I love to read. Almost every day I read blogs, magazines, and books. Much like Mark Cuban, who claims to read 3 hours per day, I make it a huge priority even on the busiest of days to find some time to read:
Most people won’t put in the time to get a knowledge advantage. Sure, there were folks that worked hard at picking up every bit of information that they could, but we were few and far between. To this day, I feel like if I put in enough time consuming all the information available, particularly with the net making it so readily available, I can get an advantage in any technology business. Of course my wife hates that I read more than 3 hours almost every day, but it gives me a level of comfort and confidence in my businesses. AT MicroSolutions it gave me a huge advantage. A guy with little computer background could compete with far more experienced guys just because I put in the time to learn all I could.
But I’m very selective with what I read. If it sucks, if I’m not learning from it, I put it down. That’s how I judge any book/magazine/blog – did I learn something?
When it comes to blogs, if it goes a few weeks without me gaining anything from it, I delete it from my Google Reader. Two or three bad issues of a magazine and it’s done in my book (Entrepreneur magazine is one that I ditched a while back). If a book just isn’t what I expected it to be, and it’s clear it isn’t getting better, I put it down and move on to another one.
Sort of an updated version of the What I Read post from almost two years ago, here’s a list of the work related blogs, magazines, and books that I currently read. Meaning that I consistently find value in their content. I obviously don’t reread the books in their entirety on a regular basis, but I do find myself constantly referring back to them, so I consider them “must reads” for aspiring entrepreneurs.
(I read a lot more blogs that aren’t listed here, many of which are sports related or fitness related or are blogs written by my friends/family)
Tech Blogs
Entrepreneur’s Blogs
- BlogMaverick (Mark Cuban)
- GuruGilbert (Adam Gilbert)
- Ma.tt (Matt Mullenweg)
- Nevblog (Neville Medhora)
- Four Hour Workweek (Tim Ferriss)
- Musings of a B-School Professor of Entrepreneurship (Dr. Bill Wales)
- Signals vs. Noise
- Corporatepreneur
Magazines
Books
- The 4-Hour Workweek – by Tim Ferriss
- Good to Great – by Jim Collins
- The E-Myth Revisited – by Michael E. Gerber
- Getting Real – by 37 Signals
- The Millionaire Next Door – by Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko
- All of my programming books
What about you guys? What are your must read business blogs, magazines, and books?
Thanks for the links. My fav rss feeds:
Chez Larsson (http://chezlarsson.typepad.com/)
Rules For My Unborn Son (http://rulesformyunbornson.tumblr.com/)
Coyote Blog (http://www.coyoteblog.com/)
Awesome Jakob – thanks for the links, I’ll definitely check all of them out. Btw, your comment didn’t appear immediately b/c it had 2+ links in it. I have WP set to require me to manually approve those. Just wanted to give everyone else a heads up if they share a lot of links…which is what I hope
Adam,
As always, I appreciate you including me. It means a lot! And that’s a great question to ask before publishing a post: Will people gain something from this? (Obviously, the more the better)
I just want to say your blog is one of the few blogs I consistently read so please keep the extremely useful and interesting content coming!
By the way, having my name in between Mark Cuban and Matt Mullenweg looks pretty good!
-A
The awesome thing about the web is the way it equalizes everything. It gives people the opportunity to choose between reading you or I or Mark Cuban. It’s pretty amazing when you think about it.
Btw – love that you’re now sharing your daily inspirations. For anyone who doesn’t read Adam’s blog, he also has a second blog that he previously only shared with his clients http://www.mybodytutor.com/blog/
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/ always has some good tidbits. short posts too. good for busy people.
Thanks Paolo. I just added it to my feed reader. I’ve always heard great things about Seth and his books but haven’t had the chance to read them.
excellent, thanks for sharing! i was actually going to send you an email asking you what blogs you enjoy reading!
Glad you found it helpful Bobby!