By Danny Porter

There are just too many books. 

That might sound weird coming from someone who is working on building his skill of writing. Not just to write a blog, but to build towards putting together enough valuable content and words to put together a book someday.

But I’m talking about reading. There are just simply too many amazing books out there to read. Depending on where you look, there are 500,000 to a million books published annually. And that doesn’t even account for digital publications or self-published books. 

So where do we start? And how in the world can one read all of them.

You can’t.

There’s no way to read all the books published every year.

But do you want to?

You could probably narrow it down to your favorite genre, author or subset of genre. That would help.

But there’s still too many. And you don’t have enough time in the day to read that many books.

Over the last 2 years I’ve had a goal of reading 52 books a year. That means reading one book a week. Every week. All year.

In 2022, I exceeded my goal. 

Even reading 52 books a year means I’m reading so much content, how can one possibly retain and understand that many different topics, titles, or concepts?

And I’d say I don’t. 

I read, but I’m not looking to be an expert on every topic that an author shares about. Sometimes I hear from people that they can barely get through one book because they want to remember every sentence and topic in the book. “There’s just so much in every book.” 

Yes. There is.

But not ever topic is applicable for your life right now.

Just because someone wrote a book with multiple chapters and reasons, doesn’t mean that every tool, tip, and bit of information is going to be important for today. 

It might be important in a year, or 5, but what’s one thing that you can take away today?

It can be especially hard reading books when authors each give 5 to 10 ideas of how to implement whatever topic they are sharing about. You know what I’m talking out. Take books on habits for instance. Everyone shares tools and tricks and tips to build habits. But if you attempt to do all of those ideas at once, you’ll never build your habit. You’ll get a headache.

But one thing you can do. Now, that’s possible. Taking one topic, one idea, and applying it to your life is more valuable than reading 100 books in one year. 

So next time you pick up a book. Realize it took that author months, years, and sometimes a lifetime to write that content. You could read it in 6 hours. You’re not going to be the expert who wrote the book, but if you can take one thing from that book, then it’s worth it.

And the people around you will benefit too. Not because your just as knowledgeable as the author who wrote the book, but you can live out the content in a practical and life-changing way.

That’s what we need. Not just more knowledge, but living out the information we gather everyday.

And that frees me up to read as many books as I do. And why I am constantly reading a book. Not because I’m an expert on all the content, but because today I’m wanting to learn something new, and learning helps everyone get better.