Nick Hutchison argues that reading alone won't change your life without action. He spends 15 hours reading and 50 sleeping, then uses the rest implementing ideas. Meetings that only schedule more meetings, he says, prove how easily we mistake motion for progress.
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Hello, Book Thinkers family. Today I'm going to switch things up again and talk a little bit about another one of my core values, which is a bias for action and why it's important as readers we have a bias for action. I'll start by going back a couple years when I first got hooked on personal development books. I thought that simply reading those books was going to change my life, and in some part it did, but I was sort of missing the other half of the spectrum. See, reading is just part of education. The other part of education and learning is actual behavior change. And so in corporate business, all the time we see meetings to set more meetings. It's one of my biggest pet peeves. Like, we should just have a bias for action. Perfection kills progress. And everybody knows at this point that progress is my one word. I love progress because it leaves me fulfilled at the end of the day. And when I'm going to sleep at night, if I've made progress in my life, I know that I'm compounding over time towards a better outcome. A better life. And so a bias for action means that when we read books, we look for ways to implement that information immediately. Maybe that's the next shirt: implement information immediately. And that's part of the core values of who we are at Book Thinkers, right? We want to help readers achieve more and live better. And that means that you need to act on the information that you're reading about. People ask me all the time, like, hey, you spend so much time reading books, do you actually reflect and implement on anything? And I say, yeah. Like, there's 168 hours in a week or whatever the number is, and I read for about 15 hours a week. I sleep for 50 hours a week, and the rest of the time is used to implement that information. A bias towards action or a bias for action means that you can compound that information so much quicker. Trial and error, figure out what works. I love failure. It's the best teacher, and that's part of this core value of who I am. So I'll talk a little bit more about this over the next couple weeks. Maybe we'll do some actual webinars or videos on how I take notes, how I look to implement information, my accountability group that holds me accountable for this kind of stuff. But a bias for action and taking action immediately means that you will move the needle. You'll progress a little bit farther, and that's always better than standing still. And with that, that's today's video. Thanks so much. Bye.
