Turning Injury Into Opportunity, Reading Naked, & The Transcendent Nature of Books

“Books are a short-cut to success … You’re getting the cream of the crop of information and it’s just-super affordable. It’s like $10 to learn from all this expert information.” - Alex

Intro

In this episode of Auxoro, Zach explores the rich world of reading with Alex of “The Reader’s Journey” and Alex & Books, a platform that promotes books as part of the journey to a better life. They dig into a range of subjects, from how a biking accident ultimately became a life-changing opportunity to the reason books should come with trailers, just like movies. Reading is an interactive platform all its own. Today’s podcast delves into how books can both mentor and inspire you on a daily basis.

Key Takeaways

How an accident turned out to be the proverbial blessing in disguise:

Alex explains how reading emerged as an important pastime after a mountain biking accident landed him in bed for a long period of recuperation.
Breaking his shoulder turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened to Alex.
Without that precipitating event – and the subsequent boredom and time for reflection – he would likely never have pursued his vision for Alex & Books.
A look at resistance and “The War of Art,” a book that dissects the mental hurdles – internally and externally imposed -- that keep people from realizing the projects they want to create.
10:36 -- “If you want to beat that resistance, it comes down to small steps in the right direction and really believing in yourself.”

What Alex has learned since starting his podcasting journey:

Alex had the equipment and desire but had been putting off the next step: Actually putting his podcast together and launching it.
He overcame his timidity and went out to authors, only to be pleasantly surprised by the number of positive responses he got to his requests. Alex & Books has now hosted many guests he would never have met had he not taken the initial gamble.
11:56 -- “I emailed three people and asked if they wanted to come on my podcast and they all said yes. So now I can’t let them down. I have to figure out how to podcast, how to record, how to edit. It was kind of pulling the trigger first and then learning how to do it.”
Alex got through to prospective guests with kindness, patience and accommodation. He also politely pitched the value in an appearance on his podcast.

Three things that constitute the overall goal for Alex and Books:

Inspiring people to pick up books and develop a reading habit.
Teaching people how to optimize reading as a skill like any other.
Taking what reading has to teach and optimizing it with real-world applications and follow-through.
18:14 -- “The first step is actually unlearning a lot of bad reading habits we picked up in school. School teaches us how to read, but it doesn’t teach us how to be readers. You can be literate, but you may not like to read books.”
It’s okay to quit a book. There’s no imaginary book police! Just because other people have enjoyed something doesn’t mean you have to. The key is to quit books, not reading.

When it comes to finding interesting books, Alex has two main criteria:

Cures: Books you pick up in order to address or resolve a problem or challenge in your life.
Curiosity: Books you pick up because of something that piques your interest.
If you bought a book that isn’t as great as you hoped it would be, return it or donate it but don’t let yourself become trapped or blocked.
22:35 -- “We are out of high school. We are out of college. You are free as a reader. You can read whatever you want. You can quit whatever you want.”
Treat books like a blog post: You can read one chapter or skip to another. You can jump around and you can feel free to quit altogether without the “book gods” looking down upon you.
Alex is trying to teach people to be readers, not just know how to read.

Skills that people can implement today to improve their reading habits:

Alex went hardcore in his effort to eliminate distractions and now owns neither an Xbox or TV, but it’s not necessary to go that far.
There are small hacks, like moving your phone into another room to eliminate the temptation to keep checking social media, etc.
Consider establishing “book o’clock,” time dedicated to reading when all devices are banished. (For Alex it’s 11p-Midnight.)
29:00 -- “Whatever things you don’t want to do, you want to put as much friction between you and that activity as possible. Even if it’s a simple thing like closing a door, it just adds that tiny little bit of work and that friction.”

Pros and cons of television:

Alex may have over-corrected by getting rid of his television. He’s not against movies or shows altogether.
It was the random channel surfing that he didn’t like because of the enormous waste of time. The video games and junk entertainment that he enjoyed were consuming him rather than the other way around.
31:39 -- “I was at an inflection point where I could continue the path I was going on and I wouldn’t be successful or as successful with Alex & Books or it would take me longer to get there. Or I could really drop the things I loved, that weren’t loving me back in a sense, to do things that I did love and were loving me back.”
Total abstinence was what worked best for Alex, but moderation is also an option. Depends on what works for you and your personality type.
Tell friends at dinner that you spent the day playing video games and that’s basically the end of the conversation, whereas when you bring up a book you’ve read it sparks questions.

“Reading Books Naked” and what it means:

This was a catchy headline that doesn’t actually mean Alex is reading in the buff. What he’s actually talking about is removing book jackets.
It makes books easier to read or carry. It frees up space for taking notes. Sometimes books actually have a little hidden “Easter Egg” that the author hides away under a cover.
36:00 -- “Whenever I start a book and want to take it seriously, I’ll take off the cover because I’m more concerned about the inside of a book than having a cool cover outside. That’s more about external validation … What I want to learn is the author’s lesson and message and take notes so I can use it later. So that’s what reading naked is really about.”
By removing the jacket, you’re turning your book into a blank slate for recording its ideas and your own.

How Alex would improve book design to make them more user-friendly:

Every book could offer basic directions to help readers get the most out of the experience: a reminder that it’s okay to exercise selectivity; space that encourages note taking; action steps at the end of each chapter that turn a book into a workbook.
38:43 -- “So many people just read a self-help book but they don’t take any action and it just stays on their shelf. So it’s like ‘shelf-help’ instead of ‘self-help.’ What you really want to do is read the book, learn what it’s about, take the lessons from it and then apply those lessons to get the changes you want out of life.”
A big part of the concept behind Alex & Books is teaching readers strategies for becoming more active and getting more out of the experience.
A big driver behind Alex & Books was his desire to be around people who are engaged, curious and eager to join and cultivate a thoughtful community.

When developing a platform it’s important to consider qualitative issues:

When he was pondering a focus for his podcast Alex considered fitness since it was an actionable topic of interest, but ultimately chose readers and reading instead because of the dimensionality of topics and types of people it would attract.
It’s important to factor in the kinds of followers you want to reach and values you want to promulgate before starting up a podcast or other digital venture.
Now Alex and his platform have a following on social media composed of people he is happy to think of as friends – successful, kind, interesting people he would want to seek out in any case.
43:26 -- “You don’t want to have ballers. You want to have people that you consider friends. The people who follow me on Instagram and Twitter? I would want to hang out with them … You love reading. I love reading. There’s a lot I can learn from you and hopefully there’s a lot you can learn from me.”

Reading fiction versus Non-Fiction:

Fiction may be more entertaining but there are also timeless lessons there that you have to look for. Alex keeps lists of novels he plans to read in the future.
Non-fiction is front and center for Alex right now because he’s at a point in his life where he’s primarily interested in acquiring concrete skills and messages.
One piece of advice would be to start with short fiction like Hemingway’s “Old Man and the Sea” before picking up novels like the 1100-page “War and Peace.”
52:00 -- “(At what stage of life) you read is super-important because your mindset is going to be different, your experiences are going to be different. It might be a great book then – and it was – but I just wasn’t ready for that (classic) book at that time.”

What we should make of platforms that abridge and summarize books:

Platforms like Blinkist and Sparknotes offer quantity but not a lot of quality.
Alex sees them as more a vehicle for information: a filtering process to determine if you’re interested in a book or a reminder/refresher of lessons you learned from a book.
53:16 -- “If you look at my Blinkist, I think it’s up to more than 400 ‘read’ books and then I started thinking to myself, ‘What do I remember from all these books?’ and the truth was, ‘Absolutely nothing.’ ”
Another way to consider such platforms is as a sort of movie trailer function -- previews of a coming attraction to help readers decide where they want to invest their time.

Things that are misunderstood about reading as a practice for people:

Most of us remember books as things being assigned in school and as property that you couldn’t write notes in, making them like foreign objects.
Owning books and making them our own turns them into living things. Reading becomes interactive if you make notes in the margins, leave question marks by thoughts you doubt or have seen in another context before, keep lists in the end pages of thoughts and follow-up possibilities.
58:22 -- “It’s like mind mapping your learning. Where have I seen this idea before and how does it relate to this other idea? It’s a great way to remember what you’ve learned and get involved with your reading.”
Making notes in your books creates a great reference tool, a place to go back to and remember what you’ve explored and learned.

Building an impressive social media presence:

Alex & Books has 60,000+ Instagram followers and 14,000+ on Twitter, as well as a presence on TikTok and YouTube.
01:26 -- “Each social media platform is like its own country. People in each country are different – the way people eat food or just physical customs might be different in each country and the way people consume content on each social media platform is also going to be different. So you need to learn the language of each platform.”
Alex built his following by commenting on people he admired in a high-value way, which in. the world of readers means writing something that has some depth and interest. The retweets followed.
People want educational content on Twitter, as opposed to TikTok. They want content that is credible and worth their time. They want book advice, reading tips and engage accordingly.
Each platform has its algorithms and knowing how to navigate without getting “punished” is key to driving traffic in the way you want. Understand how the platform works and then tailor your feed to what you want.
It’s effective and efficient to work across platforms by re-purposing content. Work smarter, not harder.
YouTube videos were a big hit for Alex, but he recognized that the work involved outweighed his pleasure in doing it. As a result he altered how he created content and in doing so has a better chance for long-term success.

If many successful people claim never to read books, why should I? What’s the value?

A lot of those people may be outliers who are the exception.
Who can’t benefit from spending a few hours learning from a book that took its author or authors months or years to research and write?
1:13:00 -- “Books are a short-cut to success … You’re getting the cream of the crop of information and it’s just-super affordable. It’s like $10 to learn from all this expert information.”
People who claim not to read books may be using different sources of information – such as magazines, podcasts or videos – but they are still lifelong learners.
There’s only upside to learn from an expert whose knowledge is worth so much more than the time or money you invest in reading a book.

What books are on Alex’s shortlist of “bibles” (aka things he revisits regularly):

Alex’s book hall of fame include: “Rules for Life” and “Discipline Equals Freedom” (including the bonus material that comes from a new edition).
Buying a fresh copy that has no markings can afford the reader a blank slate to reconsider favorite texts. Alex, for instance, has multiple copies of : “The Alamanck of Naval Ravikant,” “Creative Curve” and Marcus Aurelius’ “Meditations.”

What people would be surprised to learn about the man behind “Alex & Books”:

He’s a huge gamer who could happily spend hours and hours of life behind a console. Pokeman, Gameboy, Nintendo, Donkey Kong, Halo, Call of Duty.
1:17:09 -- “I realized, ‘Do I really want this to be what my life to be about? Playing video games all day and my contribution to society mostly about entertainment? Even though it was so much fun, I had to step back from that.”
Turns out that comedian/podcaster Joe Rogan similarly had to put a cap on video games, which can feel as dopamine-addicting as a drug. It’s not uncommon.

Alex reflects on a powerful quotation about the transcendent nature of reading:

Books provide an escape for people who can’t escape. If you’ve never been to Paris or Rome, you can travel there without ever leaving the room that you’re in, even if only temporarily.
Reading offers a deep education and exposure to incredibly accomplished best-selling mentors for the cost of a paperback and a few hours of your time.
1:23:43 -- “All these guys mentored me throughout my life. They just don’t realize it. That’s what books provide you. Even if you live in a remote village, if you can get access to a book you have access to that mentor.”
The person who chooses not to take advantage of the power of books is leaving a huge opportunity on the table – the best, most ancient wisdom and historical knowledge.
Reading is an active undertaking, a kind of conversation with yourself and learned figures. It puts you in the room with people you would otherwise never encounter.

Alex’s next two reads and how he identifies them:

Alex uses a Bread Crumb Strategy: If there’s an author you really enjoy, look at the books and authors that have inspired them. (If you have a favorite author, look at what other books they’ve written.)
Where you go with books in the future should be predicated on books you’ve loved in the past.
1:29:04 -- “If you relate to an author and look up to them and have similarities, chances are you’re going to like who they look up to as well.”
The two books currently at the top of his life are: Jordan Peterson’s next book, “12 More Rules for Life” and “Lives of the Stoics” by Ryan Holiday.