Five Books Friday

"Once you learn to read, you will be forever free." -Frederick Douglass

Author

Matt Karamazov
November 17, 2023 • Estimated Reading Time: 38 minutes

YOUTUBE 📚 THE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE 📚 PATREON

Read on The Reading Life.com | Read Time: ~20 Minutes (Skimmable)

đź“šHey, good evening!

You may notice a theme running through today’s books:

Time.

All of them deal with the subject of time in some way, but one of them approaches the topic by throwing traditional time management on its head (Book #1).

Another deals with deep time on the scale of the cosmos (Book #3).

A third deals with our conceptions of Self at various points in our lives and how to get closer to our “Ideal Self” (Book #5).

It’s no coincidence, naturally, that my new online course, Time Mastery, is coming out next Friday!

I’ll have the preorder link for you on Monday (at 85% off), but I thought I’d “warm you up a little bit” first by sharing a few of my favorite books about time.

There are plenty of great ones that I don’t mention today, but I’ll be including summaries and notes from 30 of the best books about time as one of the bonuses when Time Mastery comes out.

Unrelated, but the clock is also ticking for when my YouTube channel crosses 1,000 subscribers! We’re almost there!

I’m literally at 989 subscribers as I type this…who will be my 1,000th subscriber?

Alright, enough of that. Time for the books!

Today we've got...

  • 📚 An introduction to today's "Five Books"

  • đź—¨ The book quote of the week

  • 📢 My personal news, along with the best of what I'm reading and sharing right now

  • 🎙️ Two online creators you need to know about

  • 📩 Five of my favorite newsletters that I always open

  • 📖 A new book alert: featuring a book containing 100 “recipes” for detoxing your mind, body, and soul, and pursuing your ambitions.

  • 📜 The latest book breakdown from the Stairway to Wisdom

  • 🚀 “Implementation intentions” and why they’re crucial to habit formation and productivity

  • 🎥 You don’t actually want freedom. You want THIS.

  • ✍️ 4 must-read psychology books that most people have never heard of

  • 🧠 How I was able to read (and mostly retain) 1,200+ books in the last ten years

  • đź“š My top 5 book recommendations this week

  • 🏆 A special gift for reading all the way to the end

In one sentence…

Four Thousand Weeks is one of my favorite time management books of all time (I’m not alone in this), and he takes the radical position that you’ll never get everything done, and the very attempt is ruining our lives.

Moonwalking with Einstein was one of my first “favorite books” (I read it way back in 2014), and it’s an exciting, fascinating book about the science of remembering and why, at the end, our memories are all that we will have.

Cosmos is another early favorite about the exploration of space, the chemical composition of other planets, and what it all means for this one.

Make Time is a great, tactical time management book containing 87 tips for taking back control of your schedule (and your life).

Be Your Future Self Now is about the science of prospection, and how we can use it to shape our behaviors in the present moment, leading us to get closer and closer to our idealized Future Self.

Here in this email are summaries of each book, along with a sample of my best notes, and if you want my complete set of notes on these books, you can find them on my  Patreon .

Pro Learning Tip:

 Getting a membership to Medium is one of the best investments I've ever made in my continuing education. The quality of the writing on Medium is superb, and some of the smartest, most interesting thinkers publish there regularly.

“A lot of what mentors do is to teach us what excellence looks like, day by day.”

-David Brooks, The Second Mountain

1) Another shameless plug! Time Mastery comes out next Friday at 85% off!

There. I said it. Expect to be hearing a lot about it next week, along with sample videos and lessons from the course.

This course is going to be transformational for the right person. But hey, enough said until next week.

2) I always like finding people who combine two seemingly incompatible things into something even greater than the sum of its parts, and so I appreciate what Jon Finkel is doing with his newsletter, Books and Biceps. 

It’s well-written, and well-thought-out, and it just serves as more proof that your body doesn’t have to come at the expense of your mind - and vice versa. You can check it out here if you’re interested.

If you don’t know already, my Reading Challenge is in support of First Book, a children’s educational charity, but you don’t have to donate in order to take part.

The whole idea is just to set a personal reading goal and try to reach it! And if you feel like donating to help kids gain access to books and educational opportunities, that would be great too!

You can join the Reading Challenge here.

I'm also listening to  Living Untethered, by Michael A. Singer on Audible. It’s read by him, which is usually what I look for in an audiobook! I don’t know, it just adds a little something to have the author narrate his own book.

Nowadays, I listen to about 3-4 audiobooks a month, and I always listen to them on Audible. No other audiobook service even compares. You can also get a 30-day free trial  right here .

You know I love to support new and old friends of mine who are doing awesome things (or simply amazing people I've stumbled upon around the internet), and so here are a few great people you should know about:

1) First up, we’ve got Nick Gray, author of The 2-Hour Cocktail Party, and someone who tires me out just by reading about his busy social schedule.

He’s a walking reminder to get out more, sure, but he’s also an incredibly savvy entrepreneur who has built and sold 2 multi-million dollar companies, Museum Hack and FDS Avionics.

His TEDx talk about how he learned to love museums is worth watching too.

You can follow him on X (I do) for tips on meeting new people and growing your career, and if you’re looking to tone down the negativity on your newsfeed, I highly recommend stopping in and saying hi!

2) Next up is Josh Spector, who simplifies growth for 50,000+ entrepreneurs through his newsletter, podcast, and Skill Sessions. 

He’s actually the one who inspired me to do some “Free Coaching” on X every once in a while and answer people’s burning questions related to reading/business/etc. His free coaching sessions are worth stopping in for too!

Josh also has a newsletter, For the Interested, that I rarely, ever miss. It’s a one-paragraph newsletter that shows you simple ways to produce, promote, and profit from your creations based on how others have done so.

He’s also available for clarity calls to discuss whatever’s holding your business back.

At the very least, you can follow him on X, where he shares a ton of great stuff for creators on how to build their businesses and brands. I’ve profited from his posts immensely and always look forward to them!

Do you know someone I should know?

I’m always looking to connect with accomplished, inspirational, and good-hearted people who share the same interests that I do…especially books!

So if you have a favorite author, influencer, creator, etc. that you think I might love to meet (and maybe feature here), let me know! You can just hit reply to this email anytime and tell me about them. Thanks!

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📚 The Imperfectionist: Oliver Burkeman’s twice-monthly email on productivity, mortality, the power of limits, and building a meaningful life in an age of bewilderment.

đź“š Start Your Own Newsletter with Beehiiv: This is the email platform I use personally to support all my publications: The Reading Life, The Competitive Advantage, and Stairway to Wisdom. I recently switched to Beehiiv and I will never, ever go back!

This book, Your Brain Weighs 500 Pounds, contains 100 “recipes” to help you detox your mind, body, and soul, and attack your ambitions with UNRELENTING discipline and power.

If you loved books like Can’t Hurt Me, Extreme Ownership, Relentless, or Endure, you might also love this one!

Derrick is a former U.S. Army combat veteran who's now CIO (Chief Information Officer) at Leidos, a Fortune 500 company.

He's co-authored a book with 50 Cent (Note: The 50th Law, by Robert Greene and 50 Cent is ALSO excellent), and his team was responsible for $40B in revenue over a span of just 3 years!

Derrick Pledger is the real deal, he's a new, authentic voice in the field of personal development, and I HIGHLY recommend checking out his new book!

Here’s the book description from Amazon to give you even more context:

This is your recipe for success.

You are on a journey toward the dreams and goals you’ve set for yourself. But a steady stream of useless information bombards your brain every day. To satisfy your appetite for success, you must fill your mind with the right balance of “nutrients” to support your discipline, productivity, and positive habits.

In Your Brain Weighs 500 Pounds, Derrick Pledger provides an interactive and thought-provoking menu of one hundred lessons that will help you reach or acquire whatever it is you want, be it wealth, better relationships, career progression, or a healthier lifestyle.

Packed with easy-to-follow principles, Your Brain Weighs 500 Pounds shows you how to effectively detox your mind, body, and soul. No matter how complicated your past relationships with failure and goal-setting are, you hold the power to control your behavior, change your mindset, and achieve your desired outcomes.

“What you desire, to be undisturbed, is a great thing, nay, the greatest thing of all, and one which raises a man almost to the level of a god. The Greeks call this calm steadiness of mind euthymia, and Democritus's treatise upon it is excellently written: I call it peace of mind.”

-Seneca, Peace of Mind

No one who's never had to overcome any tremendously difficult challenges in their life is qualified to teach you about how to achieve peace of mind.

There's not a single person on earth who can be said to have had an "easy life" (we all encounter difficulties, suffer losses, get sick, and eventually have to face our own mortality), but Lucius Annaeus Seneca is uniquely qualified to teach us about how to claim tranquility of mind because he's been through it all.

Seneca had to learn early on that the world just isn't fair: good intentions don't always lead to good outcomes, people who claim to love you will turn their backs on you when it's convenient for them to do so, great achievements often go unrecognized, and then we die at the end.

Luckily for us, it was also around the time of his exile to Corsica that he started writing, and for thousands of years, people of all ages, abilities, and temperaments have come to Seneca's works for wise, soothing, sage advice about how to take the worst the world has to throw at them and still rise to their feet again afterward.

Peace of Mind (De Tranquillitate Animi) is a dialogue written during the years 49 to 62 A.D. concerning the state of mind of Seneca's friend Serenus and how to cure him of his various mental afflictions - anxiety, fear, worry, pessimism, apathy, unhealthy desires, and despair.

Inside the mind is where it all begins. That's where the majority of our work can and must be done.

We don't see the world as it is, but as we are. So it makes sense to clean and maintain the "viewing window" through which we experience life, see opportunities, and observe reality.

When we learn how to calm the mind, we realize that we're capable of controlling a lot more that happens in our lives as well. Seneca's beautiful little book can help us do this.

Over the last two thousand years, he's been a close friend to millions, and by reading Peace of Mind and experimenting with his philosophy, he can be ours too.

“As it happens, there are over one hundred published studies on this phenomenon, and the conclusion is crystal clear: if you explicitly state what you’re going to do, when you’re going to do it, and where you’re going to do it, you’re much more likely to actually do it.”

-Mike Matthews, The Little Black Book of Workout Motivation

The above quote refers to what are called implementation intentions, and they're extremely helpful when it comes to installing great habits.

My process for reading 100+ books a year works exactly the same way. In practical terms, I schedule my reading first and then schedule everything else around it.

But what I'm really doing is deciding that I'm going to read, at specific times, in a specific place, etc. It'll work the same way for anything that's important to you.

For example: Are you going to work out? Okay, great! What type of workout? Weights? Calisthenics? Rock climbing? When? Today? Tomorrow?

Now, where exactly are you going to work out? How far is the gym from here? What time do you have to leave in order to get there at your chosen time? Who are you going with? How long are you planning on staying?

The more clear and specific that you can get about these details the better.

Further Reading: The Stairway to Wisdom

Note: This is a sample from my other newsletter, Stairway to Wisdom. Along with the in-depth book breakdowns, you’ll receive a premium weekly newsletter packed with insights and ideas like this one. Get your 14-day free trial right here .

Unlimited freedom sounds nice, but it can ONLY lead to unlimited pain and frustration.

DISCIPLINE, on the other hand, will not only help you get everything you ever wanted, but it will help you gain even greater, LASTING freedom later on.

For reasons I make clear in the video, you do NOT want freedom - at least not UNLIMITED freedom.

You want more DISCIPLINE, because discipline, combined with action, focus, execution, and OBSESSION, will lead you to a kind of beautiful, sustainable freedom that most people will just never get to experience.

So enjoy the video, share it with someone you think needs to see it, and hey...happy reading :)

I experience mixed feelings whenever someone recommends a book or a song that came out years ago and which I’m just discovering now.

One part of me is grateful for the recommendation, but another part of me says, “This came out years ago and I’m only discovering it now?!” 

These are 4 books that might do the same thing to do. Sorry, not sorry. [ Read Time: 6 Mins ]

Now, for me to read 1,200+ books in the last 10 years, I had to read pretty much constantly too.

I’m not saying that it’s attainable for everybody, and I’d even go so far as to say that it’s not even NECESSARY for everybody.

You’ll get much further by reading 10 fantastic books and applying them than you will by reading 1,000 books and doing nothing with them.

That being said, for reasons that will become clear further down in this email, reading gave me my life back.

I owe much of my success and fulfillment in life to reading great books, and most people don’t need to read fewer books. They need to read more.

Nowadays, I read 100+ books a year (with GREAT, but not PERFECT comprehension and retention), and these 3 things help me tremendously. [Read Time: 3 Mins ]

Adam Grant (Originals, Think Again, Give and Take) said that this is the most important book ever written about time management, and I’m certainly inclined to agree.

This is partly because Burkeman’s approach has always been the “negative” way, by which I mean operating by negation – eliminating rather than adding.

For example, his “negative” approach to happiness outlined in his earlier book, The Antidote, meant embracing suffering and doing things that are challenging, instead of running from them, which would have, paradoxically, led to more suffering over time.

That book basically dealt with the famous question: Do you want an easy life? Or the strength to endure a difficult one?”

If you’re wise, you’ll take the strength every time! And here, in Four Thousand Weeks, where time management is concerned, Burkeman counsels giving up the idea of ever getting everything done. 

He says that you’re never going to get to a point where you feel like you’re totally on top of everything; and the very effort is wearing us out, stressing us out, and leading us to waste our absurdly, terrifyingly short lives on trivia and nonsense.

“The world is bursting with wonder, and yet it’s the rare productivity guru who seems to have considered the possibility that the ultimate point of all our frenetic doing might be to experience more of that wonder.”

***

“It turns out that when people make enough money to meet their needs, they just find new things to need and new lifestyles to aspire to; they never quite manage to keep up with the Joneses, because whenever they’re in danger of getting close, they nominate new and better Joneses with whom to try to keep up.

As a result, they work harder and harder, and soon busyness becomes an emblem of prestige. Which is clearly completely absurd: for almost the whole of history, the entire point of being rich was not having to work so much.”

***

“Most of us spend a lot of energy, one way or another, in trying to avoid fully experiencing the reality in which we find ourselves.”

***

“The more firmly you believe it ought to be possible to find time for everything, the less pressure you’ll feel to ask whether any given activity is the best use for a portion of your time.”

This is a book about memory and how to improve it, centering on the attempt by the author to improve his memory by undergoing some elite training and entering the world memory championships. 

This might sound dumb, or like I'm exaggerating or something, but I was literally pumping my fist as he told the story of his final showdown in the memory championships at the end. It’s far more exciting than it sounds, and this was one of my first “favorite books” - I read it way back in 2014.

This is an incredible book, it's extraordinarily helpful, and it taught me that, in the end, all we really have at the end of our lives are our memories. So, we may as well go out and make them as memorable as possible!

“Monotony collapses time; novelty unfolds it. You can exercise daily and eat healthily and live a long life, while experiencing a short one. If you spend your life sitting in a cubicle and passing papers, one day is bound to blend unmemorably into the next - and disappear.

That's why it's so important to change routines regularly, and take vacations to exotic locales, and have as many new experiences as possible that can serve to anchor our memories. Creating new memories stretches out psychological time and lengthens our perception of our lives.”

***

“When you want to get good at something, how you spend your time practicing is far more important than the amount of time you spend.”

***

“Students need to learn how to learn. First you teach them how to learn, then you teach them what to learn.”

***

“Our lives are the sum of our memories. How much are we willing to lose from our already short lives by not paying attention?”

How can I summarize one of my absolute favorite books of all time? This is THE book that got me hooked on learning about space, and Carl Sagan has been my go-to every time I want a triple-shot of wonder, beauty, and awe. 

The book was made into a documentary in the 1970s (or was the documentary made into a book?) and the remake was done by Neil DeGrasse Tyson, who was one of Carl Sagan's mentees. 

This is an absolutely thrilling book about space exploration, the composition of other planets, our efforts to find out more about the universe we live in, and the possibilities for future space missions to unlock even more wonder, beauty, and awe.

“Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.”

***

“Exploration is in our nature. We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still. We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean. We are ready at last to set sail for the stars.”

***

“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.”

***

“Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors.

The library connects us with the insight and knowledge, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, with the best teachers, drawn from the entire planet and from all our history, to instruct us without tiring, and to inspire us to make our own contribution to the collective knowledge of the human species.

I think the health of our civilization, the depth of our awareness about the underpinnings of our culture and our concern for the future can all be tested by how well we support our libraries.”

Books are like a handful of silence, and books like Make Time are like an oasis of sanity and calm within the chaos of our busy, ever-accelerating lives.

The authors, Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky are two tech innovators with deep domain experience and expertise who recently made the shift from being part of the problem to being part of the solution.

They've also spent years experimenting with their own habits and routines and engaging thoughtfully with the deeper questions of the proper role of technology in our lives, and the end result is this book.

Make Time presents a dead-simple, 4-step system for setting daily targets, improving focus, eliminating distractions, optimizing energy, and reflecting on what works for you and what doesn't so that you can begin to design your days and become the intentional architect of your own life.

Jake and John also identify two primary obstacles to deep focus and daily joy, which they refer to as Infinity Pools and the Busy Bandwagon.

Briefly, something is an Infinity Pool if you can scroll or refresh at any time to access a virtually infinite reservoir of new and stimulating content that's designed to constantly pull you away from your most important work. Think YouTube, Gmail, Netflix, etc.

The Busy Bandwagon refers to the always-on, go-go-go ethos of relentless productivity and 24/7/365 access to your mind by anyone who wants you to place their priorities ahead of your own. Demanding bosses, unrealistic expectations of coworkers, the treadmill of email, etc.

Make Time isn't supposed to be a complete diagnosis and cure for the state of distraction in the world today - it's just supposed to help you make some time for the things that are actually important to you and to bring more joy into your work and your life. And at that task, the book succeeds beautifully.

Alongside the 4-step strategy for making time, the authors include 87 different tactics that will actually help you do that!

The whole book feels like a conversation between the two of them and the reader - like the person reading it is a really terrific friend of theirs that the authors want to see succeed and be happy.

Gaining distance from your defaults is going to be one of the greatest benefits that this book will give you. It's also uniquely difficult to do, because, by definition, defaults are basically habits. They're automatic, and so we need a consciously-chosen system for changing those defaults.

Make Time is that system; Jake and John are your friendly and knowledgeable guides, and freedom is about to become your new normal.

“Infinity Pools are apps and other sources of endlessly replenishing content. If you can pull to refresh, it's an Infinity Pool. If it streams, it's an Infinity Pool. This always-available, always-new entertainment is your reward for the exhaustion of constant busyness."

***

“The first step is choosing a single highlight to prioritize in your day. Next, you'll employ specific tactics to stay laser-focused on that highlight. Throughout the day, you'll build energy so you can stay in control of your time and attention. Finally, you'll reflect on the day with a few simple notes."

***

“When you schedule something, you're making a commitment to yourself, sending yourself a tiny message that says: 'I'm going to do this.'"

***

“Despite the consequences, I am so much happier now. Dramatically, drastically happier. When I 'hit bottom,' I felt like I had lost control of my own brain. There is no social media meme or planning convenience that can compete with the feeling of having my mind back."

Dr. Benjamin Hardy is the world's leading expert on the science of prospection and the Future Self concept.

Be Your Future Self Now is one of the absolute best introductions to the field, and inside this book, you're going to learn exactly why having a vision for your own future development is so critically important.

But you're also going to receive practical instruction on how to apply the science here and now to make your actual life better. Immediately. Today.

Basically, who and what you're becoming - and your thoughts about it - directly affect the quality of your experience in the here and now.

Not only that but when your imagined Future Self directs your behavior rather than your behavior being directed by your past, that can be the shift that changes your entire life's trajectory.

Instead of running away from something you don't want (pain in your past), you'll be moving toward an exciting future that gives meaning to all of your subsequent days. To this day.

“The first and most fundamental threat to your Future Self is not having hope in your future. Without hope, the present loses meaning. Without hope, you don't have clear goals or a sense of purpose for your life. Without hope, there is no way. Without hope, you decay."

***

“If you’re around people who have low expectations for you, you'll fall to those standards. If you're around people with high expectations, you'll rise to those standards."

***

“The more conscious you become of how everything you do right now impacts the person you are in the future, the better and more thoughtful your actions will be."

***

“The detail and vividness of your Future Self determine your ability to achieve it. The more detailed your Future Self, the better. The more measurable and specific your goals and milestones, the more effective will be your process and progress."

Today’s Five Books:

You made it to the end! Congratulations!

You're now among the rarest of the rare.

I mean, that was a lot of books!

But I hope you found something here that looked interesting!

Personally, I’m obsessed with sharing the magic of books and reading, and so I love it when one or more of my book recommendations “hits.”

Also, if you know someone who might love this newsletter, you can just send them this link!

Or click here to share via Twitter. Thanks!

And if someone forwarded you this email, you can sign up on this page right here. 

I also want to thank you for reading this newsletter all the way through to the end and to thank you for real, I’m going to give you a 1-month free trial to the Stairway to Wisdom.

That’s twice the free trial period that most people get, because people who finish what they start - and have the patience to do a lot of reading - are usually the ones who love the Stairway to Wisdom the most.

Enjoy!

And remember, you can just hit "reply" to this email to ask me a question or offer a book recommendation of your own. I may take a while to respond, but I read every one!

All the best,

Matt Karamazov

P.S. Whenever you're ready, here are five more ways I can help you:

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