Welcome to Origin Stories. In this newsletter, we review the stories of successful people to unpack the skills they cultivated before they turned 30 that prepared them for success.

You’ll learn the what (what skills set them apart), the how (how they developed these skills at a young age) and - most importantly - how you can develop these skills, too.

- JR

For Naval's origin story, click here.

This article will examine the superpower Naval developed at an early age: his love of reading.

Skill

Reading

Naval cited reading as the most important component to his success. In an interview with Tim Ferriss, Naval explained that he values no other way of learning more than reading prolifically, a habit he's cultivated since a child. In another interview, Naval answered: If you had to pass down to your kids one or two principles, what would they be?

Cultivating your reading habit

Want to cultivate your own reading habit? To acquire this power, Naval says to “read what you love, until you love to read.”

Find a bunch of books that sound interesting to you, flip between them as your interests change, and don’t be afraid to quit a bad book.

While reading, you don't have to start at the introduction or prologue. From Naval: "Feel free to skip around; it’s your book. There are books that I’ve literally started in the middle. I’ve read near to the end and then I’ve put it down...That liberation, that freedom just allows me to read.”

TODAY

How Naval reads

How Naval reads today. “At any given time, I’m at about 50 books on my Kindle, and probably about six or seven hard-cover or soft-cover books that I’m cycling through. I open up my Kindle. I look through. Based on my mood, I’ll flip through to whatever book matches my mood. I’ll flip to whatever part of it looks the most interesting, and I’ll just read that part. I don’t read in the sequential order. The most important thing is that [this strategy] lets me read on a regular basis.”

The benefits of this are immeasurable. You read what you’re interested in, when you’re interested in it, for as long as you like. It instills the habit of reading in a positive way.

How often he reads. Naval currently reads “probably one to two hours a day”, typically before bed. “The reality is I don’t actually read that much compared to what people think. [One to two hours a day] puts me in the top .00001%. I think that alone accounts for any material success that I’ve had in my life and any intelligence that I might have.”

Recommends Meditations. One of Naval’s most recommended books is Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. Meditations teaches accepting things out of one's control and maintaining mastery over one's emotions. Naval calls Meditations "absolutely life-changing." "Here's a guy who was probably the most powerful human being on Earth at the time that he lived ... and when you open this book you realize he had all the same issues and all the same mental struggles," Naval said, adding that this caused him to realize power and success do not improve your inner life.

Recommends Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. Yuval Noah Harari's history of the human species provides "observations, frameworks, and mental models will have you looking at history and your fellow humans differently."

Recommends The Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words. Randall Munroe explains very complicated concepts, from climate change to physical systems to submarines, while only using the 1,000 most common words in the English language. For example, he calls the Saturn Five rocket “Up Goer Five.” You can’t define a rocket as a spaceship or a rocket. It’s self-referential. He says “up goer.” It’s this thing that goes up. Kids get it right away. A great book to understand complicated subjects like nuclear reactors.

His favorite childhood comic: Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, which "completely upended comics when it debuted in 1986. Since then, it’s become one of the most influential comics of all time. DKR heavily influenced Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy and Zack Snyder’s Batman v Superman."

You can find a full list of Naval's recommended books at Eric Jorgenson's Navalmanack website, here.

Building this skill

If you're like me, you often find yourself wishing you read more, rather than just reading often. Using Naval's advice to read what you love combined with a "read when you can" mentality can provide us with the tools we need to succeed.

First, make the act of reading as effortless as possible. I recommend a Kindle with the Kindle app on your smartphone, which gives you the ability to bring books wherever you go. Thankfully, some libraries also offer online books, which means you can download and read for free, with losing any time spent travelling to a library. Make the reading experience as easy as possible. Have 5 minutes while waiting for a meeting? Pull out the phone and read. Have a long flight ahead but packing light? Ditto.

But the only way you'll want to read is if you love what you're reading. This is the genius in Naval's approach. By reading books you can't put down (a biography of your favorite athlete, a comic book, etc), you'll build this reading habit. So don't pressure yourself to read the "right" books recommended by Naval or others. Think about what you're interested in - what you want to learn - and go from there.

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