#Insight 015 - For Profit Reading - What is your Book Worth? A Unique Method to measure your worth!
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-your-book-worth-unique-method-measure-boni-aditya/
Nov 2024 Update - For Profits Reading & For Purpose Reading
Usually reading is considered a Good Habit.
But it is a hobby for many. Reading as a hobby is not productive reading, it is having fun with your imagination. Reading fiction is really “non-for-profit reading”, i.e. it is not learning. When you read fiction, it is to entertain your mind, but the real profit if any is made by the publishers and may be the authors. There is very little value add to you.
Reading for fun vs Reading for Profit, one must know the difference, and it is not a thin line separating both, it is actually a mile wide border separating them.
For profit reading is about adding more value and gathering more useful data and knowledge.
July 16, 2019
In a world where the default religion is Capitalism, the only metric that is worth knowing about a person is his "NET WORTH". It is common among Indian cliches to discuss the assets that the family holds or the inheritance that the person has... But in capitalist societies, a person isn't merely valued by his assets, assets are frozen, they have come up with a rather liquid measure, i.e. net worth, to determine how much a person is worth at any point of time. Net Worth is a variable number, which reflects the ability to generate wealth/growth/profits, rather than possess a stable, fixed resource. Money and Wealth have become the only measures of worth in our society and the rat race now has a Trillion-Dollar Networth as its target. But I think that money is a rather narrow way of thinking about this world. Yes, of course, you need money to survive, but that shouldn't be the only measure of worth. In this article, I will introduce a unique way of measuring the net worth of a person, based on the books he/she has read.
HOW TO vs KNOW-HOW
Reading books isn't easy, reading non-fiction is a step further from difficult. Reading a non-fiction book is the mark of an individual trying to absorb knowledge, information or data. I once heard that books are the software that we install in the operating systems of our minds. With each book you read, you learn something new. Learning something new would only count as potential energy. The most skilled person can't exhibit his skill unless he encounters an opportunity to exhibit his skills. Thus the most learned person might never be able to find an occasion in his life to employ his hard-earned skills, nevertheless, the person is learned. Thus while measuring book worth, I did not take into account if the knowledge thus earned is actionable or not. Book Worth is merely a measure of the theoretical potential of a person and not practical. The book worth of an archeologist might be extremely huge, but let us not kid ourselves, he is never going to match the Legendary Indiana Jones! Because it is only in fiction that a character gets the opportunity to find the lost ark, or the Temple with a Holy Grail or to find alien crystal skulls in ancient ruins.
No archeologist in the world, no matter how learned, gets so many opportunities in a pragmatic world. It is extremely rare that an archeologist makes one great discovery in their entire life, a dinosaur footprint, traces of an ancient civilization in a cave, or ancient remnants of an extinct species stuck in ember. Thus mere possession of "how-to" will not translate to "Know-How" or the opportunity required to execute the knowledge. The difference between those who can do something, without the explicit knowledge of how it is done versus those who know how to do it implicitly (either through intuition or induction), but have never found the opportunity to do it or never have learned the know-how to perform it consciously, will always remain. This is the gap between the Teacher and the Student. One cannot both perform an act and also keep a track of how it is done simultaneously, a paradox indeed. Thus I would not try to convince anyone that reading books is power, but I would take the risk of stating that reading books offers you the ability to know how something is done, though you might never actually get to do it. One other constraint with books is that certain things can be learned only by doing, for example, swimming or cycling. No matter how many books you read, you cannot become a swimmer by reading, you can coach swimmers by theorizing and testing those theories on other swimmers, but you can't become a swimmer, though you have complete knowledge about swimming. The Vice-Versa is often true, many swimmers swim, but that does not necessarily mean that they completely understand the science of swimming, and they don't need to either.
But, reading books isn't completely futile either, there are certain activities that can be learned only by reading books. Reading, Writing, Language, Script and a few other exceptions require you to pick up a book to acquire those skills. Thus Book Worth is an alternative measure of theoretical ability of a person to excel in specific niches.
MYRIAD WAYS OF LOOKING AT BOOKS:
Why is reading books important to begin with? There are many perspectives and turning to each one of them will reveal interesting vantage points. Merely reading books isn't going to maximize the value of reading books. Deliberate reading or reading with a particular goal in mind is more powerful than reading without any goal. As discussed above, reading non-fiction has more weight than fiction, unless you are researching about Literature, again, there will always be exceptions. But, in general, an illiterate has less knowledge than a literate. A literate who does not read anything new has less knowledge than a literate who keeps consuming books. A literate who consumes books randomly i.e. multiple genres without any discretion has less depth of knowledge than a literate who focuses is efforts in a particular science. A Generalist Book Consumer vs A Specialist Book Consumer. There are multiple ways to look at the ways in which books are consumed, consuming books isn't a straight forward matter. Books when consumed in a particular sequence add more value than randomly consumed books, which makes it easy to connect the dots or reach the depth of the subject faster and better. At this point, presenting two quotes from Mark Twain is extremely relevant.
Thus reading must be done with extreme care, the next book you pick up must be carefully analyzed i.e. you need to remove availability bias when you pick up the next book. You must do a tiny bit of research about the book. The value that the book would add to you and the relevance of the book to you, at that specific point in life. You must be able to weigh in the options when choosing the book. The last thing you want to do is to spend 20 hours reading a book only to realize that you didn't need it after all, at least not right now. Thus, there is a purpose to this very long discussion about the value of books or opportunity cost of books. Some books are more relevant and add more value than others. Reading books in a particular order is more valuable than reading them in random order. A book read by someone is more valuable to their context than the same book read by another person living in a different context, i.e. geography, financial situation, time etc... All of these gain relevance when we try to provide the same score for everybody who has read the same book.
DIVERSIFICATION OF KNOWLEDGE SOURCES AND WORTH:
Gone are the days when Books held a monopoly over knowledge or when libraries were the only stores of knowledge. Thanks to the internet era, now knowledge is available through many sources. You don't need to read a book to learn anymore. You can learn by watching Video Courses, Slide Shows, Animations, Podcasts, Blogs, Games....
There are myriad of ways in which you can absorb knowledge and as the ecosystem matures, these options will only increase. A 3D classroom to learn by doing/i.e. interacting with virtual objects is in the scope. Imagine Iron Man-style design in every classroom. Virtual Worlds - VR tech can also be used to learn. Thus making Book Worth lesser significant, but the cheapest way to consume data still remains through books and majority of the world still uses books to transmit knowledge.
Thus Book Worth isn't really a precise measure of a person's intellect or the knowledge that the person has, let alone the skill of the person. Though this metric has its own set of pitfalls, never the less it can be used as a good measure of a person's ability to parse data and absorb information.
Here is how you would calculate the Book Worth.
Make a list of all the books you have read
Find the Price of the books in the open market - For now let us use Amazon as the Open Market Alternative
Take a Sum of all the Prices and that will be your book worth
This is a rough version I have implemented on Google Sheets, a more robust version of the same can be implemented using goodreads.com, which offers better analytics, once you provide the list of all the books you have read, the number of pages among other important analytics. But, this number offers the market value of all the books you have consumed so far. This can be your basic Book Worth.
Why is the book worth important?
Anything that can be measured must be measured because anything that is measured will be improved upon. Measuring something gives you a rough idea about where you stand and gives you direction to move ahead. This is similar to how Individuals compare NetWorth or how Businesses compare their Market Cap and use it as a measure to compete. Though these metrics don't really indicate real-health of the individual or the company, they fill the void or they serve as a basic measure. Measuring often provides the motivation for people to hit the Gym. Measurement also helps analysts to understand how their products are performing the markets. Though these measures are neither accurate nor precise, they provide a baseline i.e. a starting point. You can further refine each of them according to the specific requirement.
I hope that this metric will help you consume more books or understand how you can improve your book worth with respect to the market. I have observed an important paradox while calculating Book Worth. I have seen a very skewed curve with respect to the prices of books. Most of the books lie in the very low range i.e. priced a few hundred books, but there is the occasional book that is priced 10k or more. The curve looks more skewed, reading a few of these 10k books can push the Book Worth upwards suddenly. But, if the free market were to value that book ten times to twenty times more than an average book then, I assumed that there must be some truth to it. The Pareto rule holds true for the market price of books too!
A Parthian Shot - The Pitfalls of attempting to Maximize Book Worth
There are two kinds of people in this world, those who take time to enjoy a book and those who try to finish the book. If the difference between the attitudes isn't evident, this comic strip might help you visualize it. People who understand how to enjoy the journey and those who turn everything into a competition and destroy the joy of the experience. I have seen too many people in my life who tend to do this and make it worse for others in the process, I was indeed one of them, but not anymore.
Choose your books carefully, pick up the book that adds the most value to you at any particular point of time. The very same book could add infinite value to one person and add a negative value to another, depending upon the age, sex, language, maturity, skill, mental power, a book can either be a boon or a bane. Don't really choose books that are priced the highest in the market at this specific point of time, this goes without saying that don't pick up a book because it is a bestseller or that it was a bestseller or that it has the highest ratings or that it gets a very good recommendation. Check out the preface of the book and decide if it matches with the knowledge you wish to acquire and with your taste. Extreme care must be taken while choosing a book because it would take a few days to a week away from your life as you absorb yourself into the book. Book Worth must be taken with a grain of salt. B Reading is the only way I know of Speaking with Dead People and very old people that I might be able to see in my life. I have spoken with many of them and I have found their advice very useful and stood on their shoulders to see worlds that were alien to me.
Maximize your Book Worth and Happy Reading.