The second-best discipline I established around learning in my early 20s was to buy any book on topics of interest to me. My standard was, "Buy now. Read any time."
I quickly built an attractive library that always offered an exciting world of learning, depth, and value that aligned with my personal interests. A quick scan of my bookshelves always sparked my curiosity. They stood as a reminder of my priorities and how much I had left to learn. They still do.
The best discipline I established around learning in my late 20s was to stop reading modern best-sellers and instead exclusively read old books. My standard was "100 years old or older."
I quickly experienced that older books possess infinitely more wisdom on one page than most modern best-sellers contain in their entire text. Simply put: old books more reliably provide truths, insights, and structures that impact my life than current books.
Practitioners with their hands in the dirt wrote old books, not ghostwriters, entertainment celebrities, and professors in academic labs. Old books share hard-fought truth, frequently private notes the author never intended to publish. Sadly, the purpose of modern books is too often exclusively to make money by elevating the author's profile and speaking fee.
Most importantly, though, the older a book is and the longer it's been in publication, the more reliable its contents are. It stood up to time, nature, context, and change. And its truth passed the test.
Marcus Aurelius' "Meditations," Plutarch's "Lives," and Montaigne's "Essays" are oceans of wisdom as relevant today as they were the day they were written. It is still astounding to read them and realize how many issues of their day are the same as we face now. Most modern books, on the other hand, will be lucky to survive ten years after publication.
Buying any books on topics that interest me, avoiding modern best-sellers, and sticking primarily to older texts are three disciplines that have had an immeasurably positive on my education, my life, and without a doubt, these Daily Discipline notes.
The time is now. Do the work.
Share your thoughts