Don't read too much.

In recent years, there is this hot trend of 'reading'. Everyone started building their 'reading list' and putting 'reading books' as a mandatory item in their bucket lists. Since young we were told by everyone superior than us that 'reading is good', 'you should read more', 'knowledge is wealth'. Things were getting more tensed when journalists started telling everyone that every successful person wakes up at 4am to read and they read 60 books a year, and also every book becomes 'Must-read if you want to become successful and happy'. At the same time there were a lot of hoax-y pseudo statistics that were circulating around telling people which country's citizens read the most and how it was related to economical successes.

The outcome? Happy book publishers, bookstore owners, writers (Of course the happiest will be the pseudo writers who claimed themselves as authors but in fact they are merely information refurbishers or recyclers), toxic reading habits, drugs-addiction readers, information obesity, information bubbles, information bankrupty and all the mental diabetes, strokes, high blood pressure, high cholestrol (anxiety, depression, bipolar, ADHD)

People bought more and more books and wanted to read more and more to show that they are productive and feel good. We no longer read books because we want to read them, but because we have to and we will feel good if we read books. We read books for external validations. The crazies things is, people started feeling bad for not reading books. They felt they are not productive and not successful because they don't read.

This soar in demand of books because reading books is deemed productive resulted in the soaring of supplies. More and more people formed all kinds of theories, produce more and more PDF files and hardcopies and then sell to those who crave the dopamine coming from reading them. 

And I want to tell you the truth:
"Books are like mirrors. You only see in them what is already inside of you."

- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

What does that mean?

Books don't help you to become better. Books don't give you new knowledge.
Books merely reaffirm beliefs that are already inside you. They are not the source of power, they are merely a catalyst. And a catalyst is completely futile if the source of power is nil in the first place.

If you do not have any tangible beliefs, reading books won't help you.

Then where do beliefs come from?
It comes from experience. It comes from doing things.

This heuristics might be shocking for most of the people. And once you understand it, you will start deleting all the books in your book list. 

The exceptions are these 3:

1) Philosophy (Reading philosophy is itself an empirical experience thus it creates new beliefs. It is the only exception that is similar as empirical actions in its ability to create new beliefs)

2) Fictions (Stories create new beliefs in a subtle way) [But I think movies are better instrument in creating new beliefs than fictions, you see new things in movies, you can't think things that you have never seen before by reading fictions)
3) Hard axiomatic facts (Mathematics and physics)

So next time do not feel impressed on the number of books a person has read or bought.

Ask the person, what are the few most influential books he/she has read, if they are either philosophy, fictions or hard facts, you should be impressed.
If it contains something else, then you know.

Lastly, the number of books Gary Vaynerchuck has read in his entire life is less than the number of books he has published (He has published around 4-5).
Do things first, read alot of philosophy, read some fictions, watch some movies, do some math. And do things again. Do many many things.