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📚 Welcome back to The Reading Life!
The ten books I’m going to recommend tonight are for people who want to become unreasonably successful. Not just the “above average, maxing out the ol’ 401K, staying in the odd 5-star hotel every once in a while” kind of successful.
We’re talking: world-changing discoveries; massive industry-wide disruptions; soaring artistic achievements; life-changing contributions to human civilization and shifts in how people live their everyday lives on this planet. That kind of successful.
Or, if that doesn’t light you up (and hey, I totally understand), you can also use the strategies and advice in these books to help you get where you’re going just a little bit faster.
After reading these ten books, my brain has been completely rewired. I don’t look down on anyone who just wants a “normal” life, but I’ve also massively expanded the scope of my ambitions. I see opportunity, potential, and possibility everywhere. And I have the motivation, drive, and the sense of urgency necessary to take everything I want in this life.
These books did not let me sit still, and I credit several of them for making possible the life I live now. These books and what I’ve learned from them gave me this life, and they gave me the ability to make it real. I know they can do the same for you.
Now, before our coffees get cold, let’s hit the books!
Tonight, Inside The Reading Life, We’ve Got:
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“The purpose of life is simply to be alive. It is so plain, and so simple, and so obvious. Yet everyone rushes around in a great panic, as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.”
“Worrying about it now isn't going to change a damn thing. I've either done everything I could to get ready, or I haven't.”
Inside my private business mastermind, Creator Launch Academy, we’re tackling one nonfiction book per month and implementing its lessons inside our businesses.
This month’s book is Tools of Titans, by Tim Ferriss, a great book about the tactics, routines, and habits of billionaires, icons, and world-class performers.
Click here to claim your free trial, and join our business book club for educational content creators!
After achieving my (somewhat meaningless) goal of reading 1,000 books before I turned 30, I set a new (also meaningless but cool) goal of reading 10,000 books. As of today, I’ve read exactly 1,473 books, including 19 books so far this year, and if you’re interested, here’s my full Reading List.
“For unusual success, wide experimentation is followed sooner or later by extreme focus, and then by blazing a wholly original trail.
Ultimately, self-belief needs to be specifically attached to achieving an unusual goal. You cannot reasonably believe in yourself except in the context of what you want to achieve; but if you can give yourself a unique worthwhile mission - one that plays to your strongest suit - it is much easier to come to believe in yourself.
Even if there is no initial generic self-belief, it is never too late to define a bold target and come to believe it is attainable.
Belief in the destination can become belief in the self.”
Richard Koch also wrote the wildly influential book, The 80/20 Principle, and in this book he traces the path of 20 “unreasonably” successful people, identifying and expanding upon the 9 unique landmarks that were central to their extreme success.
The 20 “players” are gathered together from every corner of the world and all fields of human endeavor, including people like Leonardo da Vinci, Steve Jobs, Marie Curie, Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela, Viktor Frankl, Albert Einstein, and even Paul of Tarsus.
Their stories are incredibly diverse and wildly divergent, but they share common themes and similarities, and Koch draws them out as he expands on the importance of setting Olympian Expectations for oneself, cultivating delusional Self-Belief, engineering Transforming Experiences, along with 6 other attitudes and strategies.
One thing is made abundantly clear in this book, and that is that if you want to become unreasonably successful, you not only have to think differently than regular people, you also have to think and behave differently than conventionally successful people.
To be “successful” in the eyes of the world is relatively straightforward, even boring. But to be unreasonably successful takes an unreasonable approach.
It’s a lot more fun, exciting, and profitable than most conventional ideas of success, yes, but it takes dedicated, sustained thought, it requires courage and drive, and it requires that you become aware of the unique advantages you do possess. It also requires that you constantly look out for ways to exploit those unique advantages.
Conventional success is fine, by the way! But society’s definition of success has already been clearly mapped. And it’s just like Carl Jung said: If the path ahead of you is clear, then it’s a sure sign that you’re on someone else’s.
Difficulty Rating: Easy
Why It’ll Help You Become Unreasonably Successful: Conventional success is relatively straightforward. Boring, even. But if you want extreme, unreasonable success, you have to be willing to be extreme. This book lays out nine different ways you can outperform even “successful” people.
“Going 10x means you’re living based on the most intrinsic and exciting future you can imagine. That 10x future becomes your filter for everything you do, and most of your current life can’t make it through that 10x filter.”
Total transformations are never linear, and they are rarely obvious. It requires something completely different than what came before, a radical change in behavior and thinking, and if you're not consciously aiming for these types of 10X transformations, you'll never experience them.
10X Is Easier Than 2X is not a difficult book to read or understand, and once you see what Hardy's writing about, you can't unsee it. The goal of the book is to inspire entrepreneurial leaders to aim for "breakthrough" goals, not merely "incremental" goals (2X) - which will never lead to radical transformation.
One of the major themes of the book is that, in aiming for these kinds of 10X transformations, you'll have to let go of about 80 percent of what you're doing now. What got you here won't get you there, and as you keep ascending higher and higher in developing your own “Unique Ability,” you'll have to keep zoning in on the 20% that will get you to that next level.
As you progress, this kind of big-picture thinking is likely to start a spin-cycle inside your brain as you start to get a handle on all the possibilities this idea opens up for you to expand your four most important freedoms: Time Freedom, Financial Freedom, Relationship Freedom, and Purpose Freedom.
It's those four fundamental freedoms that you'll need to keep expanding if you want to keep making progress. The projects and purposes you devote yourself to, the people you choose to surround yourself with while you do, the money it'll take to make them real, and the time it'll take to bring it all together.
This all must seem like a lot more work, but it's actually less. It's easier than going 2X, and that's because we're talking about a total reimagining of business as usual, not something that's "a little bit better" than what came before.
Difficulty Rating: Easy
Why It’ll Help You Become Unreasonably Successful: This book will increase the “expected value” of your success. Like Arnold Schwarzenegger says, shooting for the small goal puts the big goal automatically out of reach. In the same way, even attempting to go 10X means that, even if you fall short, you still succeed at a higher level than if you were “just” aiming for a 2X improvement.
“Most people have the wiring in their brains messed up. They’ve decided to doubt the wrong things, such as their potential, the availability of breakthrough opportunities, and their chances for making a quantum leap. For now, if you must doubt something, doubt your limits.”
This book has one of the highest ideas-per-page ratios of any book I’ve ever read, which is always a pleasant surprise, since a lot of nonfiction books probably could have been blog posts. They may have 1-3 main ideas in the whole book, stretched to 300 pages just to make the publisher happy.
However, there is no wasted wisdom in this one - it’s full of fantastic stuff that can help you make a tremendous amount of progress in a very short time.
The Quantum Leap Strategy is tiny, clocking in at just 40 pages or so - haters might call it a pamphlet. But anyway, I took five pages of notes from the thing, and Dr. Pritchett had me thinking completely differently about my potential, what’s attainable, and what I would have to adjust about my approach in order to achieve my 5-year goals in six months.
None of it is overcomplicated, and even some of my notes may seem stupidly simple. Almost obvious. Like, of course you should start thinking about what you actually want, not just what’s reasonable for you to expect. Of course you should think big, aim high, and take massive swings. Of course you should doubt your limits, not your potential.
But there’s something about the clarity and power with which these very simple (yet profound) ideas are expressed that made them really connect with me.
Out of the 40 pages, I took five pages of notes, like I said, but I probably came away with at least 100+ ideas for how I could grow my business, make more money, fill my life with more adventures and memorable experiences, and make more progress in 12 months than most people will make in their entire lives.
Give this one a shot. It could do the same for you.
Difficulty Rating: Easy
Why It’ll Help You Become Unreasonably Successful: Similar to Dr. Hardy’s book above, this book assumes that the “default” path is merely a suggestion. You can dramatically shorten the timelines to achieving your goals if you start to think bigger, think differently, and commit to taking massive action.
“Go to your calendar and block off all the time you need to accomplish your One Thing. Do this every single day, never letting a day go by where you’re not making significant progress toward the accomplishment of your biggest goals.”
Never do the second most important thing first. That’s just such simple, fantastic advice, and if I had to boil down this book to just one sentence, that would be it.
Your One Thing is whatever it is absolutely critical for you to do next, and ideally it would be in service of your larger One Thing, which would be what you’d like your entire life to be about.
For example, my One Thing is reading (or, at least that’s one major focus of my life), and so any time that I spend doing something else besides reading is time that I am never going to get back, that I could have used to advance in the area that’s most important to me – reading. Your One Thing could be baseball, or winning a sales competition at your firm, or painting.
Whatever it is, everything else is a distraction.
Keller comes through with some excellent practical tips on how to focus on your One Thing and fight distraction – everything from time blocking and batching, to a discussion of hyperbolic discounting.
Basically, you want to create a sense of urgency to get the important things done now, and how you do that is to carve out significant blocks of time during your day at which times you only work on your One Thing.
Batching is also incredibly useful, by which is meant doing all similar tasks at once, then moving on. For example, batching could include making all your telephone calls at once instead of spreading them out throughout the day.
All that being said, it’s a real stress-killer to realize that you’re never going to get everything done that you want to get done, and to be okay with that. More important than getting to the end of your to-do is getting to the end of your life with the fewest regrets possible.
See, what’s most important isn’t always obvious, so many people go through their entire lives never differentiating between the essential and the trivial. Don’t let it become too late. Attack your One Thing, over and over, relentlessly, give up the idea of perfection or competition, and optimize your life for the fewest number of regrets at the end.
Difficulty Rating: Easy
Why It’ll Help You Become Unreasonably Successful: Think about the sun and how it warms the planet each day. Now, think about the sun’s rays, concentrated through a magnifying glass. The sun, shining naturally, keeps Earth’s temperature steady and pleasant. But filtered through a magnifying glass, the sun’s rays can ignite a raging forest fire. That’s the power of focus. That’s the power of The ONE Thing.
“Relentlessly apply the principle to every important sphere of your life. Most of the friends you have aren’t the best friends for you; most of the exercises you’re doing in the gym aren’t gaining you muscle; most of the tasks you complete at work aren’t leading you to the achievement of your biggest goals.”
The “Pareto Principle,” otherwise known as the 80/20 Rule is widely recognized today, but there are few better introductions to this extremely – and I mean extremely – powerful idea than Koch’s book.
It’s more business-oriented, but there are applications of the principle available in literally every facet of our lives, which is something that’s rare in itself, for one principle to be so impactful.
Briefly stated, the Pareto Principle is the observation that 80 percent of your results will come from just 20 percent of your actions, which of course means that if you want to maximize your effectiveness and utility, you should focus as much as you can on the 20 percent that is going to drive most of your results and ignore or delegate the rest.
In business, this means that 20 percent of your customers are bringing in 80 of your total revenue. In your relationships, it means that 20 percent of the people you associate with are bringing you 80 of the fulfillment you experience.
Originally, it was an Italian economist, Vilfredo Pareto who noticed that 80 percent of the land in Italy was owned by 20 percent of the landowners.
However, you can take this idea even further, and keep applying the Pareto Principle to the principle itself! You’ll notice as well that 20 percent of the 20 percent is giving you most of the results as well. These numbers aren’t absolute or anything – there are 99/1 relationships, 85/15 relationships, etc. – but the principle stands up remarkably well.
Whenever you find a principle this powerful and this robust, you’re doing yourself a disservice if you don’t capture as much of the potential value on offer as you can. Apply it to your business, your investments, your time, your friends, your life. It will change everything for you.
Koch book is definitely one of the 20 percent of books that will give you 80 percent of results in life, although I’ve heard some people say that you can apply the principle to his book too! Meaning that 20 percent of the book will give you 80 percent of its total value.
Difficulty Rating: Easy
Why It’ll Help You Become Unreasonably Successful: “Regular” successful people are all doing the same things to get ahead, but they’re not taking the time in advance to figure out how to apply the most leverage when it comes to achieving their goals. With this book, you can find the real shortcuts hiding in plain sight.
“The overwhelming reality is: we live in a world where almost everything is worthless and a very few things are exceptionally valuable."
The main thrust of Essentialism (both the book and the idea itself) is that almost everything is completely worthless.
Discerning the "vital few" from the "trivial many" is going to be one of the most in-demand skills in the economy of the future, and those who can do this well are going to reap the majority of the rewards and experience the highest possible meaning in their lives, while the rest of us are drowning in distraction.
One of the most famous Essentialists in history, Michelangelo, once said that he "saw the angel in the marble and carved until he set him free." In a similar way, we are the sculptors of our own lives, the creators of our own meaning.
The perfect form of our lives is hidden inside the marble of all the distractions, detours, and trivialities of the modern world, and we have to be artists; we have to be disciplined in carving away everything that's stealing our time, focus, and attention away from what we want our one and only lives to be about.
Difficulty Rating: Easy
Why It’ll Help You Become Unreasonably Successful: Your time is limited. It’s also extremely valuable, and you can’t waste it doing low-value tasks that aren’t meaningfully moving you to your desired future. This book will help you identify the highest-leverage actions you can take today to bring that desired future closer, faster.
“Wind extinguishes a candle and energizes fire. Likewise with randomness, uncertainty, chaos: you want to use them, not hide from them. You want to be the fire and wish for the wind.”
The term antifragile is meant to refer to something that “gains from disorder,” or shocks, adverse events, etc. Along a spectrum, you’ve got fragile, robust, and antifragile. For example, a politician would be “fragile” in the event of a massive scandal, and it could very well mean the end of his or her political career.
Not true for someone like a construction worker or a security guard, who, even if they do find themselves in the middle of some massive, negative publicity event, they can fairly easily find another job, even if they have to move three towns over. They are robust.
The term antifragile could apply to someone like, say, an author or artist, who, even in the middle of a public-relations shitstorm, would likely find themselves exposed to a massive new audience of people who will end up buying their books, sharing their art, talking about them, and making them even more famous.
The author or the artist would be antifragile because they would profit from negative events like this, and Taleb is saying that there are entire categories of human existence where this same principle operates - and where we can tap into it to get everything we ever wanted.
Difficulty Rating: Hard
Why It’ll Help You Become Unreasonably Successful: So much of success comes down to positioning. Putting yourself in the right places to accelerate your progress, utilize your unique advantages, and get the most reward for the least effort. This book will help you think strategically about moves like these, thereby achieving greater results in life than most people.
“If I accept average advice from average people living average lives, can I expect to be anything but average?”
This is one business book that I’ve read multiple times, and it was the first to get me to realize that named days of the week aren’t even real.
I mean, no other animal on earth knows the difference between a Monday and a Friday, except for the ones who find themselves chained to desks five days a week.
Unscripted is about escaping the script that society has written for you, and about playing the part that you actually want to play instead.
It’s about life, liberty, and the pursuit of entrepreneurship, and owning 100% of your time, not just the scraps that are tossed down to you from what’s left over after serving the interests of people who will never truly care about your life as much as you do.
How fast can you become free? Well that’s one of the many things that I love about MJ DeMarco’s books. He’s not selling six-week dreams or mountains of riches without work. The “Fastlane” to success and freedom will take most people 5-10 years.
Compared to the 40+ years that most people spend desperately trying to get ahead on more traditional career paths, I was willing to give the Fastlane a shot. But I also learned something critical, and relatively quickly.
It was that total freedom may be years away when you’re starting from zero, but when you’re headed in that direction and never stop, and when you want to be free more than anything…then you already are.
Difficulty Rating: Easy
Why It’ll Help You Become Unreasonably Successful: If you think like everybody else, and make the same choices as everybody else, you’re going to have the same quality of life as everyone else. Look around you, though. Do you want that? No? Then read this book.
“It’s like we all automatically accept that the ‘right’ way is, inevitably, the harder one. In my experience this is hardly ever questioned.
Indeed, if you do challenge this sacred cow, it can be uncomfortable. We don’t even pause to consider that something important and valuable could be made easy.
What if the biggest thing keeping us from doing what matters is the false assumption that it has to take tremendous effort?
What if, instead, we considered the possibility that the reason something feels hard is that we haven’t yet found the easier way to do it?”
This is the follow-up to McKeown’s excellent book, Essentialism, which breaks down the art of stripping down your activities and efforts to what is, well, essential, and leaving it at that.
We live in an age of limitless possibility and opportunity, but the price we pay for that is full consciousness of everything that we could do but don’t have time for.
Essentialism was about simplifying our schedules and strategies, and Effortless is about reducing complexity and hardship.
Some things work the best and can help you attain the best results because they are hard, such as, say, doing squats, as opposed to leg extensions at the gym. There’s no question that squats deliver the most impressive gains in muscle mass as opposed to leg extensions, but squats are also really, really hard, which is why most people don’t do them.
However, equating difficulty with effectiveness is a dangerous error, says McKeown. Just because something is hard, doesn’t mean that it’s the best way to do things. What if our most challenging tasks could be made easier? That’s what Effortless is about.
The hero is not the person who stayed at the office until midnight, slaving away at an impossible task; the hero is the person who left early because they found an easier way to achieve the same results. Discern the difference between laziness and effectiveness, and effortless results become possible for you.
Difficulty Rating: Easy
Why It’ll Help You Become Unreasonably Successful: If you train yourself to be able to do hard things, you’ll have an unmistakable advantage in life. But what if you were able to make those hard things effortless? Or even unnecessary?
“The 10X rule assumes that the target is never the problem; the problem is always something to do with the amount of action you’re taking to achieve it, or the kinds of actions you’re performing in order to get there.”
It takes a certain personality type to engage most effectively with a book like this, but if you benefit from a “straight-talk, hard line” approach to success and personal development, Grant Cardone could be someone you should listen to.
This book is mostly about taking massive action on massive goals, and thinking much, much bigger than you’ve ever thought before.
That sounds like hype-y guru-talk, I know, but I stand by it. There’s something to be said for just throwing every single thing you have into accomplishing your biggest and most far-out goals, and it’s in the process of that where you get to experience a happiness and a fulfillment like no other.
For me, it’s in the action and the striving itself that the happiness and fulfillment is to be found, and when you know you’ve given 100% of your effort to something, you almost can’t help but feel amazing.
Quotes from the book are sometimes over the top, and it’s absolutely not for everybody, but this is one of those books that really helped me see what was possible for me in my own life and to stop selling myself short.
Difficulty Rating: Easy
Why It’ll Help You Become Unreasonably Successful: This book will give you the motivation to put 10X the effort and focus into achieving what you say you want in this life. Sometimes, that’s what it takes. You just have to identify the price of success, the price of achieving your desires, and then resolve to pay it.
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OK, that’s it for now…
I’ve got plenty more excellent book recommendations coming your way soon though!
There’s also my YouTube channel, where I publish book reviews, reading updates, and more each week.
And if you want to learn how I’ve built an audience of 180,000+ followers across social media, became a full-time creator, and how I’m rapidly growing my audience and scaling my profits in 2025, join us inside Creator Launch Academy and that’s exactly what I’ll teach you — we’d love to have you in the community!
With that said, I hope you enjoyed this edition of The Reading Life, and enjoy the rest of your day!
Until next time…happy reading!
All the best,
Matt Karamazov
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