In an age of cutting-edge technology, many of the world’s most successful people attribute much of their achievement to something old-fashioned: reading.
Several billionaires say they spend hours reading books every day. Others squeeze in reading whenever they have a free moment.
Here are the rich people who say reading made them who they are — and how it did so.
Bill Gates
When Bill Gates takes a vacation, he spends much of his time reading. In fact, he averages about three hours daily absorbed in a book.
The co-founder of Microsoft is famous for regularly offering a list of good books to read. Reading has helped spur his success, largely because he takes an extra step to make sure the material sinks in. As he posted on Reddit:
“I only take notes on about 20% of the books I read. It takes me at least 2x as much time when I write notes but for a lot of books, that is key to my learning.”
Warren Buffett
Warren Buffett has an investing record that is unmatched. So, you might wonder what he does all day that gives him an edge over everyone else.
It’s actually pretty simple: “I just sit in my office and read all day,” he has reportedly said.
The Oracle of Omaha spends up to six hours a day reading books and newspapers.
He credits reading and long periods of thinking with preventing him from making impulsive decisions. But the real reason he reads is because it’s pleasurable.
“I do it because I like this kind of life,” he once explained.
Oprah Winfrey
Reading is one of the great joys of Oprah Winfrey’s life: “Nothing, not one thing or activity, can replace the experience of a good read,” she once wrote.
The Oprah’s Book Club segment was one of the most popular aspects of her long-running TV program “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”
Winfrey attributes much of her huge success to being a reader, saying reading “opens you up” and “gives you access to anything your mind can hold.”
“I can’t imagine where I’d be or who I’d be had reading not been such a fundamental tool in my life,” she has said.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk is a voracious reader, with some reports saying he reads more than 100 books a year. The founder of Tesla and SpaceX once wrote the following about the power of good books:
“I learn what I need to learn to accomplish my objectives, and I think most people can do this, but they often self-limit. People are more capable than what they think. If you do something like read a lot of books and talk to a lot of people, you can learn almost anything.”
Mark Zuckerberg
In 2015, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg publicly pledged to read two books a month. On his Facebook page, he wrote:
“I’ve found reading books very intellectually fulfilling. Books allow you to fully explore a topic and immerse yourself in a deeper way than most media today. I’m looking forward to shifting more of my media diet towards reading books.”
Upon completing his 2015 goal, the Facebook founder later wrote that all that reading had given him a wider perspective on a number of topics and that he came away from the project “with a greater sense of hope and optimism that our society can make greater progress in all of these areas.”
Charlie Munger
The late Charlie Munger — who was Warren Buffett’s right-hand man as vice chairman at Berkshire Hathaway — read so much that he jokingly remarked upon how his children viewed him as “a book with a couple of legs sticking out.”
Munger was never shy about expressing an opinion, and his take on the importance of reading was typically uncompromising:
“In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn’t read all the time — none, zero.”
