Reading Protocol
"The genuine love for reading itself, when cultivated, is a superpower."
"Reading science, math, and philosophy one hour per day will likely put you at the upper echelon of human success within seven years."
1. Read what you love until you love to read
- "Almost have to read the stuff you're reading because you're into it."
- Best workout = the one you'll do every day. Best reading = the one you're excited about.
- Naval reads ~1–2 hrs/day — places him in the top 0.00001%. Daily habit dominates content choice.
2. Skim, jump, reread
- No race. The better the book, the more slowly absorbed.
- Naval has poor attention; he skims, speed-reads, jumps around.
- Drop books that don't grab you within the first chapter. Skip ahead.
- "I don't believe in delayed gratification when there are an infinite number of books to read."
- "Number of books completed is a vanity metric."
3. Foundations first
- Foundations are key — be 9/10 on basics rather than super-deep in advanced.
- Most non-fiction has one point; once you get the gist, put it down.
- "If they wrote it to make money, don't read it."
- Reread the great books rather than chasing new ones (Illacertus: "100 great books over and over").
4. Stick to classics and originals
- Mathematics, hard sciences, microeconomics = solid foundations.
- Read originals, not interpretations:
- Evolution → Darwin (not Dawkins first).
- Macroeconomics → Adam Smith / von Mises / Hayek.
- Communism/socialism → Marx directly.
- Then current interpretations don't fool you.
5. Combat fear of any book
- "No book in the library should scare you."
- Confusion = working out a mental muscle.
- Foundations + math literacy = no book is too hard.
6. Note-taking
- Naval's "notetaking" is Twitter — distilling insights into aphorisms (then absorbing inevitable counter-examples).
- Teach what you learn to someone else; teaching forces learning.
7. Bias to broad inputs
- Naval skips talking about ~2/3 of his books because "they'd sound trivial or silly." Reads "junk" and disagreeable material for mind-bending.
- "It's not 'educated vs uneducated.' It's 'likes to read vs doesn't.'"
Related
- Clear Thinking Protocol — reading is upstream of foundations.
- Judgment — reading builds the mental models that become judgment.
- Naval's Recommended Reading (from Almanack) — Naval's curated list from the Almanack.
Sources: [Almanack pp114-120]