Letters to my sons
"The heart of a father is the masterpiece of nature."― Abbé Prévost
My sons,
On every playground in every school, in every city, in every country in the world, one of the most common phrases heard on a daily basis is this:
“That’s not fair!”
From an early age, we develop this sense of fairness, this belief that the world is supposed to be fair. We believe it so deeply that when we perceive something to be unfair, we throw on our biggest frown, stamp our feet, and in as loud a voice as we can muster let it be known that we have been wronged.
Problem is, the world isn’t fair.
Everywhere we look, things are not fair. There is no equalizing force that blankets the world in fairness, that spreads wealth precisely fairly to every human being, that gives the same number of opportunities to each candidate, or gives every 5 year old the same number of cupcakes for every birthday party. There is no cosmic force that gives every person the same number of years on this earth, that protects everyone in equal measure from the illnesses of life, or bestows the same gifts and talents to each individual person.
That’s just the personal stuff. The work stuff is even worse. If life itself isn’t fair, work definitely isn’t. Some people are given more opportunities than others. Some people are (to us) unfairly and undeservingly promoted. Some people seem luckier than those around them. The sooner we accept and embrace the fact that the world isn’t fair, the sooner we can take the next step; learning how to capitalize on that unfairness.
Power
These days, the word power tends to carry a number of negative connotations. Power is associated with folks who abuse their station, with bad actors taking advantage of those over whom they have power, and with depictions of power hungry and ruthless characters. While those are accurate depictions of the nefarious, they do not define power, and are not an inevitable conclusion.
Strictly speaking, power is the capacity to influence outcomes. That’s it. Nothing sinister, nothing negative implied. It is simply the capacity that a person has to have influence over the outcomes surrounding their situation.
With that definition, don’t we all want power? Doesn’t every person want the capacity and ability to influence their situation, their environment, and their outcomes? Especially when it comes to our professional endeavors, don’t we all want to be able to positively shape our outcomes?
In his book ~7 rules of power~, Jeffrey Pfeffer posits that power is not only one of the most misunderstood concepts in our modern world, but is the one that has the greatest influence on our lives and our livelihoods. Power dynamics happen in all relationships - professional ones, social ones, friendships, and even familial relationships. As such, it behooves us to better understand what it is, how to build it, and how to learn to use it for our own purposes.
Ways to attain power
In general, there are two methods that one can use one’s efforts to attain power.
- Working hard, being helpful, working for the greater good of the community
- Spending time on political advancement, self promotion, and building helpful social relationships
Studies have shown that there is a social class difference in each method. People from lower class backgrounds typically gravitate towards the former as a baseline. Power tends to flow to those that bring the most to the community, and even those that hold the political power of the community maintain that power by ensuring they continue to provide the most benefit to it. People from upper class backgrounds have a stronger propensity towards politics and often place a higher emphasis not on what you can do but rather on who you know. Power tends to flow to those who are the most connected, and much emphasis is given to currying favor with those more powerful than yourself.
Interestingly enough, people in lower classes are reluctant to use political power because they feel like it advances the self and not the community. However, when posed with a situation where using political advancement would help others, the class differentiation disappears and people in lower classes were willing to tap into that political power as well.
Harnessing your power
Independent of how you attain power is the question of how you harness and utilize it. We need to assume from this point out that each of us has to decided we are not going to “play fair” and no longer want to be a bystander in this game, playing the game as it is. If we want unfair results (ie rising to ranks higher than we might have otherwise, or faster than our peers, or faster than “the market norms” would otherwise dictate), then we have to learn to play unfairly.
As a Chinese Canadian, I grew up immersed in the ethos of keeping one’s head down, working hard, being loyal and reliable, and playing by the rules. There was an enormous amount of social pressure to stick to the plan, to color within the lines, and to do the respectable thing. Advancement meant working harder, longer hours, and being more dedicated than the next hardworking person.
The problem is that rising through the ranks, keeping your head down, and simply doing the work is not the optimal way for most people in this day and age to achieve the success that we’re all looking to have. The rules were made by those with power, almost certainly to ensure that they stay in power and no one disrupts that. How do we add to our hard work an understanding of power so that we can move from getting fair (or often, negatively unfair) results to getting positively unfair ones? How do we harness our power and utilize it for our benefit?
1. Understand and leverage your unique talents
I’ll never forget the first truth bomb my legendary Econ 101 professor Larry Smith uttered on the first day of class. “Look to your left. Now look to your right. By the end of the year, one or both of those people will no longer be here.” The reason? They were there because they thought they ought to be instead of being there because they loved it.
In the age of AI, finding our unique talents becomes increasingly difficult. AI has drastically lowered the barrier to entry for many things such that it behooves us to really dig deep to find our moat. This moat will certainly not be something we’ve picked up in the last year. It will not be a piece of knowledge or a single experience we’ve had, it won’t even be a cool new skill we’ve learned. It’ll be something much more complex and deeply engrained than that, and will definitely combine the set of our experiences and motivations.
This quest of self discovery isn’t easy. There are pitfalls, there are obstacles, there are even possible mid point conclusions that there is nothing unique about us. But if we want to harness the power that is uniquely ours, we’ve got to have the perseverance to push past those, to push past the life framing that others have for us, and to get at the heart of who we really are.
2. Move around
We are no longer in the age of the “Company Man” - you know, the circa 1940 way of life that had people join a company right out of college and retire on a pension there. Nowadays, 5 years is considered a pretty long time to stay at a single company, let alone a single team, and for good reason.
First and foremost, our world has gotten infinitely more complex, and as a result there is great need for folks with range. There is much research around the concept (if you’re interested, read Range by David Epstein) that shows how our brains subconsciously connect the seemingly disparate set of experiences we’ve had to produce more rounded and holistic decisions. Turns out the best leaders are the ones that can pull from a wide range of experiences and bring them to bear on their current work.
Next, moving around provides infusions to the growth of our network. As we discussed above, our world is increasingly impacted by those with strong networks, and moving around gives us an unnatural boost.
Lastly, with each move we take on an enormous amount of learning. The phrase “drinking from the firehose” is a common vernacular used in the tech industry to signify that someone is in the middle of a deep time of learning. That repeated firehose learning has an outsized impact on the power we have and on the value we bring to any organization.
3. Network
This one deserves some exploration. When I was younger, I used to hear this all the time. “Sam, you’ve got to network, you’ve got to go to these networking events and meet more people”. I hated them. From alumni events to tech meetups to conferences, I went to them all and dreaded them. I’ve since learned that not only was I doing it wrong, I was also missing the skills to get any benefit for it.
Networking doesn’t mean just meeting people. It means making a meaningful connection with someone such that there is follow up and follow through. It means maintaining that connection and nurturing it over time. This not only takes time and intention, but also takes skill.
Remember that networking is a two way street. The other person’s got to want to maintain a relationship with you as well, so you’d best have something to offer before you bother meeting them. This again, requires work. Intentional work. Their time, like yours, is valuable, and they’re not going to want to waste that time on a dead end relationship.
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Each of these is itself a topic that we’ll go into more detail in the future, but for now, suffice it to say that the world is not fair, but by intentionally learning and developing a few new skills we can skew that unfairness in our favor.
My sons,
We’ve been discussing the concept of hospitality, first generally and then as it applies to work. We shift our focus now to how it applies in life.
I’ve always desired to be hospitable. When I was younger, I lived in a tiny 500 sqft studio apartment, but would regularly host groups of 4-5 of my friends to have a home cooked dinner and to play board games until late into the evening. I didn’t even own a dining table, so we all sat cross legged on the floor around my coffee table, which doubled as our board game surface once dinner was done. Every home I’ve had since then has been purchased with a view of how I can entertain people, and how I can grow the set of things as I learned to be more hospitable.
The more I’ve learned though, the more I’ve discovered that my view of hospitality was limited and very, very incomplete.
For whatever reason, my view of hospitality was that it was simply the willingness/desire for people to host others in their home. This was almost a direct reflection of a few traits:
- Willingness to clean up after people leave
- Enjoyment of making food or having food delivered
- Comfort letting others into your space
As I learned more about what it really means to be hospitable, I realized that hospitality is not just about your willingness to physically serve others. It is a mindset. The hospitality mindset is one of putting people at ease, of being more interested in the lives of others than in telling others about our own lives, and of having the thoughtfulness to think of others even when you’re not physically with them.
How to cultivate a mindset of hospitality
One of the hardest things to do in this life is to adjust one’s mindset. There are a myriad books out there that talk about this - Think Again by Adam Grant and Switch by Dan and Chip Heath are two of my favorites and provide great insight into the psychology of our default behaviors as well as some greatly actionable advice on how to challenge and change our own thinking and behaviors.
Once we’ve identified, acknowledged, and determined the need to change our mindset and have understood the mechanics of changing our behaviors, we need to determine what new habits to instill, and what the goals of those habits are.
1. Build a rich thought life
One of my favorite books of all time is The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. I first read this book in my teen years, and again many times since, but that very first reading changed my life. In the book, our hero Edmond Dantes is wrongfully imprisoned for several years, and during that time he meets a prisoner that has been there even longer than he, yet who seems to have discovered a way to avoid the madness and depression that isolation typically brings. Instead, he has developed a rich thought life, one that keeps him busy studying, inventing, analyzing, and exploring, all within the recesses of his mind.
I loved that example and aspired to have that same richness in my thought life. As a teen, I realized that there were any number of mundane times where I was left alone without anything to distract. Whether it was sitting on the bus on the way to school, showering every morning, or the minutes dozing before falling asleep at night, there were many daily spaces that could be utilized better, so as often as I could remember, I started making adjustments.
I started small. I simply got myself to think about an idea instead of a situation. Instead of reliving the day on my bus ride home, I’d take an idea and work it out. Instead of imagining waking up early and playing my favorite epic video game (Final Fantasy 2) while falling asleep Friday evening, I’d think about the themes of the game (loyalty, betrayal, love) and ruminate on how I’d seen those themes play out in my life.
Over the years my thought life has developed to the point where I no longer experience boredom acutely, and where I welcome times of inactivity throughout my day so that I can spend time expanding on these ideas, themes, and debates in my mind. This is constantly challenged by the temptation of picking up that little rectangular device and being entertained by it, but the combination of identity (I believe that I am not a person that wastes time on my phone) and habit (I have a daily ritual of reclining in my Eames chair with a glass of wine to read) has helped me fend that off pretty effectively.
2. Put yourself in a position to experience hospitality from others
There are many great things about our hyper connected world and the technologies that enable it. One down side however, is that it enables - nay, causes - our world to become smaller. Why go through the discomfort of striking up a conversation with a stranger at a coffee shop when your little rectangular device enables you to interact with people you already know? Why put yourself through the stress of not understanding everything on the menu at a new restaurant when you can eat at your favorite haunt again, or can eat at home on your own?
By shrinking our world, we experience the hospitality of others less. By staying in the same small social circles, we limit our understanding and experience of hospitality to those we already know.
In contrast, expanding our world allows us to experience new ways of being hospitable. By trying new restaurants, by meeting new people and being invited to share in their hospitality, and by going to different countries to see how other cultures behave, we grow our awareness and understanding of hospitality and further our own style in how we demonstrate it to others.
3. Talk about it with others
In many ways, hospitality has fallen out of fashion in our modern world. Just the other day, we went to a digital food court. The whole idea is that you order your food via touch screen and the machine assigns you a locker number. Once you’ve ordered, someone somewhere prepares your food and deposits the food into the locker through the back and triggers the notification so that your locker lights up and you can open the front door to retrieve your food. Completely contact-less.
Why this is a feature and a desired experience I don’t know, but it was a reminder of just how much technology has enabled our world to become less hospitable.
As such, it becomes incredibly important for us to discuss, to share our experiences, and to talk about our ideas of hospitality with others! We are a social species. We learn from others. We think through talking. If we want to grow our mindset of hospitality, we need to be discussing it with others.
Making magic
Hospitality is about making magic for others. It is about caring for another’s experience. It is about thoughtfully surprising others with how valued, cared for, and known they are. And it is contagious!
Every child has wanted to be a magician at one point in their lives. Some entertain the thought for a mere minute while others spend summers at magic camp. But regardless of how intense the interaction, when one experiences the pure delight and joy that magic brings, one immediately desires to replicate and to be able to perform such feats themselves.
So too is the magic brought from hospitality. When we experience a truly magical moment of hospitality we are compelled to share it. Let us then discuss these moments with others, and let us arm ourselves with the skills to recreate these moments so that we can bring more magic to our world.
My sons,
Anything in our world that is worth doing requires teams. We are past the age where any one person can do something truly impactful on their own. Yes, we can tinker, we can prototype, we can come up with ideas on our own (that too is arguable - whether any thought is truly done in isolation is debatable, but that’s another topic for another day), but we cannot build anything worth mentioning on our own.
We need teams.
I’ve been in the business of building, managing, cultivating, and leading teams for almost two decades now, and have been in the study of excellence on the subject for at least as long. I’ve read books and articles dedicated to the subject, listened to the leading experts in the fields of leadership, human psychology, and business, and have experimented with many approaches within my teams. The undeniable truth about all the best teams is this: they have a high amount of psychological safety.
The best of the best actively and intentionally cultivate, nurture, and grow that safety, and are proactive in weeding out individuals, practices, and experiences that take away from it. At the root of that safety is a strong web of relationships built on trust, humility, and shared experiences.
Learning from the best
I once sat in a large exec review with our Senior Vice President with about 20 other people reviewing our organization’s roadmap doc, a small section of which I was responsible for. As we reviewed, our SVP had a question about something in my section. After I answered, he looked over at me and said, “hey, sorry, I know we’ve met before cause I’ve seen you in these meetings a bunch, but we haven’t actually been introduced. What’s your name? … Great to meet you, Sam. Okay, so, I know you know your stuff, and everyone else seems to be nodding at your answer, but I don’t get it yet. Do me a favor will you? In the next month or so, write me a quick doc explaining this to me.”
I would follow that guy anywhere.
In a room of 20 people, probably 6-7 of which were VPs themselves, he took the time to make me feel seen and heard. It took him all of 2 minutes, and I’m sure he’s done that a thousand times and doesn’t remember the incident, but for me, that was magic. That is a moment that I will likely remember for the rest of my career.
Undoubtedly one of the reasons he’s so beloved and successful is that he has intentionally cultivated a practice of hospitality. I’m sure that not only has he reaped the rewards of that, but he has brought that same type of magical experience into the lives of many others.
Hospitality pays
We live in a world where a large majority of our GDP is coming from the service industry and that the most important capital in our world is human capital. It is widely recognized that companies and industries rise and fall because of the teams of people that they are able to hire, attract, and retain. In that world, people matter. Teams matter.
And yet these skills are as undervalued as they are important!
Why do so many companies and teams undervalue these traits? The simple answer is because they are hard to measure, especially in the short term. It’s hard to quantify the gain that we get by investing the time and resources necessary to create a hospitable culture because culture is not a yes or no thing. There’s no measuring before and after because that distinction is binary, and cultural change is a gradient.
There are many examples of companies and industries that are moving towards building sustainable, helpful, fulfilling businesses in a way that values culture and integrity as much as they value profits. In his book Screw Business as usual, Sir Richard Branson talks about the work that he and many others like him have been doing to rethink the way we build teams, companies, and industries, and the impact that those endeavors have on local and global communities. While most of us will likely never be able to build multiple companies and industries in our lifetime, there are many lessons that we can learn from those that do.
1. Make sure everyone knows the goal.
The first and foremost important thing is to ensure that everyone on your team knows what the goal is. The goal is not to build a great product. It is to build a great product that customers will love, so that they will love your brand and the impact it has on their lives and will purchase, so that your company can make money. The goal is not to create a great recipe that is delicious. It is to create a great recipe that is delicious, so that the front of house can offer it to guests at a rate which guests will love, so that guests have a great overall dining experience, so that they will recommend the restaurant to their friends, so that their friends will come and pack the house, so that the restaurant will make money.
Even if you are working at a non-profit, there is the uber goal of the organization that everyone needs to be keenly aware of so that they can take ownership of their space. It is only by knowing the true goal that individuals on our teams can see how their hospitable practices move the needle and impact the thing that really matters.
2. Give lots of credit where it’s due.
Give credit where it’s due. No matter how much value you bring to a team yourself, it is to the team. When there are individuals that do great work, go out of your way to recognize that. As a leader on the team, you naturally get enough spotlight and attention - take every opportunity to shine the spotlight for greatness in other people’s direction.
As leaders, we need to take pride in creating an environment where greatness can happen and can flourish - that is the mark and reward of a great leader, and is the mark of a team that people love, take ownership of, and do their best work for.
3. Deeply understand what it means to be right a lot.
This one tends to trip people up a lot. Especially if you’re a tech person, you’ll have been bombarded with messages telling you that being right is critically important. At Amazon, it’s even one of the leadership principles.
I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with being right about the topic at hand. It’s a good thing to have good instincts and intuition, and to be objectively right. But there’s much more to being situationally right than just the objective debate at hand.
Being right is irrelevant when you break the relationship. This is true in our personal relationships as well as our professional ones. When you are hospitable and charitable to people, you often will be the one that needs to suck it up and adjust, even when you’re objectively right. This is always going to be best in the long run.
This is especially hard in the business context, because we often believe that when we’re seen as being in the wrong, it will reflect poorly on our performance. This is multiplied if your manager is the one that is seeing you as being in the wrong. This is amplified further if you’re seen as wrong in a large meeting with multiple stakeholders/leaders.
I am fundamentally a long game player, and the long game is all about relationships. Being right is irrelevant when you break the relationship. When you are hospitable and charitable to people, you often will be the one that needs to suck it up and adjust, even when you’re clearly right.
I’ll go even further.
If you’ve corrected someone because you don’t want them to think you’ve made a mistake, you’ve made a much bigger mistake.
The common response to this is that “sucking it up when I know I’m right feels demeaning” - yes, true, but the benefit you get to the relationship far outweighs any you lose from making a so-called mistake, especially if/when the other party realizes or discovers that they were actually wrong in the matter. The feeling you leave them with is a far greater testament to your impact than you proving that you are right.
I’m not saying that we should not go back and correct the error - do that, but do it in private. And do it in a way that preserves, and even strengthens the relationship.
Being right a lot isn’t about being objectively right. It’s not about being seen as right. It is about being relationally, long term right. It is about having the tact to know when to correct, and how to continually strengthen the relationship. And that is the definition of hospitality at work.
My sons,
We are a relational species. Whether we like it or not, we are wired for connection, for relationship, for feeling. In my younger years I tried to shed that; I tried to argue that intellect and reason were far superior to feeling. I took pride in this.
As I’ve grown over the years, my personality trait scores have drifted. In my youth and well into my early career, I scored very clearly in the INTJ bucket (for those unfamiliar with the Meyers-Briggs personality tests, INTJ is Introvert, iNtuitive, Thinking, Judgment and is pretty much the quintessential engineer). Over time, I drifted from an “I” to an “E” (ie Extrovert), but that was still fine.
But then came trouble.
One fine day, I tested as an ENFJ! Horror of all horrors, I was a feeler! That test had to be wrong. So I took the test again. And again. And a fourth time. And still, ENFJ. I went home from work early that day. I cried inside.
But as the stages of grief kicked through to acceptance, I realized this was actually a natural evolution for me, and a beneficial one at that. That famous quote from Maya Angelou resurfaced in a strong way:
”People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
I realized how true that statement was in my own life, and realized that without knowing it, I had grown into a person that desired to impact people more than I cared to say, do, or build great things. And the best way to do that was to make sure I was thoughtful about how I made others feel.
Thus began my journey to better understand this concept of hospitality.
Understanding hospitality
When I first encountered the term, I thought it applied to the service industry only. As I dove into the concept and read about the giants in the space, my understanding evolved. Reflecting on my experiences, I realized that among my friends there were certain homes that I liked visiting more, and there were certain people that I enjoyed lingering with, laughing with, and simply being around more. It never occurred to me that this was hospitality applied to my social circle.
In his book Unreasonable Hospitality, Will Guidara, former owner of Eleven Madison Park, describes his journey of understanding hospitality. He began by asking many in the service industry a simple question: “What’s the difference between service and hospitality?” He shares one of the best answers that he heard:
“Service is black and white - hospitality is color”.
Love that. Service is about ensuring the napkins are folded properly, that all the children’s toys have been put away, and that all the food is perfectly made, timed, and served. Hospitality is about ensuring that those coming over for dinner know that they belong, are seen, and feel heard. Service is about efficiency, correctness, and promptness, while hospitality is about effectiveness, experience, and connection.
Put in those terms, everyone can be hospitable.
We all live in the mundane, the day to day, in the valleys of life. Hospitality is an opportunity to transport someone to the mountaintop, to elevate their experience, and to make a wonderful memory that lasts. It is an opportunity to bring magic into their lives. It is an opportunity to create a moment that will last in their minds - a moment of pure joy, of perfect alignment, where they’re able to suspend reality, if only for a moment.
Hospitality requires intention
Turns out being hospitable isn’t easy, nor is it natural for most of us. While skill, practice, and environment are all helpful elements, the most important ingredient of hospitality is intention. Intention means that every decision, from the most obviously significant to the seemingly mundane, matters. It is a mindset that begins with a posture that no detail is too small to be ignored, and no task is beneath us.
Being intentional requires focus and effort. It is not easy, nor is it common. It is not obvious, nor is it natural. It requires skill, and it requires practice. It does not have a high barrier to entry. It simply requires a mindset of growth and learning combined with a desire to be the best versions of ourselves that we can be.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve always wanted to help people. When I was in College, I spent a bunch of my time helping younger students; whether it was being a TA, running study sessions, or just hanging out and showing others the ropes, I spent my time trying to guide and shape others just as some that went before me poured into my life.
One of my advisors gave me some sage advice that has stuck with me to this day. “Sam”, he said, “if you really want to impact others, you’ve got to plan for it. You’ve got to walk to class early, you’ve got to keep a fairly clear schedule, and you’ve got to recognize that none of it will happen on your schedule. You can’t plan when others are going to go through a tough time and need to talk. You can’t predict when a seemingly mundane conversation sparks into an hours-long one where someone bares a part of their soul to you. If you don’t plan for space to be available to others, you will not reach them.”
Every memorable connection that was built during my time in College happened in those spaces. From walking a friend home just to end up chatting until the wee hours of morning about life things to overnight study sessions ending in running outside to catch the sunrise, from standing outside GameStop at 2am waiting for the release of Halo 2 to commiserating with a friend on a deep heartbreak over coffee, each of the magical moments in those years happened because I had the time and space for those moments to happen.
Over the years, I learned that hospitality is about more than just creating space and margin for others; it’s about intentionally thinking about what they need, about how you can show up for them, and how you can bless them. That that requires thoughtfulness and intention.
Hospitality is a virtuous cycle
In our world, there are many vicious cycles out there. Shame, hate, anger, violence, suspicion, just to name a few. In contrast, there are fewer natural virtuous cycles, and far fewer examples of them going around.
Hospitality is an opportunity for us to change that.
Perhaps I’m an optimist, perhaps I’m naive, or perhaps I simply want it to be true, but every time I see a charitable act, a display of hospitality, or a picture of generosity, my soul lifts a little and I’m inspired to do the same, if only a little. But that’s it, isn’t it? By being intentionally hospitable to others, we lift them and everyone around them up just a little. Over time, as these little increases build up, it inspires them to turn around and do the same, if only for one person.
That’s the definition of a virtuous cycle and is exactly the type of thing our world needs.
The more we experience hospitality, the more we are motivated to be hospitable ourselves. The influential thinkers of our age have known this all along. From Aristotle to Confucius, from Ralph Waldo Emerson to David Brooks, all the greats speak about this. In Atomic Habits, James Clear lays this out explicitly:
“You don’t rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. And your systems are largely shaped by the people and environments you surround yourself with.”
By surrounding ourselves with hospitable people, we shape our systems, our mindset, and our actions to be more hospitable ourselves. By being hospitable, we shape the systems, mindset, and actions of those around us to be more hospitable as well. And maybe just maybe, we can bring a little more magic to our world.
My sons,
One of the biggest joys of my life is the ability to read, and the immense trove of literature that I have access to. It has immeasurably enriched my life and is very easily the single most important factor of making me the person that I am today. It has the ability to stretch your mind, to transport you to places you’ve never been, to challenge your beliefs, and to bring new perspective.
Reading lifts the spirit. It brings flight to the soul. It gives wings to our minds, and allows us to unleash the full potential of the human experience.
It is arguably one of the most impactful technological advancements in our world history. Combined with the printing press and mass publication/distribution, it has enabled the thoughts and ideas of the great thinkers of each era to be shared and consumed by most of the world’s population, in their lifetime and those that followed.
All of the greats in our world read. Tech and non-tech giants alike attribute much of their success to reading:
- Bill Gates reads ~50 books a year
- Mark Zuckerberg launched “A year of books” where he challenged everyone to read a book every two weeks
- Elon Musk famously said that he “was raised by books. Books, then my parents”
- Oprah’s Book Club is arguably one of the most influential movements in the world
- Warren Buffett said that “the more you learn, the more you’ll earn”
- Nelson Mandela said that “one child, one teacher, one book, one pen can change the world”
And yet reading across our world is declining.
Twenty years ago, 51% of American children ages 8-18 reported that they “greatly enjoyed reading” or “got a lot of enjoyment from reading”. That number dropped to 34% in 2025. In 2011, 79% of Americans said they read at least one book per year. That number dropped to 64% in 2024. The numbers vary slightly in the UK and the EU, but follow a similar trend.
What’s happening?
A belief of inherent value
Our current era of raising people has created a batch of incredibly self-confident youngsters, many of whom have been taught all their lives that they are unique and invaluable simply because they are who they are. We have taught them that their lives are interesting and worth broadcasting, that their thoughts are important and worth sharing on a global scale, and that their opinions, regardless of how weakly formed, have value.
This has led to an epidemic of shallow living, of people who are content to talk about themselves, events, and activities, who shy away from the deeper, richer, topics in life. This in turn results in a generation who experiences the world in the frame set by the likes of their social media icons and models. A life that is constantly looking for post-worthy activities is one focused on and consumed by the superficial, and therefore does not seek to nor feel the need to read.
I suppose if you’re reading this, that isn’t you.
Habitual book reading
Something that the monks, religious leaders, and philosophers figured out centuries ago is that habits are important. That’s an understatement. Habits are paramount. Not only because they help us achieve their goals, but because regular exposure to something changes the way we think about that thing.
We’ve all heard sayings like “fake it till you make it”, “practice makes perfect”, and “slow and steady wins the race”. This wisdom comes in many different sayings and teachings, but is essentially the same: by doing a thing regularly, you will become someone who does that thing regularly.
C.S. Lewis said it best in Mere Christianity:
“When you are behaving as you loved someone, you will presently come to love [them].”
The obvious question then, is this: what does the habit of reading produce in a person?
- The practice of different perspectives. Regardless of whether you’re reading fiction, non-fiction, or anything in between, the daily habit of picking up a book and actively immersing yourself in a perspective other than your own is immensely valuable.
- The practice of stretching your mind. A healthy book list stretches your mind and your beliefs as you consider different topics and areas that you would naturally not encounter. Because we’re reading well-researched, well thought-out works by people who have spent their careers dedicated to the study of the topic as opposed to (ahem) random musings from an average mind, we can be sure that our minds will be stretched by the perspectives of the greats in each of their fields.
- The practice of developing a rich inner life. The more we read, the richer our inner life becomes. We become adept at building cathedrals in the sky, at exploring the vastness of space with intricate detail and nuance, at delving into the psyche of our favorite literary characters, and at living - no, feeling - every thoughtful and beautiful word of poetry in our minds. Books open our minds to the wealth to be found within and allow us to develop a rich thought life.
Framing our experiences
These in turn shape the way we experience the world. Instead of standing on the edge of the Thames wondering how to take the best selfie of the Tower Bridge, we ought to stand and admire the majesty of the human spirit that built and maintained such beautiful things. Instead of standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon wondering how to frame ourselves in a photo to capture the best angle of our face while still capturing the canyon, we ought to stand and be blown away by the awe of such a natural beauty and grand vista. Instead of figuring out how to capture a selfie with our faces lit enough but not too much so that the northern lights appear in the background clearly with us, we ought to be contemplating the celestial wonders that allow such beauty to be experienced.
Reading expands our minds, causes us to introspect, to extrospect, to ponder deeply about the mysteries of our world and our galaxy, to question and to examine life, and to wrestle with our purpose for being. It frames our travels, our conversations, our relationships, and our interactions. It gives us a variety of perspectives by which we can derive meaning from the experiences of our lives.
So please, my sons, read. I implore you to read. Not just my thoughts (although I am honored that you have decided to do so) or the thoughts of our contemporaries, but the thoughts of the greats. Read the classics to appreciate the beauty and honor of a bygone era. Read fiction to expand your imagination. Read philosophy to deepen your thought. Read biographies to increase your empathy and understanding of other perspectives. And above all, share all the way that the things you read have changed your life with those around you.