Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

What I struggled with:

• Same as last week (and the week before): I had trouble getting started on synthesizing another book.

What I learned:

• I listened to this section of an Odds on Open Podcast episode where Alix Pasquet argued that reading books leads to more critical thinking, unique insights, knowledge building, and gaining of analytical reps, whereas using technology like AI doesn’t. AI just helps you acquire information, which is different than knowledge. Because younger people aren’t reading books, Pasquet thinks they’re at a disadvantage. Pasquet also shared and discussed extensively this quote from Henry Kissinger:

Reading books requires you to form concepts, to train your mind to relationships. . . . A book is a large intellectual construction; you can’t hold it all in mind easily or at once. You have to struggle mentally to internalize it. Now there is no need to internalize because each fact can instantly be called up again on the computer. There is no context, no motive. Information is not knowledge. People are not readers but researchers, they float on the surface. . . . This new thinking erases context. It disaggregates everything. All this makes strategic thinking about world order nearly impossible to achieve.

That’s what I learned and struggled with last week.