What Should I Read? The Great Books Vs. Articles Debate Revisited

What should i read? the great books vs. articles debate revisited

Why am I writing this?

I get some form of the following two questions a lot from readers:

1. How do I pick what to read and consume?; and
2. Which medium offers me the highest ROI?1

I found that each time I answer this question, no matter what I say, we’d inevitably end up on the question – books or articles? I figured there’d be a litany of writing on the topic and while I’m sure it’s been debated over decades, I surprisingly found little to no writing that encapsulated how I’d address the topic. I typically hear individuals vehemently defend one approach or the other but never make the case for both.

I spend a lot of time reading and listening about successful people – CEOs, athletes, investors, politicians, etc. and one of the only surefire commonalities between them all is a voracious appetite for reading. Furthermore, a lot of the people I follow online and writers that I admire also read both books and articles prodigiously. To be transparent, from my perspective, there’s a clear bias that reading long-form essays and books is more valuable than articles – and I’d agree. However, I don’t think anyone has tackled the issue the way I’d like to see it presented, on the merits of both approaches – each of which have compelling arguments.

Quick disclaimer: I want to preface this post with the clarification that I am assuming readers are debating high-quality articles vs. books. For the sake of this discussion, I am bucketing shorter-form (<15 min), scholarly pieces, and long-form essays (e.g. Wait but Why, Ribbon Farm, etc.) as articles and excluding [Insert Buzzfeed Quiz] or [Insert Clickbait] articles, which are much lower value-add options. If you are looking for something to defend you reading minimal value nonsense, that is absolutely fine but this post is not for you. I hope you one day find enlightenment in the form of astrology sign blog posts or quizzes that tell you what type of pizza you are.

Second disclaimer: This post does also NOT cover alternative mediums (e.g. Podcast, documentaries, academic papers) that I find are incredible resources for learning. If this post generates significant interest/dialogue from readers, I can expand to later include.

The benefits of reading in general.

I shouldn’t have to tell you, nor am I qualified to speak to, the scientific reasons of why reading should be so important to you but I felt the need to address some of the benefits up front. Reading stimulates your mind, increases your vocabulary, introduces new viewpoints/perspectives, improves memory/concentration/focus, enhances your imagination, and will make you a better reader/writer the more you do it. Reading leads you to have more fulfilling conversations and lead a more interesting life as you explore the topics you spend time reading about. Reading ultimately helps you build an analytical mind and think clearly as it forces you to critically think about the world around you and constantly reevaluate your most strongly held beliefs and values. It can trigger new thoughts, lead to new insights and broaden your horizons. Reading is an activity that has minimal negative consequences and unlimited potential upside. In investing, we call that an asymmetric return profile – one that is imbalanced or skewed toward the upside than the downside. You might be like, “great, how incredibly boring of you” so let’s try this instead:

• Warren Buffet reads 500 pages a day and estimates ~80% of his working day is dedicated to reading
• Bill Gates read 50 books a year
• In 2015, Mark Zuckerberg started a book club where he read a book every two weeks
• Mark Cuban reads 4-5 hours a day
• A self-made millionaire who studied 1,200 wealthy people and found they all have one — free — pastime in common: they self-educate by reading

The argument for books.

• “High protein” content: Books are people’s life works distilled into something that takes just hours to digest. Reading books is like having a conversation with an author that lasts for hours or even days. If it’s an autobiography, you’re hearing about their life with incredibly rich detail. If it’s a scholar, you are reading the culmination of countless hours of research, writing, and conversations/debates. With an unlimited amount of information out there, it’s vital to focus on content that has been optimized for the highest value-add. Imagine finding one of the smartest people on planet earth on a certain topic, paying them to study said topic for years and years, and then have them write the most condensed, efficient version of what they found most valuable over the course of their study. This is precisely the trade you’re making when you buy a book and often times it’s <$20, lower than a cost of a round of drinks! Now not all books are the made the same but if you effectively structure your selection process, you can curate an incredibly high quality stream of some of the most content-rich, information-dense, value-add content on a certain topic or person just by selecting the right book.
• Work that has withstood the test of time and has long useful-life: Articles can cycle at an incredibly high velocity with 2 million new articles published every single day. You typically remember a handful of great articles you’ve read over time but even those fade from memory after a few weeks or months. High quality books, on the other hand, have much higher staying power. Books make a lasting impression on your mind and worldview. Once, you have read a book you change as a person even if you don’t realize it immediately. Given the long useful lives of some books, it adds another layer of approval. The longer the book stays relevant or the more its touted by other individuals, the more filters you’ve had on that content! While an article can be seamlessly shared across social media platforms or instant messages mindlessly, when someone recommends a book it’s taken with a different weight. Now amplify that weight by multiple generations across multiple countries across multiple periods of time. How many things have you been exposed to in your life can you say that have withstood as much scrutiny from the public eye than great books? If that’s not a sign to pick one up, I don’t know what is.
• Specialized, rich, in-depth information that can focus on higher complexity topics: Given the length and information density of books, you are able to dive deeper into complex and or complicated topics that short-form or longer-form essays are unable to address. This includes, but is not limited to, the lives of extraordinary leaders and entrepreneurs, complex technologies or areas of academic research, and studies into various periods of time or historical events. Remember how much difficulty you had fitting your entire life through high school into a convenient 500 word essay for college applications? Now multiply that by a million orders of magnitude of complexity, depth, and involved parties, and try to impose that same size limitation. It’s impossible. That’s why if you really want to do a deep dive into someone’s life, understand a new technology, or dissect an interesting trend, you’re better off picking up a book that is focused on the topic.
• Added Context: Books are afforded the luxury of being able to provide additional context: time, details, and events that otherwise would be superfluous in shorter-form writing. The ability to add in context that may be unrelated from the main takeaway or point of the book allows authors to dive deeper into the motivations, causes, and thoughts of their subject matters, which enhances your understanding as a reader. Instead of getting just ‘the story’, you get ‘the whole story’.

The argument for articles.

• Lower commitment cost (time and effort): There’s no getting around it. This is the biggest differentiator between books and articles. Books require significant time commitments (~4-6 hour average for a 200 page book) while articles can be read in <10-45 minutes, depending on length. There’s something to be said about the time: value relationship but let’s be realistic that time and attention are scarce in today’s world and it’s frightening to commit both to an intensive endeavor like reading a book. I’d call this intellectual lock-in. Articles afford readers the freedom to quit early without as much guilt, cover a higher volume of pieces, and lead you to be able to read about a wider variety of topics. This is also optimal for people that are stretched for time. These individuals are likely to fear the ‘sunk costs’ associated with reading a book that takes hours to go through and doesn’t add much value versus an article where they only lose <1 hour of their time. In terms of an ROI on info:time, articles are unmatched.
• Up to date information and coverage of recent developments: A key benefit of articles is that they can be rapidly produced in order to incorporate the latest information and/or developments. What do I mean by that? If you’re reading about the latest technologies, trends, or news, it makes sense to read information that reflects the most up-to-date information. Articles are created quickly, can be edited or added to later, and are meant to be temporary snapshots in time. Articles are much more agile. If there is a breakthrough or fundamental reinvention of how we interpret or understand something, articles can deal with that change much more efficiently than books can. On the flipside, it is important to note that the fast deploy model has the inherent risk that the work is more error-prone given the speed at which articles are published.  However, assuming quality sources, articles are largely more useful on a day-to-day basis if your goals are to increase the number of touchpoints you can talk about with friends and coworkers, strike up a conversation with strangers, or share on social media.
• Can catalyze further interest in topics you wouldn’t previously entertain: A potentially underrated feature of articles is how often they expose me to new topics, information, or authors I would otherwise never been exposed to. Articles can capture your attention in the form of a witty headline, being recommended by colleagues or online personalities, or by being selectively populated into your curated stream of information feeds. I’m much more inclined to click on a random article than I am to pick up a random book and start reading on a new topic. In this way, reading articles has actually exposed me to a whole host of new topics that I never would’ve imagined being interested in beforehand. There’s been more than a handful of times where reading an article has led me to pick up a book by the same author (e.g., James Clear) or discover an author’s entire body of work that I had never been exposed to prior to reading one of their articles (e.g., David Perell).

How to choose.

I’d encourage readers to focus on a few criteria when deciding to read books vs. articles. The overarching question you should be asking yourself is: Do you want to be a mile deep and inch wide (book) or mile wide and inch deep (articles)? Be intentional about the things you read and why you read them.

• Level of depth: Are you seeking deep expertise (book) or an introduction to a topic (article)?
• Commitment: Do you have large amounts time and attention to dedicate to this reading (book) or are you constrained by limitations (article)?
• Volume: Are you looking to find one synthesized, high-quality piece (book) or do you want the flexibility of reading multiple pieces (article)?
• Style: Do you want a chapter-by-chapter dissertation (book) or one singular stream of consciousness (article)?

Ideally, there is a symbiotic relationship between the two. You can use articles to get surface-level knowledge on a variety of interesting topics and then use books to supplement that knowledge with enhanced explanations in greater levels of detail on the topics you care most about. Understand your constraints and then select the path that allows you to maximize the relationship between value and information provided compared to time you have available.

Guardrails.

• Select credible, unbiased and pedigreed authors and/or publications. You should leverage the power of 3rd party sources (e.g. reviews, recommendations by people you look up to) or personal filters such as friends or family to assist in this process but spend time getting comfortable that the work you are reading is intellectually honest in its approach and does not have an ulterior motive for getting you to read it. You should only pick pieces that rely on credible data sources from well renowned or accredited institutions, companies, and governments, among other sources. One way I’ve seen this exemplified personally is that publications that are more transparent about references to original data sources often have less to hide. They allow you to connect the dots and dig further yourself if you choose to and do not mask their work in obscurity.
• Seek information that enhances and broadens your horizons versus confirming preconceived stances or opinions. What’s the point of reading something if you won’t evaluate it holistically with an open mind? If you merely seek out things that confirm what you already perceive to know, the act of reading isn’t adding much value for you. Seek out authors/publications that challenge your assumptions, test your most fundamental deeply held beliefs, and open your eyes on new ways to view your reality.

Even if you lose, you still win.

Even when you conform to all the above, you’ll still find some lingering issues with reading either medium. Most often, I see the following two nagging issues:

1. Decision anxiety; and
2. Reliability/validity of sources over time

With regards to decision anxiety, that’s a symptom of living in the Information Age. There’s an infinite amount of options to choose from and a numerous amount of ways you can drown in the vastness of it all. Whenever I fall into that loop, I remember the asymmetric bet reading offers – little to no downside and massive upside. Even if I choose something I’m not thrilled with, I can ultimately move onto something else or build a better understanding of pieces/styles/topics that don’t resonate with me or my reading approach. There’s something to be gained every time.

The other main issue is that sometimes you can read what is perceived to be true or conventional wisdom at the time later be proved wrong. Even in these situations, I think you still end up ahead because you’re simply evolving over time. You’re applying the scientific method to learning: hypothesize/formulate–>observe/measure/test–>confirm/deny/modify–>repeat. We live in a dynamic and everchanging world while written literature is largely static. Just because you read something doesn’t mean it should be ritualized in your head forever and be left unchanged for decades to come. Rather, you build a strong foundational understanding or operating system that can be easily updated when newer/better information comes out and, again, you end up ahead.

Stay tuned.

Next week: I’ll be releasing what I enjoyed reading and consuming most in 2019.

In the coming weeks: I hope to release an article that breaks down my systematic approach to sourcing and curating valuable information by tailoring your systems and feeds to curate the highest quality information for you.