save what matters from every book you read
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Franz Kafka asked his best friend to burn everything he had ever written. His friend said no. Kafka died of tuberculosis in June 1924. He was 40. In his lifetime he had published a few short stories that hardly anyone bought. He worked at an insurance company by day and wrote at night, and he thought almost all of it was a failure. Three unfinished novels sat in his drawers. After his death, his friend Max Brod found a note in his desk. It said that every diary, manuscript and letter Kafka left behind was to be burned without being read. Brod had already told him, years earlier, that he would never do it. Kafka left the note anyway. Within two months, Brod had signed a publishing deal. The Trial came out in 1925, The Castle in 1926, Amerika in 1927. The man who wanted it all burned is now one of the most famous writers of the twentieth century, and his name became a word.
Alexander the Great once offered a homeless man anything he wanted. The man told him to get out of his light. It happened in Corinth in 336 BC. Alexander was 20 and had just been named commander of all the Greeks for the invasion of Persia. Every politician and philosopher in Greece came to congratulate him. One man didn’t. Diogenes was a philosopher who lived in a large clay jar in the street, owned nothing but a cloak and a stick, and spent his days insulting respectable people. So Alexander went to him. He found Diogenes lying in the sun. He stood over him with his generals and asked if there was anything he could do for him. Diogenes said: “Yes. Stand a little out of my sun.” The generals laughed. Alexander didn’t. Walking away, he said: “If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.”
From what I’ve seen most successful people have similarly multidisciplinary reading lists. I don't see Jobs as an exception.
The most important contract in football history was written on a napkin. In 2000, Lionel Messi was 13 years old. Doctors in Argentina had found he had a growth hormone deficiency. The treatment cost around $1,000 a month, and his club back home could not afford it. His father took him to Barcelona for a trial. The club’s directors liked what they saw but spent months not deciding. On December 14, the sporting director Carles Rexach sat down at a tennis club with two agents, and the agents told him to decide now or they would take the boy somewhere else. Rexach had no paper. He asked for a napkin and wrote on it that Barcelona committed to sign Lionel Messi, and he signed it. The club paid for the treatment. Messi went on to win eight Ballons d’Or and the World Cup. In 2024, the napkin sold at auction for $965,000.
Nogales is one city cut in half by a fence. On the Arizona side, the average household earns about $30,000 a year. On the Mexican side, it’s about a third of that. If you haven’t read Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, you don’t know why some countries get rich. The people on both sides of that fence share the same ancestors, the same food and the same weather. What’s different is the rules they live under. Some rules let ordinary people own property, start businesses and keep what they earn. Others are built so a small elite can take everything. Geography and culture can’t explain why South Korea is about ten times richer than North Korea. Only the rules can.
How old is too old to start over? Colonel Sanders spent years building a restaurant in Corbin, Kentucky. Then the government moved the highway. The travelers stopped coming. In 1956, he sold the restaurant at auction for $75,000. After paying his debts, he was in his mid-60s and living on a $105 Social Security check each month. He had one thing left: a fried chicken recipe. So he got in his car and drove from restaurant to restaurant, cooking his chicken for the owners and asking them to sell it. His deal was a nickel for every chicken they sold. Many said no. By 1964, more than 600 restaurants were selling Kentucky Fried Chicken. That year, he sold the company for $2 million. His face is still on every bucket. Your age is not an excuse.
Napoleon once dared an entire regiment to kill him. In February 1815, he escaped from exile on the island of Elba. He was 45. He landed in the south of France with about 1,000 men. The King sent the army to stop him. Marshal Ney, one of Napoleon’s old generals, promised the King he would bring him back in an iron cage. Near Grenoble, Napoleon met a regiment that had been ordered to stop him. He walked out in front of them and said: “Soldiers of the 5th, I am your Emperor. If there is one among you who wants to kill his Emperor, here I am.” Nobody fired. The soldiers shouted “Long live the Emperor!” and joined him. So did Ney. On March 20, Napoleon entered Paris. The King had already fled. He took back France without fighting a single battle. People follow the man who isn’t afraid.
A 20-year study found the average expert predicted the future about as well as a dart-throwing chimpanzee. Superforecasting by Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner shows what the few people who actually can predict do differently. Tetlock tracked 284 experts making about 28,000 predictions. The famous ones did worse than the unknown ones. Then the US intelligence community ran a forecasting tournament, and Tetlock entered with thousands of ordinary volunteers. The best of them beat professional analysts who had access to classified information. What set them apart wasn’t IQ or credentials. They broke big questions into small ones. They thought in percentages instead of yes or no. They changed their minds often, in small steps. And they kept score. Everyone makes predictions every day about money, jobs and people. This is the best book there is on making better ones.
If the only reason you’re staying in your job is that it feels safe, read this. In 1994, Jeff Bezos was 30 and had a great job at a hedge fund in New York. He wanted to quit and sell books on the internet. His boss took him on a two-hour walk through Central Park. He told Jeff it was a good idea, but a better idea for someone who didn’t already have a good job. Jeff imagined himself at 80, looking back on his life. He said: “I knew that if I failed I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not ever having tried.” He quit. His wife drove them across the country while he typed the business plan. He started Amazon in a garage. He told his parents there was a 70% chance they’d lose the money they put in. You will regret not trying far more than failing.
An ordinary journalist trained for one year and won the US Memory Championship. Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer is the story of how he did it. In 2005, Foer went to cover the contest as a reporter. The competitors told him they weren’t born with special memories. They had learned a technique. So he tried it. He practiced for a year, came back in 2006 and won. He memorized a shuffled deck of cards in 1 minute and 40 seconds, a new US record. The technique is about 2,500 years old. Greek and Roman orators used it to give long speeches without notes. It is the most useful book on memory you will ever read.
