill can pay you greater dividends than learning how to learn. Yet, most people don’t know how to do it.

When researchers asked, “Do you study the way you do because somebody taught you to study that way?” 73% of students answered “No.”

The majority uses ineffective learning strategies and ignores that humans don’t absorb information and knowledge by reading sentences.

But it doesn’t have to stay this way.

Learning how to learn is a skill you can easily learn.

In the last years, I read books on learning and taught as a Teach for All fellow. Here are the best resources for learning how to learn:

  • The book ‘Make it stick.’ (336 pages; 7 hours to read)
  • The free Coursera course ‘Learning How to Learn.’ (15 hours to complete)
  • The learning section on ‘FS blog.’ (10 minutes per article)
  • The book ‘Mindsets.’ (320 pages, 6.5 hours to read)

And whatever you learn, keep Naval’s words in mind:

“Even today, what to study and how to study it are more important than where to study it and for how long. The best teachers are on the Internet. The best books are on the Internet. The best peers are on the Internet. The means of learning are abundant — it’s the desire to learn that is scarce.”

“Reading is faster than listening. Doing is faster than watching.”

In 2017, I read my first life-changing book. Since then, I have read at least one book a week.

Yet, when I stumbled upon this quote by Ratna Kusnur some time ago, I started to question the power of books: “Knowledge trapped in books neatly stacked is meaningless and powerless until applied for the betterment of life.”

Before building my first business, I had read dozens of books for each stage in the business lifecycle. But when it came to really starting, the biggest impact was just doing it.

Entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk found the right words: “But how many books from these ‘experts’ do you need to read before you can actually do something? You can only read so much, and at some point, you just have to do. Stop being a student, and start being an entrepreneur.”

Yes, reading is faster than listening. But doing and trying trumps theoretical lessons.

You’ll get farther bumping along on your own without any books than you ever will, reading a lot but not doing anything.

And yet, the combination of reading and doing trumps mere doing. Again, Naval:

“Read a lot — just read.”

On page 207, you’ll find a list of the books he recommends with short statements, why he recommends them. But before you dive into every single one, remember Naval who said reading is not about following the book advice of famous people:

“It’s really more about identifying the great books for you because different books speak to different people.”

If you blindly copy Naval’s principles, you missed the most important point.

You’re the only person that best knows how to live your life.

Try everything, but test it for yourself. Stay skeptical and discard what doesn’t serve you. Ultimately, only keep the principles that work for you.

How Social Media Captivates Your Mind

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Have you ever wondered how much lifetime you spend on social media?

According to this meta-analysis, it’s around two hours every day. And while you might think two hours a day is reasonable, the time adds up. By the age of 50, you’ll have spent more than 4 entire years on LinkedIn, TikTok, Snapchat, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or any social invention of the future.

“If you are not paying for the product, you are the product,” Jaron Lanier, a computer philosophy writer, said in a social media docudrama. In 2017, I co-founded a company against screen addiction and spent weeks researching addictive technology, persuasive design, and hooking mechanisms. And yet, Lanier’s words made me pause.

In our so-called attention economy, businesses make money by developing technology that attracts and retains attention for as long as possible. The more attention a social media platform can get from you, the more attractive its advertising space becomes, and the more it can charge its advertisers. We feel the platform is free to use, while we pay with our life’s limited attention.

This article is not going to teach you how to spend less time on your phone. Instead, it shows you the most common hooking mechanisms. Knowing them will help you identify platforms that use you as a product.

1) Red Notification Badges Alert Your Senses

20 years ago, Apple introduced with its Mac OS X the first version of the red notification badge — tiny, red, rounded, with numbers inside. Today, the red icon is almost everywhere. There are red dots next to the apps on your home screen and the horizontal toolbar of almost any social media platform.

When you see the red notification badge, you know there’s something you need to check: new activities, messages you need to reply to, people liking or commenting on your pictures, people who mentioned you, people that started following you, contact requests, or important announcements.

And the surprise factor behind the notification number makes these tiny red notification badges so powerful. You investigate because they could mean anything: a career-boosting email from your boss, a reminder for your hair dresser’s appointment today; a message from your crush; or a family member checking in with you.

This psychological strategy tells you that there’s information you want to know but requires you to click through to the site to find out more.

“Red is a trigger color,” design ethicist Tristan Harris said in an interview with the Guardian. “That’s why it is used as an alarm signal.” When you see such a badge, you need to click on it. It’s a visual form of screaming, shouting something like “hey, click on me; I’m important, you’re important.”

“I’ve met dots that existed only to inform me of the existence of other dots, new dots, dots with almost no meaning at all.”

— John Herrman in the New York Times

2) Pull-to-Refresh Works Like A Slot Machine

B.F. Skinner, a behavioral psychologist, experimented with mice on incentives and rewards in the 1950s. What he found led to a mechanism all social media platforms use: the intermittent variable reward.

Skinner discovered mice respond compulsively to random rewards. The mice would press a lever and sometimes got a small treat, other times a large treat, and other times nothing at all. Unlike the mice that received the same treat every time, the mice that received variable rewards pressed the lever compulsively.

Just like lab mice in Skinner’s box, we respond most voraciously to random rewards.

We crave predictability and struggle to find patterns, even when none exist. And that’s why we continue to pull-to-refresh. We don’t know when we’ll be rewarded. Most of the time, we won’t find anything noteworthy. But just like with gambling, we continue to refresh in the hope of a quick dopamine shot.

“You pull a lever and immediately receive either an enticing reward (a match, a prize!) or nothing.”

— Tristan Harris in one of his essays

3) There’s No End to Infinite Scrolling Design

As we’ve established, nothing holds our attention better than the unknown. And that’s why often find ourselves subconsciously scrolling through social media apps for entire hours. Translating scrolling time into scrolling distance, this report shows we scroll for more than 200 meters per day.

According to Nir Eyal, the author of two best-selling books on persuasive design, wrote in Psychology Today, “The infinite scroll is interaction design’s answer to our penchant for endlessly searching for novelty.”

One finger flick away, we continue searching in the uncertainty of what’s next. Using platforms that deploy infinite scrolls can feel like solving a mystery, looking for a final puzzle piece. And during the aimless search, we give away much of our lifetime.

“Time worth 200,000 human lifetimes are wasted on a daily basis due to our act of infinite scrolling.”

— Aza Raskin, creator of the infinite scroll in an interview

4) Push Notifications Recapture Your Attention

If you’ve watched the Social Dilemma of Netflix, you might remember the following scene: two friends talk to each other in a cafeteria. Then, one gets a notification and checks in with his phone. Shortly after, both friends stare at their screens and disengage with the physical world around them.

“If you disengage, you get peppered with little messages or bonus offers to get your attention and pull you back in.”

— Natasha SchĂŒll, author of Addiction by Design.

Push notifications remind you to go back to a social platform. Something ‘exciting’ happened, something you shouldn’t miss. A friend posted a photo or tagged you in a story. You can’t help yourself but see it.

“The vast majority of push notifications are just distractions that pull us out of the moment,” Justin Rosenstein, the co-creator of the like button, said in an interview with Vice. “They get us hooked on pulling our phones out and getting lost in a quick hit of information that could wait for later, or doesn’t matter at all.”

For you, push notifications are disturbing. For the platforms using them, they’re a great tool. According to a report from analytics company Urban Airship, sending out weekly notifications doubles the app-retention on mobile operating systems.

5) Algorithmic Filtering Monetizes Your Mood

Have you ever wondered why you spend more time on your newsfeed than you intended to? Algorithmic filtering is the answer. Platforms like Facebook developed machine learning algorithms that study your behavior on the platform.

So-called ‘Text mining’ enables social media platforms to analyze your emotions. It’s common practice to record what you like and record how long you hover over a certain post. In this way, platforms do not only know what you’re interested in but also what mood you are in.

This 2019 study from two German Universities concluded Facebook has a great interest in studying your behavior as detailed as possible. At best, you only see interesting information in your ‘Newsfeed.’ Filtering information to maximize your engagement stops you from leaving the app.

6) Social Validation Makes You Want To Stay

One of the most prominent features of social reward mechanisms is the iconic ‘thumbs up.’ According to this 2019 study, a ‘like’ demonstrates positive social feedback on one’s own post or gives another person such feedback.

A group of neuroscientists investigated our brain’s responses to social validation. Instagram users were confronted with their own posted pictures. These pictures were manipulated by being presented either with many or few ‘Likes.’ When the participants saw more likes on their pictures, their brains showed greater activity in neural regions for reward processing, social cognition, and imitation. And that’s why we keep posting our pictures.

“We were not evolved to get social approval being dosed upon us every 5 minutes.”

— Chamath Palihapitiya, former Facebook Executive

With each tweet and post, we wonder how much social validation we’ll receive. This goes as far as quantifying our social influences with tools like Klout. And above all, it means we adapt our public behavior on the platforms to receive the maximum amount of recognition.

Final Thoughts

Persuasive design and addictive technology will continue to exist. There will always be tools competing for your attention. Yet, knowing the key mechanisms behind social media platforms can help you identify software that takes away your time. Watch out for:

  1. Notification Badges
  2. Pull-to-Refresh Triggers
  3. Infinite Scrolling
  4. Push Notifications
  5. Algorithmic Filtering
  6. Social Validation Cues

And whatever you do, charge your phone outside of your bedroom and keep Tristan Harris words in mind:

“Once you start understanding that your mind can be scheduled into having little thoughts or little blocks of time that you didn’t choose, wouldn’t we want to use that understanding and protect against the way that that happens?”

Education Systems Are Sick. Here Are Three Suggestions for a Cure.

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“We may not see the future, but our students will and our job is to help them make something of it.”

— Sir Ken Robinson

The next generation faces climate change, digital disruption, and need skills like critical thinking, problem-solving, information literacy, and self-directed learning.

Yet, most schools haven’t changed since your parents went to school.

Our education system operates in an outdated framework. It’s like we’re desperately using Henry Ford’s assembly lines to create the future of mobility.

Unless we want our kids to blame us for pushing them through a sick system, we better change the frames in which schools operate.

Below are three instructive examples of how to improve school systems. By reading, you’ll understand how teachers, grading systems, and technology can drive us into a new education era.

1. Attract The Best Talent To Teaching

Future education systems attract the most qualified people, so children learn from the best.

Meanwhile, we’re personally familiar with the high percentage of teachers who don’t like teaching or even worse, who hate children. It’s those persons that trampled on the emotional entryway to our brains and devalued our respect for the teaching profession.

And as if bad memories weren’t enough, the current system doesn’t even attract fresh, ambitious talent. There are careers in the private sector, in politics, in the artistic field, but not in school.

I made a brave decision when I waived half my salary and ignored social expectations to teach at a school rather than to consult at McKinsey.

This decision shouldn’t have felt brave. A teaching career needs to shine as bright as working for the “Big Three” does to some business students.

How to attract the best talent into the teaching profession?

By professionalizing a teacher’s job. Here’s a checklist for decision-makers:

  • Adequate workspaces with quiet cubicles for undisturbed deep work and rooms for team meetings and parent-teacher conferences.
  • Proper work equipment, including laptops, WIFI, and stationery for lesson preparation and communication.
  • Core working hours that enable team-oriented work and free the teaching profession from the stigma of a part-time job.
  • 360° feedback systems that support teachers in their personal and professional development.
  • Career paths and opportunities besides teaching, similar to Singapore’s leadership and senior specialist tracks.

„Like any other profession, career advancement is only limited by your own performance and potential.”

— Ministry of Education, Singapore

Once enough teaching prospects apply, universities can pick the most suitable candidates based on leadership qualities needed for teaching, like decisiveness, self-awareness, courage, clarity, empathy, and the willingness to learn.

2. Measure Student’s Progress by Learning Instead of Grading

In a new education era, students focus on learning progress instead of grades.

When education scaled in the 20th century, grades were our best guess for performance measurement. Now, we know better.

“Schools reward students who consistently do what they are told. Academic grades correlate only loosely with intelligence. Grades are, however, an excellent predictor of self-discipline, conscientiousness, and the ability to comply with rules.”

— Eric Barker

The most successful students are those who understand what teachers want and follow the rules. A student who arranges his worksheets in the right order and nods silently often receives better marks than his peer, who asks critical questions and challenges the status quo.

Here’s the unwritten formula to grade success: “Accept the ideas of your superiors and implement them quickly, silently, and never critically question any teacher.”

With this mantra in mind, you might wonder how students are supposed to become tomorrow’s critical thinkers and creative minds.Good point.

It’s hard to foster creativity and critical thinking when grades reward those who follow the rules.

Besides, children read grades as a measurement for their intelligence. Many students derive or destroy their self-worth based on a grade (and their parents’ reaction to this grade).

By an overrated attribution of meaning, the next Thomas Alva Edison might lose her interest in science, concluding she’s not good in Chemistry.

“I’ve never been good in _______ (subject),”is the most noxious statement grading has produced.

A new education era replaces grades with learning progress.

How to measure a student’s learning progress?

By teaching kids to judge their progress based on learning instead of grades. Guiding questions could be:

  • What new did you learn today?
  • What have you done better than yesterday?
  • What mistake did you make that taught you something?
  • What’s the most helpful feedback you received today?
  • What did you try hard today?
  • What are you curious about, and what will you explore next?

Future schools build on the work of the American psychologist Carol Dweck who demonstrated the role of mindsets in students’ achievement.

Fixed Mindset vs. Growth Mindset (Source: Author based on C. Dweck)

“Test scores and measures of achievement tell you where a student is, but they don’t tell you, where a student could end up.”

— Carol Dweck

Photo by Daniel von Appen on Unsplash

3. Using State-of-the-Art Technology To Facilitate Learning

In a new education era, all children experience personalized learning.

Remember when you were sitting in a classroom, bored to death because some of your classmates didn’t get the concept? Or were you the one rushing and struggling, because you didn’t want the others to wait for you?

Unfortunately, classroom reality hasn’t changed much.

Schools expect students to learn at the same speed and with the same means. It doesn’t help that we batch children through our school system, assuming age is the most important thing they’ve in common.

Future education systems make use of technology to adapt learning to students’ individual needs.

How To Make Use of Technology?

By scaling best practices like BetterLesson or Teach to One.

Teach to One has digitized 10.000 math units as educational games and explanatory videos. In large rooms, children of different ages learn simultaneously while each student works on a device. Algorithms determine personalized daily schedules based on student’s learning needs, with each schedule and instruction plan adjusted to suit their ability and most successful learning method.

In classrooms with technology, teachers are learning guides, motivators, and coaches. Instead of keeping an entire class quite and busy, they focus on social interaction in 1:1 check-ins and smaller group settings.

“In Teach to One, you’re always doing something. Because there is no set curriculum, you can keep moving up. Once you know something, you can just go on to the next concept and figure that one out.”

— Student at Teach to One

The result: Within five years, these students learn 40–50% more mathematics than comparison students with conventional teaching methods.

Algorithm facilitated curricula can give students what they need in the way they need and when they need it.

“The future is called digital learning. It’s the most important innovation in education since the invention of the printing press.”

— Rafael Reif

The Bottom Line

Students, parents, teachers, community leaders, and decision-makers — together, we have to demand courageous and new solutions in education! Little will change if we stay quiet.

Let’s start by acknowledging all the great teachers who make the best of a diseased system. The ones who explore new ways of teaching, encourage students to ask critical questions and focus on learning progress.

Let’s help them by attracting more talent to teaching, shifting the grade focus to learning focus, and using the power of algorithms for student’s personalized learning experiences.

There’s no reason any student should not enjoy learning.

Sources

Barker, E. (2017). Barking up the wrong tree. The surprising science behind why everything you know about success is (mostly) wrong.Harper One.

Dweck, C. (2006). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.Random House.

Haynes, V. (1995). Being a Head of Class Isn’t Same as Having Inside Track on Life. Chicago Tribune.

Papageorge, N. W., Ronda, V., & Zheng, Y. (2019). The economic value of breaking bad: Misbehavior, schooling, and the labor market. National Bureau of Economic Research.

Robinson, K. (2010). Changing education paradigms.RSA Animate, The Royal Society of Arts.

Singapore Government (2020). Teaching Careers.

The Economist (2014). The digital degree. The Economist Group Limited.

9 Free Writing Tools That Helped Me Make $4,167 a Month

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Let’s get this clear: Your writing won’t bring you money because of these tools.

Sitting down to write will make your writing better. With quantity comes quality, my writing coach continues used to say. And she was right.

I wrote my first Medium article on March 27. Since then, I have published 55 pieces with a >80% curation rate. In August, I earned $4,167 on Medium alone.

Screenshot by Author

And while these tools won’t turn you into a professional writer, they will level up your writing process.

Whether you’re struggling with headlines, keeping a writing routine, or are non-native speakers, these priceless tools will help.

1 Manage Your Articles With Trello

Trello is an idea keeper, a writing tracker, and a motivation booster. Here’s how I use my Trello Board, from left to right:

  • Medium Article Ideas
  • Working Projects
  • Articles Submitted to Publications
  • Articles Rejected by Publications that need Reediting
  • Articles Published

When to use it:

Your Trello board will be useful on five occasions.

  1. When an idea strikes you. Add the title or the idea as a new card to your very left corner. You can also access it from mobile. Write down everything that comes to your mind.
  2. When you start writing. Because of all the article ideas on your board, you’ll never have to worry about a blank page in front of you. When you start a new story, pick one of your ideas, drag them to the “Working Projects” column, and start writing.
  3. When you hit publish. This is a motivational booster. It feels great to move a working project card to the “articles submitted” column. In the card add a date when you expect to hear back. Thereby, you’ll see when you need to follow-up or submit your piece to another publication.
  4. When the publication publishes or rejects your piece. Being rejected is part of every writer’s journey. Move your card to “rejected” and improve your piece. Then, give it a new shot at another publication.
  5. When a publication publishes your piece. Boom! You’ll move your card from “submitted to publication” to “published.”
Screenshot by Author

2 Improve Your Headlines with Co-Schedule

Most writers ignore this fact. They write great content and bad headlines. Yet, readers will never read your writing if your headline isn’t catchy.

Nobody will read your article if your headline sucks.

I ignored this fact until I completed Benjamin Hardy, PhD’s online course writing course. He takes 20–30 minutes every time he writes an article. He’d jot down 10–30 headlines before he starts to write.

Headline writing is a craft. It leaves the reader asking questions and wanting more.

Headlines consist of a combination of words. And while there are great articles on headline hacks, this tool does a quick check-up for you.

When to use it:

Opinions vary on this one. I love to find the headline before I start writing. It’ll help me frame my idea in various contexts. Moreover, a clear headline will help you structure the content.

Screenshot by Author

3 Format Your Headlines With Title Case Converter

After you mastered the balancing act of crafting a headline that grabs the reader’s attention, you’ll want to format it. Many publications reject articles because of their first impression.

When to use it:

I use Title Case Converter before I paste the headline into my story.

Screenshot by Author

4 Look Beyond Unsplash Pictures

After you’ve leveled up your writing with a great and proper formatted headline, you want to make sure you choose an awesome picture.

Search images by emotions instead of keywords. Pick a picture that supports the feeling you’re trying to convey. Tim Denning is an incredible picture picker.

When you analyze his images, you’ll see he searches beyond Medium’s built-in Unsplash feature. Here’s a list of links to free high-quality stock images:

When to use it:

After you set and formatted the headline, and before you start writing.

5 Use A Leftover Graveyard To Edit Without Mercy

Excellent writing requires ruthless editing. A leftover graveyard is a simple tool for producing clear, dense, and solid writing.

It’s a simple text document containing every phrase that wasn’t good enough to remain in your piece but was too beautiful to be deleted.

With every passage, ask yourself: Does this add value for the reader?

If the answer is yes, keep what you wrote. If the answer is nay, move sections or words to your graveyard. Every time you doubt whether you should delete a sentence, cut the sentence out, and paste it into your leftover document.

When to use it:

When you do the editing after you’ve written your article.

Screenshot by Author

6 Engage Your Reader With Thesaurus

If you’re also a non-native English speaker, a synonym finder is a pure piece of gold. It’ll find words outside of your vocabulary and give you suggestions on how to use them.

By adding variety to your writing, you’ll make your texts more interesting.

When to use it:

I use it at the same time as the leftover graveyard. In my first round of editing, I’d cut out everything that’s not needed and look for words that make the writing better.

Screenshot by Author

7 Run a Health Check With Grammarly

Grammarly has gained a lot of popularity within the last year. And it’s well-deserved. This writing tool checks your writing for grammar and punctuation mistakes.

And, in the pro-version, it also offers suggestions on how to replace your words.

Yet, don’t let Grammarly ruin your copy. It’ll sometimes be very strict on suggestions and make you want to reach the 99, even though a 78 score might be more authentic and humane.

When to use it:

To ensure it’ll not change your message, only use it after your round of self-editing. A grammar health check will give your piece the final touch.

Screenshot by Author

8 Do A Second Audit With The Hemmingway App

Even though I love Grammarly, it’s not perfect. So anytime I submit a piece, I’d make it run through the Hemingway App and look for phrases that are very hard to read.

Most of the times, the very hard to read phrases contain some logical errors. I’ll try to split them into two sentences or change the overall structure.

By focusing on clear, logical writing throughout your entire article, you’ll attract more readers, and, after all, take your writing to the next level.

When to use it:

After you’ve run your writing through Grammarly and before you hit publish.

Screenshot by Author

9 Analyze Your Articles With an Excel Sheet

I first learned about this sheet in Sinem’s Medium Writing Academy. It’s a self-made excel sheet you can use after you publish your article. It serves as an analyzer and a motivator.

This sheet helps you to do more of what works well. Moreover, this system helps you keep track of the number of articles published, your curation tags, and the publications you’ve published with. You can use your sheet to set your writing KPIs.

When to use it:

Once a publication published your piece add all the details to the sheet. Once a month, add the stats and the numbers.

Screenshot by Author

These 7 Books Will Improve The Way You Work

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Most people spend most of their life working.

Yet, only a few try to improve how they work.

By working only one percent better each day for one year, you’ll end up thirty-seven times better by the time you’re done. This is what James Clear calls the accumulative advantage:

“What begins as a small advantage gets bigger over time. One plant only needs a slight edge in the beginning to crowd out the competition and take over the entire forest.”

Reading the right books is the simplest and fastest way to get one percent better each day.

And by learning and applying strategies from the smartest minds, you can improve how you work step by step.

I regret I didn’t make reading a habit earlier. Yet, since I realized the books’ potential, I read every day. Since 2016, I’ve read 161 books.

Here is the list of seven books that will change the way you work, including why they‘re relevant and when you might want to read them.

Barking Up the Wrong Tree by Eric Barker

This one is a fantastic meta-analysis of the latest scientific findings related to the Western idea of “success.”

Barker combines storytelling with science and shares how you can apply his findings to your work life.

If you question whether you’re on your right career path and look for bulletproof advice, this one is for you.

Most of Barker’s lessons are so simple yet effective that you will be astonished.

“Great mentors and great teachers help you learn faster. Not only should you care about your mentors; the mentors who really make you succeed need to care about you. When you relate to someone you look up to, you get motivated. And when that person makes you feel you can do that too, bang-that produces real results.”

Deep Work by Cal Newport

This book will improve how you work on various levels. After reading Deep Work, I stopped procrastinating and quit Instagram and Snapchat.

Deep work is a must-read for anyone doing any kind of work as it teaches you how to produce your best output. It’s also an excellent read for anyone who struggles to concentrate and achieve great results when life is distracting.

Cal Newport provides concrete, actionable advice on how to focus and engage in, what he calls, deep work. By putting deliberate thought into what you do, you’ll be less inclined to procrastinate.

“Who you are, what you think, feel, and do, what you love — is the sum of what you focus on.”

Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday

I love Ryan Holiday. Especially his articles about managing your time management and developing better habits.

In Ego is the Enemy, he helps us to get a deeper understanding of who we are. After reading, you’ll understand the anatomy of our success and failure.

The book is not only packed with inspiration that will empower you to produce your best work, but also includes actionable advice on how to live your best life.

It’s an ideal read for anyone who is either early in her career or achieved success and wonders what to do next.

“There’s no one to perform for. There is just work to be done and lessons to be learned, in all that’s around us.”

Bad Blood by John Carreyrou

This one is quite different from the rest of the list, but there are a lot of life lessons to learn from this page-turner.

Bad Blood portraits the breathtaking rise and the surprising collapse of a unicorn startup in a way every reader can relate and form her own opinion.

I gasped out loud while reading this thriller-like business book as it shows what happens when a CEO and prioritizes ego above all else.

Bad Blood is worthwhile for anyone struggling with ethical questions or interested in the importance of honest work.

“The way Theranos is operating is like trying to build a bus while you’re driving the bus. Someone is going to get killed.”

The Making of a Manager by Julie Zhou

A consultant shared that she’d read and discussed this book at her Boston Consulting Group book club.

To be honest, I didn’t expect much. I thought it would go along the lines of other mediocre self-help fluff.

Turns out I was wrong.

Julie Zhou might turn into the Peter Drucker of our time. She shares everything from leading teams to managing oneself and nurturing culture.

Throughout the book, she asks powerful self-reflection questions and shares simple, yet applicable principles to excel at work.

This book is a growth bible for anyone who wants to step up from employee to a manager or recently got promoted to managing people.

“What opportunities do you see for me to do more of what I do well? What do you think are the biggest things holding me back from having greater impact?”

Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss

The title sounds like clickbait, I know. But this book delivers on its promises as you access the brains of world-class performers.

I’ve read all books of Tim Ferriss but found this by far the most inspiring piece. Tools of Titans is an encyclopedia for personal growth and productivity.

The world-class performers in this book share all their strategies on how to become healthy, wealthy, and wise. This sounds like too much to cover in a single book, but the titans deliver the value.

“Losers have goals. Winners have systems.”

Mindset by Carol Dweck

If you’re only going to read one book on the list, you may want to choose this one. Why? It covers how to program your mind to excel at anything.

Dweck demonstrates how success in work, sports, and almost every area of human endeavor is influenced by how we think about our talents and abilities.

This book is a must-read for every person looking for personal growth. After reading this book, you’ll be able to integrate a growth mindset into your life, and you’ll see mistakes as valuable learning opportunities.

“No matter what your ability is, effort is what ignites that ability and turns it into accomplishment.”

Once you get enough of an answer to act on, stop reading, and start doing.

Applied knowledge is power.