Back in August, I wrote about Paul Graham. Graham is worth an estimated $2.5B.
That’s because a part of what Graham does is invest in early-stage startups, such as Airbnb, Stripe, Dropbox. But Graham is more than just an investor.
He is also an entrepreneur himself — he started and sold multiple businesses. He is also a computer scientist and somewhat of an inventor — he created his own new programming language. He also paints paintings, writes books and essays, and for all I know, sings opera.
In other words, Graham is as close to a Renaissance man as you can get in 21st century.
Anyways, a couple days ago, Graham wrote a new essay in which he made the following argument:
In the science fiction books I read as a kid, reading had often been replaced by some more efficient way of acquiring knowledge. Mysterious “tapes” would load it into one’s brain like a program being loaded into a computer.
That sort of thing is unlikely to happen anytime soon. Not just because it would be hard to build a replacement for reading, but because even if one existed, it would be insufficient. Reading about x doesn’t just teach you about x; it also teaches you how to write.
Would that matter? If we replaced reading, would anyone need to be good at writing?
The reason it would matter is that writing is not just a way to convey ideas, but also a way to have them.
Cue my Insights & More Book Club.
This is a bonus I am offering with the Age of Insight live training.
With the Insights & More Book Club, you can get exposed to new books that I will choose specifically because they are likely to be insightful and perspective-shifting.
You can also see the kinds of notes I take and ideas I have as I am reading the book — I will share them with you as I go along.
And of course, you can read yourself. And then, we can get on a call every two months to discuss what we’ve read and how to use it.
In this way, Insights & More is both a book club — with quilts and tea and cookies — and a mastermind where we can talk about ways to apply ideas from the reading to your marketing and content and even offers.
By the way, I’ve realized over the years I am very good at getting info and ideas out of books. But I am also very, very slow. Hence, only one new book for the Insights & More Book Club every two months.
So if you are interested in ideas, writing, or making money, then you might be interested in joining my Age of Insight live training, and the Insights & More Book Club.
Registration closes in three days, on Wednesday 12 midnight PST. But I am only making this training open to people who are on my email newsletter. To get in before the doors close, sign up for my newsletter.