[scrollaway]

I used to read these types of books (including the most popular of the bunch listed here) years ago. I had this idea that if I just kept reading this stuff, I would eventually just "get it". (I never did. I "got it" much faster by reading individual comments from select people, and trying things out by myself)

The thing is, it seems to me that many of these books are just extremely information-sparse. Very very lengthened ways of making a small set of points. And because of that, I don't particularly remember the lessons learned from the lot.

200 pages to tell you to talk to your customers? 300 pages to explain that you should focus on your core business and not get sidetracked?

Here's a challenge to those who have read books in that list. Pick one you've found useful, and tell me how it changed you. Then look at your comment and decide whether the book could have just made that same point in that many words.

[TheAceOfHearts]

There's no way 20 books are necessary. You can achieve near expertise in many domains with 2 or 3 really good books, what do the remaining 17 add?

[SkyPuncher]

Ive read most of these books over my career. There is absolutely a plateau of learning.

I find the value in continuing to read these books is offering a new perspective (or at least new wording) on a topic I’ve lost touch with over time.

For example, I don’t really get much out of re-reading “the lean startup “. I know the core principles by heart. I do however tend to forget them over time. They get lost in the noise of my day to day. However, simply re-reading the same book doesn’t bring them back sharply. I find, instead, that reading a similar book helps bring back the vividness.

[wg0]

Not every book is worth reading. There's only one or few original works and rest is always commentary or reaction, rejections and impressions.

[melx]

Oh cheers! I read The Lean Startup and due to my leaky memory I remember nothing! But it's as you say: 200 pages to tell "iterate more often on product updates". Hell yeah.

[dizzydes]

This.

Maybe reading a few on Blinkist initially but all one really needs:

- is repeatedly trying (even on a side project)

- first principles thinking/common sense

Why? Because:

- all those books are repetitive

- we learn faster by doing

- problems a given project faces at a given time are highly situational

[scrollaway]

Yeah I really like the idea of Blinkist but I never tried it. Have you?

[browningstreet]

Very ironic response given the tone of this thread.

How many opinions (err, books) will you need before you just try it yourself?

[scrollaway]

Wat?

I am perfectly content with my current learning strategy, it got me this far in life. However I'm open to new things, and I enjoy reading people's open opinions first. Even if I were to try it myself, I may have a different experience depending on my expectations of it.

[conductr]

> The thing is, it seems to me that many of these books are just extremely information-sparse

I too have most of these books on a shelf. I’ve found most of them can be skimmed and if they have descriptive chapter naming , just skimming the TOC is enough to get the gist. They rarely go into much detail on execution and generally just talk about a couple business cases as examples of the topic in action. But these usually don’t help on your specific business other than making you aware of the topic. If you’re already interested in business and know some of the lingo these are mostly useless. There’s a lot of blogs and content online I’ve read over the years that is significantly more helpful but I could see how given the state of blogs and content how this could be useful for someone young and/or relatively new to business in general.

[1123581321]

I've only read some of these books, but the ones I've read had 20 or 30 points or pieces of advice that took a few pages each. One of them would put just a few sentences on each page. If it takes you a long time to read the sentences that expand or illustrate the idea, learn to skim.