Don't Give Up on Reading Just Yet

Finding time to read is almost impossible. Everyone I know is struggling with it. We’re becoming a post-book society. The amount of books Americans are reading goes down every year. It’s no surprise. There is just so many trends happing now that makes reading difficult.

1) Work Schedule. You work all day. Where are you going to find time to read? For most people, it’s before bed—if you’re not already drained from the mental grind—or maybe you squeeze in a few pages over the weekend, but that’s if you’re not completely wiped out or have other plans.

2) Endless Entertainment Options. TikTok, YouTube, streaming series, podcasts, Twitter—your phone never stops. Your brain is buzzing nonstop. It’s harder than ever to slow down and focus on a book. The pages blur together; the text feels like static.

3) Sheer Number of Books. It’s overwhelming. There are so many books out there, where do you even begin? Take an example like film or cinema, you can sit down and watch the best films in a 3-5 year span. It's a young art form and today it's mostly dead. So you can actually absorb the best possible part of that genre.

With reading, it can be overwhelming, it’s easy to go down a wrong path and waste your time. You can actually end up dumber than if you didn't read the books in the first place.

Reading itself isn’t a moral good. It can harm you.

4) Bookstores Cater to Women. The other challenge with reading today that the book market is so gendered. If you walk into a bookstore today you’ll notice most of the books on the shelves are being advertised toward women. Go inside one. What do you see?

This is just the market responding to demand. Women are the group who is reading the most. Up until recently everyone read novels. Men, women—it didn’t matter. Male authors cranked out fiction that hooked everyone. Fast forward to now, and the landscape’s shifted. Women own the literary scene.

Men have mostly left books behind and have gravitated toward podcasts, YouTube channels or Twitter.

This is a common pattern that’s occurring. Activities are getting more gendered.

Our Gendered World

Gender differences manifest when it comes to hobbies. Certain activities that were exclusively male are now something that women mostly do.

Travel is mostly a female activity. Women make up the majority of travelers, both in groups and solo. It’s the number one hobby for women. Meanwhile,. traveling is niche hobby for men, like fixing cars, riding a motorcycle or playing sports. They may like doing it a little bit, but it isn’t this hobby that appeals to all men. Traveling seems to appeal to most women now.

This traveling interest even extends to study abroad, which is now primarily female.

Or think about horse riding. Men used to love horses. It was a deep bond. Horses were transportation, weapons of war and necessary for survival in many areas. You can see that all throughout ancient literature.

Homer: "Horses are the pride of noble men."

Xenophon: "A horse is a thing of such beauty… none will tire of looking at him as long as he displays himself in his splendor."

Jordanus Rufus: "For in the horse lies the bravery and heart of a knight; he is an equal in battle, a true companion."

But men don’t ride horses anymore for pleasure. Women and girls ride horses. The horse girl keeps the entire horse industry afloat today. Most men prefer fast cars or motorcycles. Not the horse anymore.

Or take the subject of poetry. Men

used to write the bulk of poetry. Today, it’s women who are writing it and men left that entire genre.

Even our politics are becoming gendered now. With specific parties trying to court gender. 68% of single women vote for the Democratic Party.

Read Aphorisms and Maxims

I think the largest challenge to reading is something else. We’re all wired with "internet brain" now. It’s buzzing 24/7 with social media, TikTok, endless videos, constant stimulation. Sitting down to read? Probably feels dull. Maybe you don’t even know how to focus anymore.

My suggestion is to not abandon reading. Text still hits hard. It has staying power in your brain. You can recall something that resonated with you decades after you read. Wisdom in text form is a special thing. If you want a shortcut to wisdom but don’t want to spend your life reading, you can get it through books on maxims.

Think of maxims like photo tweets, except filtered by time. It’s easy reading for our digital fried brains. The most accessible way a modern person to get wisdom.

Here are some you may like.

• La Rochefoucauld

• Publilius Syrus

• The Delphic Maxims

• Schopenhauer 

• Chamfort

• Erasmus

• La Bruyere

• Vauvenargues

• Havamal

• Baltasar Gracian

• Goethe

• Theophrastus

• Leopardi

• Bed of Procrustes

In This Newsletter

I’m pulling out 5 maxims that changed the way I see the world from that list above. These lines made an impression on me and actually changed the way I operate and made my life better.

Five Maxims

1) Men Feel the Good Less Intensely than the Bad (homines bona quam mala sentiunt)

This was a common statement in ancient times. It’s all over Seneca’s writing, and also mentioned by Livy. You’ll even hear it mentioned by modern people. In Confessions of a Winning Poker Player, Jack King said, "Few players recall big pots they have won, strange as it seems, but every player can remember with remarkable accuracy the outstanding tough beats of his career."

The bad times hurt worse than how nice the good times feel. Losing money hurts worse than how good making money feels. Breakups hit harder than love. In the scientific literature it is called Loss Aversion.

It even extends to business. Why is McDonalds so popular all over the world when the food isn’t even that good? Because we know it’s reliable. It won’t make you sick. If you are in a foreign country and want a risk-free option for dinner, go to McDonalds.

You have to make sure you keep this in mind when you do things in life.

This fact of human nature has led to me to make realize how many of my decisions are out of the satisfice principle. We all make satisfice decisions unconsciously. 

Rory Sutherland’s discusses ‘satisficing’, which basically means we tend to look for products/brands that are not perfect but good enough. What we’re really trying to do is buy something that will ‘satisfy’ and ‘suffice’ while avoiding a complete catastrophe.

2) The Half Is More Than the Whole

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