Skip to main content

Can ‘Reading like Bill Gates’ make you the next Bill Gates??

Reading a book will open a door of opportunity in front of you...
Here is a list of five sets containing five books in each set. Those books have been suggested by five different successful persons in the world:

Elon Musk

1. The Lord of the Rings
2. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the galaxy
3. Structures
4. Super Intelligence
5. Screw Business As Usual

Bill Gates

1. The Choice
2. Cloud Atlas
3. The Ride of a Lifetime
4. The Great Influenza
5. Good Economics for Hard Times

Warren Buffet

1. The Intelligent Investor
2. Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street
3. The Outsiders
4. Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits
5. Where Are the Customers’ Yachts?

Mark Zuckerberg

1. The Muqaddimah
2. Sapiens
3. The Better Angels of Our Nature
4. On Immunity
5. The End of Power

Dr. Mohammad Yousuf

1. Creating a World Without Poverty 
2. Banker to the Poor 
3. Germinal 
4. A Tale of Two Cities 
5. An Anthology by Rabindranath Tagore
 

Can you see a pattern here?

No, you can’t!

In fact, there is no pattern! You can’t blindly follow someone’s book list and wish to become successful like her. You can at best try to understand that person’s thought process by reading his suggested books.

The only pattern you will find is, all successful people are avid readers. They read books, and there are zillions of books that you can’t even read their titles in your lifetime. There is no exact booklist for everybody. You can’t expect to start SpaceX by reading Russian Rocket Manual. Or perhaps you can, but then you need to have the other personality traits of Elon Musk more than his reading habits. Or maybe, you possess something extraordinary beyond our present perception. Whatever the case is, don’t think you have to read every book listed by the successful person. That is not required to be successful.

If it were, then Mark Zuckerberg’s booklist would have emulated Warren Buffet’s!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

I Know How Fake Everything Is

We had an AC installation project today at Manikgonj. Our technician team went to the site, saw a 30'' thick wall that has to be pierced for copper piping. And they backed off. I was communicating over the phone with my PSL, with a heavy voice, pretending everything is under control.  Those are miniature life hick-ups that an entrepreneur has to face, regularly, and for me - intentionally. Only a few have the guts to continue after all these. I want to be one of them of course. January 2022 Update: Another year has gone by without any fruitful progress. Still, we don't see any tangible source of revenue. We are kinda parasite of Muspana. This burns me like hell, I wanted to live an independent life. That's why I chose to be an entrepreneur Now is the real challenge. What value am I providing to my users? What is the one big vision that can change the lives of billions? Can I acquire a big investment ever? Why am I so self-centered? Am I all after money? Today a kid 10 y

A Trader with an Investment Mindset

Invest in good stock... Being a finance student, I have always been told that investors make much more profit compared to traders in the long run.  In a sense, that statement is apparently true. If you take the historical gain reference of traders vs. investors, the latter will come triumphant without any confusion. But remember, few traders make much more profit compared to investors.  For the traders, the profit curve is seemingly positively skewed, only a few can truly make a profit, but most of them lose money and cancel out the average profit. For the investors, the profit curve follows a normal distribution and returns an average profit to the clients in the long haul. And most importantly, it is always the small ticket-sized shares that give you the best return. For instance, a stock priced at BDT 10 has the potential to go up to 20 or 30 TK, giving you a return from 100% to 200%. But imagine a good stock that is already priced at BDT 600, how much can it go up? I always calcula

Network = Net Worth

Need to boost up my networking skill So far I have been a socially awkward person. I don't like public gatherings, I avoid phone calls, even I don't have any active social media account. For me, deciding to do business was an internal soul call, which I hardly could relate to my shortcomings. Almost three years back when I was an employee of LankaBangla Finance, my SME head told me, ''Why don't you laugh man? There is a Chinese Proverb you know - if you can't laugh, don't open a shop.'' I thought a smiling face is a mere redundant verbal expression. Unnecessary, showy, sycophantic.  At this moment, after almost a year in the business world, I am to words changing my mind. In fact, a smiling face can win million hearts, and those million hearts are money in business. Am I sounding too commercial? Probably am, but smiling is also prophylactic. If you love yourself, you should smile. Another reason behind smiling is - human nature is precoded to accept