If reading that book will earn you $1,000 (or more) – NOW will you read it?!?

There is a book on your reading list. Perhaps several. You might have already bought it. And it could be sitting on your shelf or on your Kindle or whatever e-reading app you use. That book has been sitting there for a while. What if I told you: reading THAT BOOK will be worth $1,000 (or MORE) to you? NOW would you have more motivation to read it?

That’s my theory. I believe that if you read THAT BOOK then you will gain at least $1000 worth of value. I don’t know what THAT BOOK is, and it doesn’t really matter. I still believe it would be worth at least a thousand dollars to you. I am much more confident if that book is nonfiction though I suspect there is still a lot of value in fiction books as well.

The small print is that after reading THAT BOOK you would take one (or more) of the principles that you acquired and implement them in your life. That’s my theory. Currently, I don’t have any means of proving the statements at the moment, and here is some of the rationale anyways:

Choice

The very act of reading THAT BOOK has already altered your mindset to one that is making a choice to better yourself. In my opinion that choice And that effort on its own could easily compound to over $1,000 in your lifetime.

Classics like the “Seven habits of highly effective people” by Stephen Covey. Or “Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill. Or more recent additions like “Principles” by Ray Dalio. It can be an ordeal to actually get THAT BOOK. Open it up. Then spend your precious time to read it. Then spend even more effort to pick one or more things from THAT BOOK and implement them into your life. My belief is that conscious choice will allow you to have even more possibilities for your growth and improvement.

Think about it. If you received one dollar of value a day from the insights or even just for the feeling of accomplishment of having read THAT BOOK then you would have gained your value back in less than three years. Of course, why would you stop after three years? Ideally, they would have already turned into habits and you will reap the world words indefinitely. You could easily get more than a dollar worth of value per day in being a more effective person, or improving your mindset for money, or implementing new life and work principles.

Effort

Firstly, putting the effort into reading THAT BOOK will probably not take very long. People tend to read at roughly one page per minute which might be longer if the material is more technical. If we use that value than a typical 300-page book would be done In about five hours which could be spread over 10 days of reading for half an hour a day. That $1,000 would equate to over $200 an hour!

Also, the small print presumes that you take some of the most memorable and practical steps or ideas in THAT BOOK and implement them into your life. That effort to make continual improvements can compound on itself and work like compound interest to take that $1,000 and exponentially increase it the longer that you put it in place. For all you youngsters out there you might’ve heard the value of investing early and letting compound and that effort to make continual improvements can compound on itself and work like compound interest to take that $1,000 and exponentially increase it the longer that you put it in place. For all you youngsters out there you might’ve heard the value of investing early and letting compound interest help you out. Well, why not do that for your own personal development?

Role models

Many of the wealthiest people in the world read on the order of 40 books per year. That is almost a book a week. Warren Buffett and Bill Gates have both been reported o say that if they had a superpower they would want it to be a Speed Reading. So that they could consume even more information.

Now correlation is not causation because there are many successful people that don’t read 40 bucks per year. At the same time if a large majority do, then it could be the knowledge from the content of books, it could be the effort in reading books, or something else that ties them all together.

Theory fine print and details

I do not believe the theory applies to all cases. Here are the areas it applies to and the exceptions:

Does it matter that I read THAT BOOK? As opposed to listening to the audiobook or another consumption method?

I believe it does. While listening to the content through an audiobook is better than not consuming the content at all, I believe that the focus and attention of reading, allows you to consume the information better. Often times when we listen to things we are not focussing completely. It is more difficult to be reading and doing something at the same time so we tend to focus more. Now my opinion is that the ultimate would be for you to be reading AND listening to the content at the same time as you will be engaging multiple senses and understand the content much better. Though that does come at an added cost.

Does THAT BOOK have to be on a bestseller list? As compared to a lesser known book.

I don’t believe so. I believe there is a value that can be derived from every book that is out there. My assumption is that even self-published e-books meant to be an introduction to a pipeline for their sales final will have value. They would have consumed some content, curated it and put it in there so that you would have an appetizer of what other information you could look forward to reading. Now the content of THAT BOOK might have just been copied and paste, though my assumption is that the author did distill the information from another valuable source. And my assumption is that hearing the same thing repeated differently and from different places is still of value.

I would also suggest that best sellers will tend to have a higher probability of original ideas and new concepts for you to explore. At the same time, there are many lesser known books that are gold full of gold. I may see something that another author has said before and perhaps hearing it this time will finally land with you. Or perhaps the way with I may see something that another author has said before and perhaps hearing it this time will finally land with you. Or perhaps the way I presented the information or the context might make a point resonate more with you. Or it could be that hearing it for the fourth time will finally get you to do something about it. Being a best-seller might improve the likelihood of original content and perhaps might move the $1,000 to $10,000 or more. Though there are many books not on best-seller lists that are well worth the read.

Take my book for instance “Stuff I Wish I Knew Earlier” https://amzn.to/2LEF52R. Apart from my own personal story, most of the content is a remix of other ideas and content out there. So if you were to read that content then that would probably be a remix and perspective of other content. There is very little that is new “under the sun quote. Especially in the world of personal development. As long as people have been successful in their careers and have started writing it down, people have been taking those ideas and remixing them, combining them, teasing them out and calling it their own. The ones that might be most valuable are the ones that are scientifically proven. Although there are many studies that show that scientific studies can be tweaked to show various theories so you’ll want to do your due diligence.

Does THAT BOOK have to be nonfiction?

While I do believe that the theory could apply to fiction, I feel that would be relevant for a smaller number of fiction books. Rich fiction has morals and lessons to be learned. Plus the character details and development would help in practicing empathy.

Why $1,000?

One thousand seems to be a good balance of motivation and believability.

Motivation: one thousand dollars seems to me as a big enough amount to get people moving. While a few hundred may be enough for some, a thousand seems to be enough to entice people to start and eventually finish

Believability: I feel that some books could net you tens, hundreds, perhaps millions or more of dollars. Using the simple assumption of $1/day over three years seem very reasonable. For many, it will be more than a dollar a day, as well as longer than 3 years. Implementing one of the seven-habits to be a more effective person would definitely earn you more than $1 a day. Adopting the abundance money mindset to think and grow rich would also earn you more than $1. Books like those would likely net you tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars when implemented.

If I were to say $10,000, that might increase the motivation and also decrease the believability. So $1,000 seemed to be a good value in my un-scientifically proven analysis. At the end of the day, you now understand the logic of why reading that book could be well worth the effort to read it.

Now, will you read THAT BOOK and earn yourself $1000+?

So grab that book off the shelf or open your e-reader and read. Schedule a half hour (or a whole hour) per day to read. Then choose and implement a key takeaway from the book. As you do so, you will become more valuable. And as you develop your skills, you will earn more!

Are you motivated now?
Why? Or why not? Let me know here or at luki@focusinspired.com. Take care and hope to hear from you!

Also published on Medium.