The skill last week was: speed reading.

Why? to be smarter, faster.

This week: fishing!

I want to tell you about 7 books, 7 lessons that will improve your life:

but really I want to tell you about the last one. the one I almost skipped. you'll see why.

this week was speed reading. I read 7 books in 7 days.

FIRST: here's what nobody tells you about speed reading.

you understand LESS.

that's not a failure of the technique, that's just how it works.

The science is clear.

when you read faster you trade some comprehension for speed. you catch the big ideas and miss some details.

and after doing it for a full week, I think that tradeoff is one of the best deals available!

the model most of us grew up with is the school model.

read one book slowly, finish it completely, don't start the next one until you're done. that approach produces maybe 8 to 12 books a year for most people…

The real cost in my opinion isn't the slow pace, it's that you have no idea whether the book you just spent three weeks on was even the right book for where you are right now. you went deep on a random pick and hoped for the best.

this week I read 7 books in 7 days and I can already tell you which 2 or 3 I want to go back to and read slowly because they actually connected with problems I'm dealing with right now. the other 4 gave me useful ideas I'll carry around, but they don't need a second pass yet.

that kind of sorting is impossible when you're stuck on one book per month.

here are the 7 books and the lesson from each:

100 million dollar offers, alex hormozi. "too expensive" is never really about the price. it means the person can't see enough value in what you offer. fix that.

100 million dollar leads, alex hormozi. there's a difference between going out and finding customers and building something that makes customers show up on their own. Do cool useful shit and attract more.

48 laws of power, robert greene. (this one was weird) always say less than necessary.

how to win friends and influence people, dale carnegie. you'll make more meaningful connections in two months of being genuinely interested in other people than in two years of trying to get people interested in you.

start with why, simon sinek. people buy WHY you do things, not how. "I'm learning a new skill every week" stops being exciting around week 6 when you're tired and the audience is small and nobody seems to care. the why is what carries me past that wall. Because I want to help people unlock their potential, explore life and find meaning :)

the school of life, alain de botton. the problem for most people isn't that they don't know enough. it's that they don't have the nerve to act on what they already know.

the greatest salesman in the world, og mandino. a small book from 1968 that reads like a letter from someone who believes in you more than you believe in yourself. the line that stayed with me is the simplest one: I will persist until I succeed.

after 20 weeks of doing this in public, that kind of simplicity is more useful than another framework.

7 books. 7 simple lessons. not one of them is complicated. that's usually how the best ideas work. they're obvious once someone says them out loud, and then you spend the rest of your life trying to actually live them.

my real advice from this week is to stop reading one book at a time and start reading five.

skim them, speed through them, figure out which ones are speaking to where you are right now, and then go back to those ones and give them the slow attention they deserve.

you'll read more, waste less time on the wrong books, and get to the ideas that can actually change something much faster.

this week’s skill is…

fishing!

Skill 21 of 53!

reply and tell me: what's the one book that changed your life?

Short video update:

If you missed the previous weeks and unusual lessons, check them out HERE:

Reply to this email with all your questions, comments, or tips, I will answer.

Or share with friends who want to improve their life.

- Alex