In 2024, I began reading a book every week. I wanted to share what I’d read, so I posted a recap of my 2024 reading stats and lessons learned (see here). I was frustrated by how hard it was to share a list of all the book titles (see here), so I created a page about each book I read in 2024 (see here). I wanted to replace the Google Sheet I use to track all my reading, so I created a searchable library of all the books I’ve read (see here). I update it weekly.

Last year, 2025, was year two of consistently reading a book every week, and I want to share a recap of my stats and lessons learned. Sorry it’s late (the goal was January).

High-level stat for 2025:

• Books read: 51

2025 breakdown by month:

• January: 4
• February: 4
• March: 4
• April: 4
• May: 4
• June: 5
• July: 4
• August: 5
• September: 4
• October: 4
• November: 5
• December: 4

If you’d like to know what those 51 books were, see my 2025 reading list here.

Here are a few things I learned along the way:

• Reading for general information is critical if I want to generate new ideas—and I do. A Technique for Producing Ideas reinforced this. I have to learn about ideas so I can borrow from them when I’m trying to come up with a new one myself.
• Rereading high-quality books is sometimes better than reading new books. I reread a few books last year, and that helped me a ton. I’m now trying to reread at least one book every month.
• Synoptical reading is key to leveraging books to solve hard problems or deeply understand something. See more here.
• Framework books are a good fit for my personality, and they’re helpful. They give you the framework or process to use when you’re trying to accomplish something. They don’t give you the answer, but they show you how to get to the right answer.
• I get the most out of books when I read with intention; that is, with a clearly defined purpose for reading that book. That purpose should be a problem I’m actively trying to solve or a topic I want to understand better. This year, I’ve started writing down the problem I need to solve or the topic I want to understand before I choose a book. That’s helped me do more synoptical reading and get more from my reading that I can quickly put to use.
• There are no hacks with reading. I have to not only read but also do the work to understand what I’m reading. The best way to do that (that I’ve found so far) is to synthesize a book and share what I learned with others. But I haven’t found a way to be consistent with that.
• Learning through reading doesn’t feel like a chore anymore. It’s something I enjoy doing in my downtime. The personal-growth aspect of it appeals to my curious nature, and I feel like I can sustain it for a long time.
• Application of knowledge is the key to getting better outcomes. A priority of mine in 2025 is to apply what I’ve learned from reading, specifically around decision-making with imperfect information and probabilistic thinking.

Those are my takeaways and reading stats for 2025!

I had a chat with a friend who shared a story with me. An entrepreneur needed someone to build an MVP of the software she needed. She was connected with a developer who knew AI like the back of his hand. He agreed to build the app for $10,000. Over a weekend, he vibe coded her MVP in six or eight hours. The entrepreneur was happy to finally have a working MVP she could demo with customers and immediately started reaching out to potential customers.

One school of thought around this was that the developer charged the entrepreneur too much. Ten thousand dollars for something he did on the couch while he was doing other things might sound slightly predatory. Especially when you consider that he was paid $1,200 to $1,500 an hour. Some would say he was taking advantage of the entrepreneur.

I have an different perspective. What matters is the output and how quickly it can be created. What the developer got paid for was his skill and expertise, which allowed him to move faster than others. His expertise allowed him to charge based on the value of what he created, not the effort put into the creation process. As for this entrepreneur, I’d imagine she was happy to pay the $10,000 for two reasons. First, she got the app she’d been struggling to build lightning fast, in three or four days. Second, she knew she could sign up customers who want what her software offers and can generate way more than $10,000 in gross profit.

With AI moving so fast, many people don’t know what’s possible or how to use all the AI tools. Skill and expertise in knowing what tools exist, what they can do, and how to use them are highly valued now. But as more people learn these skills and tools, the value of that expertise will go down. Developers and others with this skill set won’t be able to charge as much to build products quickly by leveraging their AI expertise. The market will become more efficient as understanding of AI and its tools is more widely disseminated.

Last year, I shared one of my favorite maxims, which came from the autobiography of John H. Johnson, founder of Johnson Publishing Company, which published JET and Ebony magazines. See that post, with the backstory, here. Here’s what Johnson’s boss at the time, Harry H. Pace, told him:

If you want to succeed in business, young man, you’ve got to learn how to work with people that you don’t like. And you’ve got to learn how to compromise. After you compromise, you have to forget the past and go on to the future. For in business, you have no permanent enemies or permanent friends—only permanent interests.

Today I shared this with an entrepreneur friend who’s refusing to negotiate with an important supplier because of the supplier’s personality. Because she’s doing this, my friend can’t source the products her customers want and is forgoing some revenue. It’s a lose-lose situation for her and her supplier.

Business is full of characters and people with strong personalities, among other things. You aren’t going to be friends with everyone you need to do business with. Regardless of how you feel about someone, if you need them to accomplish a goal or objective, you’ve got to figure out how to get past personality differences and work with them. Pace put it best: “In business, you have no permanent enemies or permanent friends—only permanent interests.”

I was working on a project over the past weekend using Claude, and I kept hitting my usage limit. I ended up buying more time so I could finish working on Sunday without interruption. The cost was low, $5, but as a percentage of my $20 monthly subscription, it was material (20%).

I thought about it and realized that between lost focus and productivity from hitting the usage limit repeatedly throughout the month and the likelihood that I’d keep buying à la carte time so I could keep working, the $20 plan wasn’t going to cut it. I did some rough math and realized that at 20x more usage, the $100-per-month plan is a good deal for my situation.

So, I upgraded. The product is good and brings way more value to me than $100 per month, so it’s a fair price. It might even be too cheap to be honest.

I’m looking forward to working with Claude interruption-free now!

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

Cumulative metrics (since 4/1/24):

• Total books read: 109
• Total blog posts published: 728

This week’s metrics:

• Books read: 1
• Blog posts published: 7

What I completed in the week ending 4/5/26 (link to the previous week’s commitments):

• Read What Intelligence Tests Miss, a framework book that highlights the difference between intelligence and rationality; it discusses how the brain works and how cognitive biases impact most people’s ability to think and act rationally

What I’ll do next week:

• Read a biography, autobiography, or framework book

Asks:

• No ask this week

Week three hundred fourteen was another week of learning. Looking forward to next week!

Continuing with my new protocol, here I’m going to share content I consumed and learned from.

What I struggled with:

• No material struggles this week

What I consumed this week and what I learned from it:

• Nothing material this week

That’s what I consumed and learned from and struggled with last week.

So, I figured out what my challenge will be for this long Easter weekend. I’m going to keep it simple. I’m going to review my notes and highlights from a book I’ve read. Of course, that’s in addition to reading a new book this week. That’s it. Very simple. Wish me luck!

This weekend is a long one. For long weekends, especially holiday weekends, I like to challenge myself with a goal or project. I don’t always accomplish what I set out to do, but I always end up in a better place. Plus, it’s fun to challenge myself and, at the end of the weekend or holiday, have something to be proud of.

This holiday weekend snuck up on me a bit. I haven’t thought through exactly what I want to work on this weekend. I’ll spend the next day or so thinking about this and then share my challenge.

This week, while using Claude and Claude Cowork, I’ve noticed something different. The tool is enforcing usage limits. That is, it won’t work if I hit a limit. The interesting thing is that the usage limit is for a given period of time. For example, I was working on something at 11 a.m. and hit a session usage limit. Claude said that my limit would reset at 3:30 p.m. The same thing had happened the night before at 7 p.m., when it said my session limit would reset at 11 p.m. It feels a bit more like throttling than anything, but I could be wrong and have limited data to back that up.

Here’s where it gets even more interesting: I was talking with a friend who’s an entrepreneur. He started a new company and is using Claude Cowork to build an agent to analyze data from disparate sources automatically. It’s pretty complex. In the middle of building the agent, he hit a usage limit. He was frustrated, so he upgraded his plan on the spot. He had no further difficulties.

My takeaway is that if I make Claude and Cowork a part of my normal habits and workflows, I’ll likely have to upgrade to the most expensive plan. Otherwise, my ability to rely on them will plummet, and tasks could stretch over days instead of minutes or hours. At the moment I don’t mind, because I get far more value from the tool than the price I pay. But it shows me that while Claude and similar tools are great, if you rely on them heavily, you must have the proper plans and tokens. If you don’t, they’re like the employee who shows up to work and leaves early, whether or not their work is done.

This week, I met with an early-stage founder who just finished a big project and is thinking about the next strategic thing they should work on. During our conversation, the founder zeroed in on their biggest challenge: getting more customers. The first version of their product is built, and it’s been tested by a handful of early paying customers. No major issues were found, so the founder is ready to get more paying customers to use the platform. The challenge is that how to find them isn’t obvious. In fact, it’s pretty hard, especially since the founder is bootstrapping the company.

Making customers aware of your product or service is a problem that never goes away, regardless of your size. But it feels insurmountable in the early days when resources are limited. Unfortunately, there’s no silver bullet. The tactics that work change constantly as the world evolves. But one principle that underlies many successful tactics is to start by meeting customers where they are.

It’s hard to get people to change their habits, or “flows” as I call them. Instead of trying to get them to come to the site of a new company or to a new platform to learn more about your product, consider meeting them where they already are. I know that sounds broad, but when you do that, you’re forced to think about things from the customer’s perspective. You have to learn their existing behaviors and habits. Once you understand them, you can begin testing tactics that lean into what they’re already doing. Test enough of them and one is bound to work. When you find one that works well, do more of it.

Finding customers is something all entrepreneurs think about. In the early days, they should try to understand their potential customers’ behaviors and habits. Doing so makes it easier to understand how to market to them by meeting them where they are.