After 10 years of reading business books, I finally figured out why most of them waste your time.

The uncomfortable truth about performance reading, why AI summaries work better than cover-to-cover consumption, and the builder's system for actually learning instead of just feeling productive.
The bookstore experience that changed everything:

• Went to bookstore yesterday, couldn't get past chapter one of ANY book
• 40 pages of backstory before frameworks, entire chapters that could be one paragraph
• Wasn't distracted or lazy - physically couldn't tolerate how long books take to get to the point
• Used to carry boxes of books between dorms in college, refused to donate them
• Realized: I'm not reading less, I'm reading more - just stopped reading the wrong way

The most useless book I read this year:

• Trailblazer by Mark Benioff (Salesforce CEO)
• 300 pages of billionaire congratulating himself for being socially conscious
• Zero insights on how he built Salesforce, just self-performance
• After finishing: "What an absolute waste of time"
• Can count life-changing books on one hand (5-6 books total)

The uncomfortable truth about business books:

• Most written for people who want to READ, not people who want to BUILD
• When you want to read: you want journey, backstory, feeling of learning
• When you want to build: you want insights in 30 seconds, then move on
• Book industry stretches 30 pages of insights into 300 pages of filler
• People buy books to feel productive, not to actually produce

The performance trap everywhere:

• Founders posting reading lists: "This month I read these 5 books"
• Society tells us reading = intellectual, self-improvement, serious person
• Reality: If you're reading business/self-help and not immediately applying it, you're procrastinating
• You're not learning, you're performing that you're learning

Why newer generations avoid reading:

• Being told to read 400-500 pages just to learn one thing is ridiculous
• Creates image that reading = boring
• Don't see people reading on subways/buses anymore (except retirees and 40-50s)
• Younger generations prefer TikTok, Instagram, visual content with short attention spans

My three reading phases over 10 years:

Phase 1 (College 2017-2018): Read everything cover to cover

• Read to catch up, feel motivated as broke student
• Didn't know anything about startups or business
• Books helped me not feel helpless

Phase 2 (Few years ago): Got selective like Naval

• Naval flips through books, throws away if not interesting
• Started flipping in bookstores, reading first/last chapters
• If not actionable, put it down
• Stopped reading self-help books entirely - rarely make you do anything concrete

Phase 3 (Now): Builder system - format agnostic and AI-assisted

• Fully evolved to extract knowledge, not perform reading

The self-help guru problem:

• Jay Shetty (the monk author) - journalist discovered he never actually went to India to be a monk
• Self-help authors make money from people thinking they can help them
• Books designed as lead magnets → $700-1400 courses → conference tickets
• One guru selling $700 course to financially unaware people using buy-now-pay-later
• "This is so dark and disgusting - exploiting people at bottom of society"

The two books that were actually worth it:

• Zero to One by Peter Thiel - lived through PayPal mafia, raw and real
• The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz (A16Z founder) - read 2016, still remember
• Both felt like real people with real experiences, not performance

Recent books I actually liked:

• The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck - raw, direct, challenged pressures
• Value Investing by Bruce Greenwald - super niche, solved specific problem
• Realized: Best books aren't bestsellers, they're written for specific person with specific problem

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