Should You Read Every Book in Your Library? (What an Antilibrary Is)

All right, so today we are going to talk about if you should read every single book in your library. So, I was reading something recently and this is regarding the concept of an anti-library. So, you know, in my library, I have a ton of books that I haven't read. And so, what usually happens is if someone recommends a book, I'll probably just end up ordering it or if I hear it at the end of a podcast where like Let's say Tim Ferriss asks a question about a book that's changed your life, or I'll ask on my podcast too, you know, what's one business book that you'd recommend? And, you know, for me, books are some of the best deals that you can get because if you're paying $10 to $20 for a book and the knowledge that you gain from it, it's invaluable, right? Because look, you know, at the end of the day, if you invest in yourself, nobody can ever take that away from you, right? So the best investment you can make is in yourself. Who said that? Warren Buffett. And there's a reason why, you know, he spends 5+ hours a day reading, right? He's just getting as much information as he can, staying up to date on things, and then making decisions from there. So I certainly enjoy reading. I enjoy learning. But, you know, when people would come over to my place, they look at the library and be like, so how many of these have you actually read? It's very judgmental, right? You know, how many of these have you read? Like as if to say, oh, you don't really read all these books. And That's fine, but like at the end of the day, that's not what really matters. What really matters is that you have a library that you can go to for knowledge, you know, anytime that you want, right? You know there's gonna be good stuff in there because it's all recommended stuff that you have in there. So what I would recommend is, well, let's take a look at what people are saying for this whole anti-library concept, right? So you can see, I'm not pronouncing this correctly, but Sundoku. Sundoku. Is a beautiful Japanese word describing the habit of acquiring books but letting them pile up without reading them. So that seems like a negative word, but— and you can see this author used to feel guilty about this, right? So you have all these books over here. I would say in my library, I might have read maybe just 10% of the books, right? And I have a ton of books and I have new books coming in all the time. So that percentage gets lower and lower. And so what Nassim Taleb said, and he's a bestselling author, he's wrote books like The Black Swan, You know, Antifragile. These are all really good books. And so what he says is this: a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage, but a research tool. Look at that. So when people ask you these questions, like totally judgmental, right? Like how many books in here have you read? It's— and then if you respond, it is your ego talking, right? If you respond to try to prove something, it's your ego talking. No need to do that. Reframe your mindset and think about, you know what? You know, I'm just here to— again, I'm here to learn and then if I want to refer back to something, I can. If I want to do more research, I can. And when I read stuff, by the way, I'm using— speaking of research, I use a tool called Roam Research to collect my thoughts in there when I'm reading books and then I can refer back to these later, right? So, I need a reference point that I can keep going back to. So, I have a library on top of my library. So, a library for my thoughts and then an actual physical library for the books, right? And I'm not saying I'm some type of genius, I'm just saying, you know, that's what works out for me. So, you know, read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real estate market allows you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. Menacingly. There we go. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the row of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an anti-library. So I love that, right? This whole concept of anti-library. Yeah, I mean, look, you don't need to read everything out there. And I've had books that I've had them for years, and just now I'm starting to open them up. I'll be like, oh, it actually, you know, for example, if I was if I wanted to learn something around, you know, how happiness works out, right? Right now I'm reading a book called The Nordic Theory of Everything. So, you know, they talk about how the Nordic countries are just generally happier and how they operate in their lives, right? Or let's say, you know, you wanna learn how to buy a business, right? I've bought how to buy a business books years and years ago. And, you know, maybe a couple years later, I would actually end up referring back to them. You know, you pull it out at the right time, but you just know that you have everything categorized so you can come back to it at any time and, you know, you're gonna know that whatever you're reading is damn good because someone else recommended it, right? So, you know, take— I think the key takeaway here is to take things one step at a time with your book and not feel that type of pressure that other people might be giving you. Because I guarantee when you walk into someone else's house, let's say they're very successful and they have a big library in back of them. They probably haven't read most of those books, right? So anyway, that is it for today. And by the way, if you want to level up, I have a book coming out called Leveling Up, and you can get a free chapter of the book just going to levelingup.com, right? And you can go to your favorite online retailer if you wanna support me, just go pick it up there, would really appreciate it. And that is it for today, and we'll catch you later.