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The Only 7 Books You Need to Educate Yourself Like the Top 1% — Transcript

by Sandeep Swadia · 2,374 words · 362 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

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0:00Most people read books to get smarter.
0:02They get more informed, but their life
0:04stays exactly the same. But a few books
0:06make you dangerously smart. They rewire
0:10your brain and change how you think, how
0:12you decide, and how you see what others
0:15don't. I've been a CEO and board [music]
0:17advisor to billion-dollar companies, and
0:20I've distilled hundreds of titles down
0:22to four that function as a toolkit for a
0:25self-taught genius. But first, something
0:28more valuable than the list itself. A
0:30framework for finding the books that
0:32actually rewire you. Every book is an
0:36investment of time and attention. Most
0:38of them entertain you, some inform you,
0:41but a very few change [music] you.
0:44Here's how to tell the difference.
0:45Before you commit to a book, ask [music]
0:47three questions. I call them the three
0:49gates. Gate number one, the operator.
0:52Will this book change how you think or
0:55just change what you think? If a book
0:57can install new mental moves, new ways
1:01to see, to reason, to decide, then it'll
1:04make you a better operator because it
1:06will bring the kind of system upgrade
1:08that we're talking about here. Gate
1:10number two, the challenger. Does this
1:12book make you
1:14>> [music]
1:14>> uncomfortable? Does it challenge your
1:15beliefs? You know, the best books don't
1:18confirm what you know. They dismantle
1:21everything you're certain about page by
1:23page permanently. If you finish a book
1:26and you feel validated, you've learned
1:28nothing new. And gate number three, the
1:30fire alarm. I always ask myself, will
1:33this book stop me from doing dumb things
1:35with confidence? Will it prevent an
1:37expensive [music] mistake? Great books
1:40hand you tools to stop you from
1:41confusing confidence from competence. If
1:44a book passes any of these three gates,
1:46it will upgrade your inner operating
1:48system. Now, of course, I love books
1:51like Grit or Atomic [snorts] Habits or
1:54So Good They Can't Ignore You. Great
1:56books. They're brilliant for building
1:58tactics and changing your daily
1:59behavior. We want to go beyond just
2:02behavioral shifts. We want to upgrade
2:05and scale our entire way of thinking.
2:08Most books will change your speed. These
2:11four will change your engine. Book
2:13number one was a gut punch to me. It
2:16forced me to ask a terrifying question.
2:18Are my heroes visionaries or just
2:21lottery winners? Nassim Taleb talks
2:24about it in our first book, Fooled by
2:26Randomness. He shows why randomness
2:29manufactures geniuses and it changes the
2:31way we think about outcomes. [music]
2:33Look at the math. Imagine you invite
2:3610,000 traders from Wall Street to a
2:38stadium. Once a year, they flip a coin.
2:41Heads, they double their money. Tails,
2:44they go bust, they go home. After 1
2:46year, half of them will go home. 5,000
2:48will come back. If you keep doing this
2:50for 5 years, then 5 years later, 312 of
2:53those traders will be left in the
2:55stadium. They won all five times. Now,
2:58these 312 people will be on the cover of
3:01Forbes. They'll write books. They'll
3:03sell you systems. They'll start a
3:05YouTube channel. But, are they masters?
3:08No.
3:09They are a statistical certainty. They
3:12didn't beat the system. They were
3:13produced by the system. That's why
3:15Taleb's point is chilling. You cannot
3:18distinguish a master from a lucky idiot
3:21simply by looking at their track record.
3:23At the AI company where I was CEO,
3:26[music] we were one of the fastest
3:28growing firms in the US. I was
3:30surrounded by some of the smartest
3:33minds. Exceptional talent. But, we also
3:35got a once-in-a-decade
3:38tailwind we didn't control. The internet
3:40was overwhelmed at that moment with the
3:43cyber threat of fake transactions and
3:46bots that acted like humans. It had
3:48become an existential crisis for the
3:51internet. So, we were the right company
3:53at the right time. Was our team
3:55exceptional? Sure. Did we work our butts
3:58off? Of course. But, without that
4:00existential threat, without that
4:01tailwind, all of my visionary strategies
4:05would have been a forgotten footnote
4:06somewhere. Because we often confuse
4:08[music] a tailwind with our own talent.
4:11This is called the survivorship bias.
4:13Stop trying to be a better forecaster of
4:16your future. Start trying to be less
4:18fragile, more resilient to randomness.
4:21Now, what if you read this book already?
4:24Then, the graduate-level upgrade would
4:26be a book from a Nobel Prize winner,
4:28Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and
4:30Slow. Kahneman shows you exactly what's
4:33happening in your brain when you are
4:35being fooled by randomness. His book
4:37shows the exact wiring, system one, that
4:40makes you jump to conclusions
4:41immediately, and system two, which helps
4:44us avoid those mistakes. How do you make
4:46all of this actionable? Here are two
4:48steps. First, the luck-labor audit.
4:51Every Friday, audit your wins into two
4:53columns. Column A, labor. What did I
4:56control? And column B, luck. Timing,
4:59tailwinds. If column B is empty, then
5:02your ego is doing all the driving, and
5:04you are headed for a crash. Second, the
5:06wreckage tour. Now, this is my favorite.
5:09Stop studying just the survivors. Find
5:11the people who made your exact bet, and
5:13then make it. Learn from them. Because
5:15if your plan only works in the calm
5:18seas, it's not a plan. It's a prayer.
5:20Book number two is about the biggest
5:22mistake successful people make. When you
5:25win, you stop searching, and you somehow
5:28start defending what you already know.
5:30Adam Grant calls this out in his book,
5:32Think Again. This is our second book.
5:34The smarter you are, the harder it is to
5:37change your mind. There was a study done
5:39on tax professionals. Researchers gave
5:42complex [music] tax code and problems to
5:44both junior students and seasoned CPAs.
5:48When the rules change just a little, the
5:50experts failed three times more often
5:53than the students because the experts
5:55were so certain. The more you know, the
5:57less you see. I call it the proficiency
6:00prison. And the case studies are
6:01everywhere. Kodak [music] invented
6:03digital photography. They had the
6:05technology, they had the talent, they
6:07had the resources, but they buried it.
6:09Why? Because it threatened their film
6:12business and Kodak's no more.
6:13Blockbuster had a chance to buy Netflix
6:15for $50 million and they passed. Now,
6:18none of these executives were stupid,
6:20they were just trying to protect
6:22yesterday's wins. They were trapped in
6:24their own proficiency prison. We wear
6:27three masks when we don't want to change
6:29our thinking. The preacher, the
6:30prosecutor, and the politician. The
6:32preacher defends the belief like it's a
6:34scripture. Prosecutors will defend their
6:37belief by spotting flaws in others. And
6:39politicians, well, they'll say whatever
6:41the room wants to hear. Now, what do you
6:43do to take these masks off? Be a
6:46scientist. Treat your beliefs as
6:48hypotheses. Run experiments, update your
6:51beliefs based on data. Now, if you read
6:54this book, then the graduate level work
6:56is Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton
6:58Christensen. That book shows you exactly
7:01why companies love to stay in their
7:03proficiency prison. Intel dominated the
7:06computer chip market for [music]
7:07decades. They were so busy protecting
7:10that business, they completely ignored
7:12the GPU revolution. Today, Intel is
7:14roughly a $220 billion giant, but Nvidia
7:18is a $4 trillion ecosystem. And that is
7:21what the Innovator's Dilemma is all
7:23about. The action plan here, there are
7:25three mindsets that helped me a lot.
7:27Scientist, stranger, startup. First, the
7:30scientist mode. Take your strongest
7:32current belief and rewrite it as I
7:35currently believe X, but it could be
7:38wrong if [music] XYZ. It turns on the
7:41scientist mode on demand. Second, the
7:44stranger mode. Try to explain your
7:46strategy or plan to someone outside of
7:48your industry, someone who doesn't know
7:50anything about it. Where they get
7:52confused is exactly where you need to
7:54focus. And finally, the startup mode. I
7:57never hire a C-level executive in any
8:00company that I work with until I ask
8:02them this very question. If you had a
8:04million dollars and all the technology
8:06in the world, what would you build to
8:08take down your own company? If they can
8:11map out their own destruction,
8:13they're scientists.
8:15If they defend the status quo,
8:18they are just priests. The scientist is
8:21never certain,
8:22and the priest
8:24is never curious. The third book
8:26completely changes how you judge your
8:28own decisions. Annie Duke spent 20 years
8:32being a world-class poker player. In her
8:34book, Thinking in Bets, she talks about
8:36this interesting way of thinking. Treat
8:39every decision like a bet.
8:41>> [music]
8:41>> When I was coming to Boston from Mumbai
8:45for my master study, the university had
8:48only given me a conditional scholarship
8:51because my scores were okay, they
8:52weren't great. So, they said, you know,
8:55pay for the first semester yourself and
8:57teach undergrad mathematics at the same
8:59time. And the department said, you know,
9:01if you survive, we'll pay for the rest
9:03of the graduate program. And if not, you
9:05have to pay out of pocket. And I said,
9:07sure. What they didn't know was that if
9:09I failed, I had [music] no way to pay
9:13for the rest of the program. I thought
9:15in terms of bets. I outlined my
9:17strengths, my weaknesses, I made a list
9:19of things that could go wrong, and I
9:21calculated my odds. There was about a
9:2330% chance that I would fail. I was okay
9:26taking that risk. I bought a one-way
9:28ticket from Mumbai to Boston. It wasn't
9:31bravery.
9:32I really didn't have a plan B. The only
9:34plan was to focus on increasing my odds
9:38every day. [music] Now, of course, the
9:39bet could have gone the other way, but
9:41the point is to know exactly what is at
9:43risk and whether you have a plan to
9:46manage that risk. [music] And if you
9:47read this book already, the graduate
9:49version is Superforecasting. Philip
9:52Tetlock studied 25,000 predictions over
9:55decades and found that the most accurate
9:58people on Earth, or the
9:59superforecasters, don't think in terms
10:01of yes or no. They think in terms of
10:04bets, odds, possibilities, [music]
10:07probabilities, and they update that
10:09number every time new data hits the
10:11wire. They aren't trying to be right all
10:13the time. All they're trying to do is to
10:16be less wrong after every iteration. So,
10:19how do you put this in action? The
10:20simplest one is to decision journal.
10:23Just do it for 30 days. I did it, super
10:25helpful. For the next 30 days, for
10:27example, before any major decision or a
10:30pivot, write down three things. One,
10:33your confidence level, 0 to 100%. Number
10:36two, what you know, what you don't, and
10:38what evidence will change your odds. And
10:41number three, write down three reasons
10:43why you could be wrong about this
10:44decision. And track that for 30 days.
10:47Your emotions will get quieter, your
10:50thinking will get [music] clearer. When
10:52you start thinking in bets, you stop
10:54reacting and you start revising. Book
10:57number four is the most dangerous one on
11:00this list. Everything we have covered so
11:02far leads to this single question. What
11:05if your intelligence itself is the trap?
11:08David Robson spent years studying the
11:10relationship between intelligence and
11:13cognitive failure. And the book he wrote
11:15was The Intelligence Trap. He shows that
11:17smart people have this special failure
11:20mode because they can rationalize
11:22anything, and they become their own
11:23enemies because they become their own
11:26defense attorneys. Most people hit a
11:28wall and question themselves. Smart
11:30people hit a wall and question the wall.
11:32[music] And I've learned this the hard
11:33way. At my first job after coming out of
11:36MIT, I was the head of marketing for a
11:39global company. And in hindsight, I did
11:42not build an advisory board of mentors.
11:45And I did not ask dumb questions early
11:47on. And when the company hired a new
11:49president, he could see that I wasn't
11:51ready for a promotion. So, he brought in
11:53>> [music]
11:53>> an SVP of marketing instead of promoting
11:56me. And in hindsight, I think I had
11:58trapped myself in my own narrative about
12:01my capabilities, about my competence.
12:03And that's a very subtle trap. The book
12:06helps you avoid such self-justification.
12:09The one drill that helps me the most is
12:11what I call the anti-mentor. So, before
12:14any major decision, ask one person in
12:17your life whose judgment you trust to
12:19argue the opposite case as hard as they
12:22can. Tell them, "Don't be polite. Try to
12:24kill the plan on paper." [music] And if
12:27no one in your life can do that, that's
12:30also a great problem to solve. The
12:31second practice is the empty [music]
12:34cup. Before your next high-stakes
12:36meeting, write down three naive
12:39questions you would be embarrassed to
12:41ask, and go ahead and ask anyway. There
12:44is a concept in the Zen Buddhism called
12:46Shoshin, beginner's mind. The expert's
12:49cup is always full, no room for anything
12:52new. The beginner's [music] cup is
12:54always empty, ready to receive
12:56everything. I saw this on a train ride
13:00many years ago. I remember we were going
13:02to New York City from New Jersey [music]
13:05with our two kids, and they were little,
13:07seven and four. The train has to go
13:10through this tunnel because it goes
13:11under the river, and it was pitch dark
13:13outside, and [music] both kids were so
13:16incredibly excited to see it. They just
13:18started giggling with joy. Pure Shoshin.
13:23Pure magic. [music]
13:24And that made me think. I took that
13:27train and went through the same tunnel
13:29twice a day
13:30>> [music]
13:31>> and never even once was I overwhelmed
13:34with this feeling of sheer joy. As we
13:37grow old, why do we treat our sense of
13:40wonder as [music] weakness and
13:43embarrassment? Why treat our curiosity
13:46as if it's a curse? These books will
13:49help you reset your system so you
13:51[music] can answer those questions. But
13:53the ultimate system upgrade isn't adding
13:57more [music] to your cup.
13:59It's your ability to go through that
14:00dark tunnel
14:02and still find [music] magic in it.
14:05If you like this video, don't forget to
14:07subscribe and check out my most recent
14:09video here.
14:11Thank you
14:12and I love you.

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