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!

Below, I share content I consumed and learned from last week. I spent time doing general learning about a variety of topics.

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

• Worth $100m and living on less than $100k – YouTube interview with finance technology entrepreneur Bill Harris. Bill was CEO of Intuit, PayPal, and several other companies. His thinking about simplifying his life and living on less than $100k was surprising. He’s done it all, and it’s interesting to see what he truly values at 71.
• Zapier’s AI platform is impressive – YouTube interview with technology entrepreneur Wade Foster, founder/CEO of Zapier. Seeing how he uses AI gave me lots of ideas. To challenge my thinking, I definitely want to copy his tactics for using AI to get a daily end-of-day brief in which I instruct agents to execute tasks while I sleep.

That’s what I learned from what I consumed last week.

I like to take downtime and relax a bit on holidays, but I’ve developed a habit of also setting a challenge for myself for each one. It’s a fun way to push myself or make progress on something I’ve been putting off. Sometimes I accomplish exactly what I set out to do, and sometimes I don’t, but I always learn something.

Last week I read How to Get Rich in American History. One of the concepts in the book stood out: fast time vs. slow time. But I haven’t had time to dig into it more to make sure I really understand it.

My challenge for Labor Day is to review this concept in the book and share my understanding in a post.

That’s it. Pretty simple. Wish me luck!

This week I read a quote from a surprising source that I really like:

 Discipline is doing what you hate to do, but doing it like you love it.

~ Mike Tyson

I like this quote because discipline is what leads to consistency. And consistency compounds over time and can lead to outsize outcomes.

I like to think of discipline as the superpower that anyone can leverage. Most people won’t, though, so the small percentage of people who are disciplined have a huge advantage.

One insight that resonated with me when I read How to Get Rich in American History was about retirement. The author said that one of the 25 financial ideas that have worked throughout history is “Do not obsess over early retirement.” His point was that throughout history, most people who became wealthy didn’t stop working. Their wealth made them self-sufficient, so they spent their time doing what they wanted. Often, they wanted to work (and many wealthy early retirees go back to work). Retirement has historically meant having control over what you choose to pursue and work on, not choosing to not work.

I agree with this point. In 2023, I shared the insights I gained from taking extended time off. My conclusion was that “[m]y retirement plan is to never retire.” You can see my explanation here.

After reading 300 years’ worth of history, the author came to a conclusion similar to mine. It’s good to know that my stance is supported by history.

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A few weeks ago, I came across a podcast in which a history professor turned real estate investor shared what he’d learned from researching 300 years of Americans climbing the economic ladder. He spent over 10 years reading history and trying some of the strategies himself. He shared everything in his book, How to Get Rich in American History, which I read last week.

There are lots of good takeaways in this book. One of them is that most financial advice we think is timeless hasn’t held throughout history. Today I’ll share the seven strategies that Americans used throughout history to get ahead:

1. Built their own business
2. Took a large income in someone else’s business
3. Combined several small incomes to create excess income
4. Invested extreme portions of their income
5. Leveraged a high-payout opportunity with debt or risk
6. Invested steadily over a long period of time
7. Married well

Number 6 is valid, but timing matters because the stock market has had terrible periods. So, as much as timing the market is frowned upon now, history says you should time it when you use strategy #6.

These strategies are pretty straightforward. Using a combination of them intelligently is how people got ahead in life over the last 300 years.

I caught up with a friend this past week. He’s considering making an investment. He shared his thinking and asked me if I thought it was a good investment.

I told him I had no idea. Partly this was because I’m unfamiliar with the asset class, but more fundamentally it was because he said nothing about what he thinks the asset is worth today. I heard only about the price the seller wants.

Investing, in my opinion, is all about buying something for less than it’s worth. An important distinction is between price and value. Price is what you pay for the asset. Value is what you get. If you pay more than the asset is worth, it’s not such a great investment. To be a good investor, you have to be able to use your judgment to determine an asset’s value. There are lots of ways to do that. But if your analysis is thorough and you buy for less than value…you have a good chance of making a good investment.

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and investors 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: 130
• Total blog posts published: 875

This week’s metrics:

• Books read: 1
• Blog posts published: 7

What I completed in the week ending 8/30/26 (link to the previous week’s commitments):

• Read How to Get Rich in American History by Joseph S. Moore, a history book detailing the strategies Americans have used to climb the prosperity ladder

What I’ll do next week:

• Read a biography, autobiography, or framework book

Week three hundred thirty-five was another week of learning. Looking forward to next week!

Every week, I share content that I consumed and learned from during the previous week.

This week, I consumed less content than usual, and none of it is worth sharing. Hopefully next week will be more normal and I’ll have insights worth sharing in this space.

I’ve been trying to figure out how to leverage the power of books using AI. I toyed with some ideas, but I was never able to find workarounds for several issues. Today I learned that I wasn’t the only one working on this. Google was too. Thursday, Google announced Expert Intelligence (see here).

The product allows anyone to use Gemini Notebook (formerly NotebookLM) to ask questions of books; well, e-books, to be exact. Users can now upload books to Gemini Notebook, which makes it possible for them to interact with the book’s contents. They can ask questions, create audio overviews (i.e., personalized podcasts), search the contents of the book, etc. And this can all be done with one book or multiple books.

It’s still early, and this product is new, but I think it could transform how people make use of book content.