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12 Books - Business, Philosophy, Psychology, Self-Help, Productivity - to Stimulate Your Mind
Matt Karamazov
September 04, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 15 minutes
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Good evening! I hope you got lots of reading done today or, if you’re just waking up, that you get to enjoy a few pages from a great book very soon.
I’ve got a somewhat shorter, punchier newsletter today, where I’m going to pass along the 12 complete book summaries/notes I’ve just updated on Patreon.
As you may know, I’ve been taking notes on every single book I’ve read since 2014 (more than 1,300+ now!), and my Patreon is where you can get all my book notes from those 1,300+ books for just $1.
Here are the new notes I’ve updated so far this month:
The Secret Life of Books, by Tom Mole
Dude, Where’s My Car-tharsis?, by Phil Stark
The Science of Powerful Focus, by Peter Hollins
The 21 Success Secrets of Self-Made Millionaires, by Brian Tracy
Day Trading Attention, by Gary Vaynerchuk
Change Your Paradigm, Change Your Life, by Bob Proctor
Slow Productivity, by Cal Newport
Burn the Boats, by Matt Higgins
Exactly What to Say, by Phil M. Jones
On the Nature of Things, by Lucretius
Consider the Lobster, by David Foster Wallace
Eastern Wisdom, Modern Life, by Alan Watts
Those are the new book notes for this month (I’m going back and updating ALL my earlier notes so they’re more comprehensive, easier to read, and just all-around more valuable for you), and I’ve got more coming very soon.
I’d also like to thank my current Patreon supporters, including Aaron and Dale who just joined, and my friends Will and Jeremy who have been huge supporters of me for YEARS.
Literally years.
As in, we started off strangers who connected over books, and now we’re honest-to-goodness, real friends.
So yeah…here are the 12 newest book notes (readers of my newsletter get these 12 for free), and the rest of the 1,300+ book notes and summaries are on my Patreon. And now…
Let’s hit the books!
“Even if we can’t recall most of what we’ve read, the presence of the books serves as an aide-memoire, a reassuring sign that not everything we’ve read is lost. Books on the shelves are sandbags stacked against the floodwaters of forgetting.”
“No matter how elaborate the cage, ultimately we have the key within ourselves.”
“Overcoming something that you struggled with a little is an amazing feeling - easily finishing a task does nothing for your confidence, and being stopped cold by another task is far too discouraging.”
“Here is a great rule for success: Your life only gets better when you get better. And since there is no limit to how much better you can become, there is no limit to how much better you can make your life.”
“If there’s attention somewhere, it’s possible to tell your story there in a way that makes people want to buy.”
“The libraries are full of knowledge, but knowledge in itself is not power. If it were, all the librarians would be multimillionaires.”
“This philosophy rejects busyness, seeing overload as an obstacle to producing results that matter, not a badge of pride.
It also posits that professional efforts should unfold at a more varied and humane pace, with hard periods counterbalanced by relaxation at many different timescales, and that a focus on impressive quality, not performative activity, should underpin everything.”
“To accomplish something great, you have to give yourself no escape route, no chance to ever turn back. You throw away your backup plans and you push forward, no longer bogged down by the infinite ways in which we hedge our own successes.”
“The worst time to think about the thing you are going to say is in the moment you are saying it. This book prepares you for nearly every known eventuality and provides you with a fair advantage in almost every conversation.”
"But whilst the thing we long for is lacking, that seems good above all else. Thereafter, when we've touched it, something else we long for."
“We who are well off should be willing to share more of what we have with poor people not for the poor people's sake but for our own; i.e., we should share what we have in order to become less narrow and frightened and lonely and self-centered people.”
“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.”
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OK, that’s it for now…
More excellent book recommendations coming your way soon!
And if you’d like me to buy you a new book every month, (and rapidly scale your personal brand while earning more money in your business), click to join us inside The Competitive Advantage - we’d love to have you!
With that said, I hope you enjoyed this edition of The Reading Life, and enjoy the rest of your week!
Until next time…happy reading!
All the best,
Matt Karamazov
P.S. Whenever you're ready, here are three more ways I can help you:
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