Reading That Business Book is a Waste of Time

Whenever the smartest people in the tech industry recommend a book, I rush out to buy it immediately. When Ben Horowitz, one of the most respected entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, published his book The Hard Thing About Hard Things everyone from Mark Zuckerberg (CEO of Facebook) and Larry Page (CEO of Google) gave the book high praise. If it was good enough for billionaires it was good enough for me. So I ran to the bookstore across the street from my office to buy a copy.

That was a mistake. While Horowitz teaches valuable lessons on management, they didn’t apply to my career at the time. He was the co-founder/CEO of a tech startup with over $100 million in revenue. He managed thousands of employees as a Vice President at a Fortune 50 company. I was managing the website at a twenty-person startup. While any executive would have benefited from reading about Horowitz’s startup experiences, it wasn’t practical for me to learn those lessons at that time.

Reading is an investment: Nail the timing

When you invest money it’s not good enough just picking the right investment. It’s equally important to invest at the right time.

Since your time is infinitely more valuable than your money, make sure you get the timing right. There’s no point spending hours, days, or even weeks reading a business book when you’ll only apply those lessons twenty years from now. Those books will always be there if you need them. Focus on learning things that will help you immediately.

Don’t waste your time stockpiling knowledge for the future. Learn something that will help you today.

If you’re a student, read books that will help you succeed as a student. If you’re a junior designer, read books that will help you succeed as a designer. When you become an executive then you can look for wisdom to help you in that position.

What should you read instead?

I’m not saying it’s best to read books that only have immediate value. You should read books that can benefit you today and for the rest of your life.

How will you know if a book will have lifelong value? That’s hard to know until after you’ve read it. There’s classics that everyone recommends (Dale Carnegie’s How to Make Friends and Influence People immediately springs to mind) but I suggest exploring for yourself. You can focus on learning ideas and specialized skills that will get you to the next step in your career. Then keep building your knowledge on top of that stepping stone.

Just don’t forget- If you happen to read a book that changes your life, make sure to recommend it to your friends.

Andrew So is the VP of 😂 at Disrupt Cards, aka Silicon Valley’s Card Thing About Har-Har Things. He loves getting book recommendations from friends.