You’re probably reading the wrong books for the wrong reasons
A successful founder shares his framework for how to choose and read books that will create the best outcomes for you.
I read a lot of books. 1–2 per week, going on many years now.
I love reading. But I hate talking to people about reading.
Because books are Swiss Army knives that do five distinct jobs (at least), yet most people are aware of only two or three of these jobs. So their opinions about books often miss the point.
Books give us the 5 Ps:
Propositions
Procedures
Perspectives
Provocation
Pleasure
Few books address all of these use cases, but most address at least two.
Below I'll break these jobs down and mention some of my favorite books from each category.
1. Propositions
Job to be done:
You want to learn a general set of facts about a subject. Maybe you're just curious. Or maybe you figure it'll be professionally or socially useful to inform yourself.
Either way, you're probably not looking for specific action steps here. You just want to go from being ignorant to being… somewhat less ignorant.
Examples:
Early last year I picked up Yuen Yuen Ang's How China Escaped the Poverty Trap out of curiosity and out of a nagging since that I should know at least something about China. What I came away with massively exceeded my expectations:
a playbook for making something out of nothing,
a good primer on the rules of economic growth and how nations can become exceptions to those rules,
an inspirational and actionable case study in leadership,
even a couple systems-theoretic mental models that I've applied to running Indie Hackers.
This was arguably my favorite book from 2023. You really never know with propositional books, because every set of facts is also a messy set of instructions.
Here are 5 other propositional books I love (in no particular order):
Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson
Addiction by Design by Natasha Dow Schüll
The Secret of Our Success by Joseph Henrich
Traffic by Ben Smith
The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman
2. Procedures
Job to be done:
Whereas propositional books are about "knowing that," procedural books are about "knowing how." You pick them up when you want to learn the action steps for solving a specific problem in your life.
Propositions and procedures are the two use cases that most people have in mind when they think about non-fiction.
Examples:
We spin up new crowdsourced products all the time for Indie Hackers, and it's always difficult to go from 0 to 1. So a few years ago I picked up The Cold Start Problem by Andrew Chen.
Tremendously valuable. It helped validate several of our suspicions about how to create and leverage network effects, including the controversial principle that social networks should reward accounts that are already big, because they're doing a tremendous amount of heavy lifting on the supply side.
Here are 5 other procedural books I love:
Mindful Self-Discipline by Giovanni Dienstmann
Deep Work by Cal Newport (plus all his other books)
Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg
Change Your Brain Every Day by Daniel Amen
The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron
3. Perspectives
Job to be done:
Can you tell me what's north of the north pole? Or what time it is on the sun?
Probably not. Because these questions are based on assumptions that aren't true. And as the saying goes: "It's very difficult to find a black cat in a dark room. Especially if there is no cat."
Enter perspectival books. They serve to explore new and better ways of framing problems. This is less about offering answers and more about suggesting better questions to ask.
These are often works of innovative genius and they're generally my favorite books.
Examples:
Two of my favorites are The Society of Mind by Marvin Minsky and Finite and Infinite Games by James Carse.
But here are 5 others I really love:
A First-Rate Madness by Nassir Ghaemi
Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (plus all his other books)
Reflections on the Self by Krishnamurti (plus all his other books)
Dynamics in Action by Alicia Juarrero
The World Beyond Your Head by Matthew Crawford
4. Provocation
Job to be done:
Sometimes akrasia gets you: you know what to do but can't get yourself to do it. What a lot of people do in these situations is reach for how-to content as if they have a knowledge deficit, when really they have a motivation deficit. They need rousing, not reason.
This is where self-improvement books help. Or biographies about titans of your field that light a spark in you.
Examples:
I almost always have at least one provocative arrow in my book quiver. Currently I'm reading about Deng Xiaoping, the "needle inside a ball of cotton" who turned China's economy from a communist backwater into the fastest-growing economy in the history of the world.
Again: for me, it's not about ideology transfer. It's about energy transfer. Robert Moses is up next, then Frederick Winslow Taylor.
Here are 5 more:
The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
This is Marketing by Seth Godin
The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter
Can't Hurt Me by David Goggins
Novelist as a Vocation by Haruki Murakami
5. Pleasure
Job to be done:
To feel good. Fiction does a good job of this but I'm a novelist so I usually read fiction for 1+ of the reasons above.
I won't give examples here because pleasure is highly subjective and we all can think up good examples.
Mixing and matching
In my case, how I read a book depends on why I'm reading it.
If I'm reading a "procedural book", I'll expect a lot from the author, and if they don't clearly know more about the subject than me I'll discard the book immediately.
But if they're legit, I'll take my time. I'll take a lot of notes. Sometimes I'll convert insights into standard operating procedures within my personal productivity systems.
But if I'm reading for perspective, say, I'll read with a lot more patience and open-mindedness. I'll also go quickly. More quickly than with a propositional or procedural book. Come across a new term or concept I don't understand? No matter. I just forge ahead and work out the bigger picture as I cover more ground. These are the books I'll re-read from cover to cover when they're really good. Usually more slowly with each successive read.
Huge help in bringing back the joy of reading! Having multiple books in the balance has made it much easier to spend less time on social media and more getting lost in a good book (or four).
Thank you for this article. It provides me with a new framework for reading.
Curious. What systems do you have each day or each week to read 1-2 books a week?
I'm struggling with finding a system
Here's a tl;dr of my ideal reading workflow:
Note that this is my ideal workflow! In real life, my weeks are filled with unexpected curveballs just like everyone else's, so it's rarely ever this "clean," and I often skip steps or take shortcuts.
With that out of the way, here's a breakdown:
Pre-Reading Process
After deciding on a book, I set aside ~20–45 minutes to "pre-read" the entire book using the THIEVES method, the idea of which is to "steal" the gist of the book in advance. You can read more about it here, but here's a tl:dr of my modified version:
Co-Reading Process
It's very disruptive to take notes. Really kills the flow of reading. But sometimes you come across really powerful lines that give you an "aha" moment. If you don't make note of these lines or the insights prompted by them, you can lose them forever. Ideas are perishable!
So. Say I decide I want to listen to the audiobook version of a book while going for a walk. (I always buy books in every format: audiobook, e-book (via Google Play Books usually), and print.) Before I hit play on the audiobook for a session of reading, I make sure two other apps are open in the background: the e-book version of the same book and Obsidian, where I jot down random thoughts. That way, if I hear a great quote in the audiobook or if the content prompts a sudden insight in me, I pause it and a) highlight the quote in the e-book version or b) jot down the thought in Obsidian, respectively.
This sets the stage for future learning, but it also gives me tiny, real-time reps of active engagement with the material.
Post-Reading Process
Note: this only applies to really good books. If a book isn't great, I won't do a post-reading process at all.
After finishing the book, I go back through all of my notes and archive them in Notion. Sometimes this takes 30 minutes. But sometimes it takes like 3 hours and I chip away at it over a week or two.
Not only is this a natural way to leverage spaced repetition, but the effort and friction involved in Notion data entry is a pretty good way to engage the neural circuitry for learning.
Phenomenal. Thank you for this thorough explanation. I am reading Ryan Serhant's new book on branding and will try this methodology.
That's awesome, thanks for sharing that
This post was definitly eye-opening for me. I'm already thinking a lot before actually reading a book (i have my own SOP on how to evaluate, get, read and long-term learn from a ressource for myself). But that only worked great for some books and some didn't fit in at all. Now I know why. THANK YOU! :D
Glad to have helped!
Excellent recommendations. I read a lot of fiction for fun but I will read a “useful” book once every other month or so. Here are some recommendations:
Atomic Habits
Man’s Search for Meaning
Falling upwards
Freakonomics
Getting Things Done
How to win friends and influence people
Sapiens
Great recs, love all of those. (Except Falling Upwards — first time hearing about it.)
It was new for me too. I read it 3 weeks ago and it’s now my second favorite book. It might depend on where you are in life. 2 years ago I would have never liked it or even read it.
Interesting perspective and great book recommendations.
I'd also add at least 1 personal finance-related book / year unless you've already reached some sort of financial security/freedom such as:
The only financial advice anyone needs is to spend money on books instead of cars, houses, and travel.
Just kidding. Good books recs!
I love this. As someone who decided to read more on 2020 actively, I have become obsessed (maybe a bit too much) with how much I read.
I often read about the first category (Propositions), and something that helped me tackle new domains is the following trick (I trace the idea back to Bill Gates, but who knows?): I read many books on the same topic. They may disagree on several points, but there is often a common denominator, and that's where the gold is!
I also upload everything that I read to Goodreads
This is a really good and subtle insight. There's nothing worse than knowing a lot about a topic and then talking to someone who's read precisely one book on that topic. To them, that one book covers pretty much all there is know. It's like walking into the ocean: the further you walk, the deeper it goes.
Always a good idea to read multiple different takes.
You know what they say: don't put all your eggs in one basket 🙂
What a fun way to look at reading. I am with you in that I typically read 1-2 books per week, but I honestly don't ever think about why I am reading what I am reading.
To be fair, I didn't used to think about it much either! A big influence for me was the work of John Vervaeke (example), a popular cognitive scientist.
Interesting post. And yeah, I hadn't come up with categories for reasons either.
I've got to say, pretty unique take. Most people just skim the surface, missing all the different things their books have. I get why breaking them down by jobs is such a productive way to look at them. I like the recommendations too. Will definitely check those out. Thanks for sharing.
Saves a lot of time honestly.
I can imagine.
Since I was very young I read. At the beginning, because I was a child that always had a broken leg (literally) during summer holiday, and I was born in an era without smartphones, tablets and video-gaming. So the only option to pass the time was reading. So I read basically everything that I could find, from fiction to poetry and even cooking books. Even as an adult I was, for a very long time, an avid reader with no path :) There were moments I skipped work ;) to be able to finish a book that was I was completely sunk into. But I came to realize that the tendency was to read anything, with no filter.
Now, I do get to select my books and in order to have a bit of structure I decided to read 1 book for pleasure, 1 book for personal development, 1 for knowledge and 1 for context.
However, I find your 5P structure more clear and with your permission, I will give it a try.
Permission granted
Thanks for sharing
Just a good book for a beginner , who finds it difficult to read a book
Woah!
I love the way you broke down and outlined the various Ps
Will be adding these books to my library
I find your categorisation and book recommendations thoroughly useful! Thanks!
Thanks for sharing mate
Of course 🙏
Thanks a lot ❤️
Thanks for reading!
Thanks for sharing such invaluable knowledge!
The comprehensive breakdown for the various role that book plays in each of our lives is relatable. Thank you for sharing a curated list of favourite books
This breakdown of the different roles books play in our lives is fascinating! It's so true that books offer much more than just information or entertainment—they provide perspectives, provoke thought, and offer practical guidance. I appreciate the categorization into Propositions, Procedures, Perspectives, Provocation, and Pleasure; it's a great way to think about why we read and what we hope to gain from each book. Thanks for sharing your insights and some awesome book recommendations across these categories!