Why Smart People Read Dumb Books

Today, You walk into any bookstore and 80% of the titles promise to fix your life. They will ask you to wake up at 4 AM. Build better habits. Manage your time. Be more disciplined. They're all selling the same snake oil in different bottles - the only difference is whether the author was a Navy SEAL, a Silicon Valley CEO, or someone who interviewed successful people for a living.

Over the last few years, the self-help industry has convinced all of us that reading should always serve a purpose. Every book out there is trying to make you better, faster, stronger, more efficient. This is like a drug… you finish one, feel briefly motivated, then need another hit. Not to mention the anxiety that drives people to constantly optimise themselves instead of accepting who they are.

Real reading does the opposite. It teaches you that most problems don't have clean solutions. Fiction shows you that people are messy and contradictory - just like your customers and employees. History reveals that every 'revolutionary' business strategy is just old wine in new bottles. Philosophy trains you to spot bullshit instead of collecting more of it.

This is exactly why most people avoid these books. They want answers, not better questions. In reading books you have to sit with ideas, let them marinate, argue with them mentally.

Please stop treating your bookshelf like a medicine cabinet where each book need to serves a purpose.

So next time when you go to a bookstore… Please pick up something that serves no purpose except expanding how you see the world. Your 4 AM wake-up routine won't matter if you have nothing worth thinking about once you're awake.

Stop optimizing your life and start living it.