Read More. Read Often. Read Every Day. - by JA Westenberg

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Read More. Read Often. Read Every Day.<br>Stop Looking for Productivity Hacks. Pick Up a Damn Book.

JA Westenberg<br>Jul 24, 2026

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Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash<br>🍕 I’m JA Westenberg. I write essays about technology, philosophy, productivity, and what it means to be human. If you like ideas that take their time, you’re in the right place.<br>While you’re here, a few things I’ve built: Kerouac, a writing app | Post Through It, a solo microblogging tool | Distributism.ai, my MCP platform | Laterware, all the AI news you need | Studio Self, a thought leadership agency for founders x VCs.<br>You can buy my book Permissionless here.

I’m not a true believer in much.<br>I am a fanatical believer in reading.<br>I do it early in my day, I do it late in my day, and I do it often.<br>I keep the Kobo app in my iPhone dock, a paperback in my messenger bag, and my eReader never out of arm’s reach. If I’m waiting in line for a coffee, jumping in an Uber, etc, I’ll be nose deep in a book.<br>Why?<br>It takes serious concentration, and I’m addicted to focus.<br>We keep searching for lifehacks, productivity tips, and bullshit, but the answer is right there. If you want to be better, grow more, understand your life, understand your purpose, learn something, or just find somewhere to stay a while when life gets overwhelming  -  pick up a damn book.<br>Why You Should Spend The Majority Of Your Time Reading

The Pareto Principle states that 20% of the effort yields 80% of the results.<br>It’s the 80/20 rule.<br>I believe that spending 20% of your time buried in a book, buried in something that will inspire you, excite you, and make you want to jump out of your seat is going to give you the fuel, the ideas, and the power to create 80% of your output.<br>It’s worked for me so far. Every decision I’ve made, every idea that’s shaped the course of my life, every drop of sweat that I have spent trying to be a better human being, can be traced back to the power of a good book.<br>In other words?<br>Damn right you should spend the majority of your time reading.<br>You should be reading books, newsletters, magazines, and blogs.<br>Literally anything of worth and value to you.<br>Anything and everything.<br>Reading books will improve your vocabulary by 80%.<br>Readers have a 20% reduction in the risk of dying before their time.<br>Readers are 2.5 times less likely to contract Alzheimers.<br>And readers have a better handle on the various weaknesses of dragons  -  something that may or may not be useful, depending on your career path.<br>Reading can shape your path

Even if you have a clear as crystal idea of what you want to do with your life, it’s almost impossible to know the correct path to follow.<br>There are so many things that can happen along the way that it can be tortuously difficult to figure out exactly where you should be going and how you should be getting there.<br>But you have access to the entire archive of human knowledge up until this point.<br>In the pages of every book in your library, every book on Kobo, every book on Gutenberg. You have access to every insight worth exploring, and the answer is going to be somewhere out there.<br>I would guarantee that there is not a single question or problem you could bring to me that can’t be solved with a book that someone has already written.<br>And it could have been written 1,000 years ago.<br>What you should spend the majority of your time reading

Books : This is the most obvious. Books are filled with words, ideas, and information that will improve your experience of life. Most of your time should be devoted to books, at whatever pace and in whatever category you’re comfortable with. They’re the purest form of the written word, created with love and care, crafted and honed to their best possible form.<br>Other publications : There are many other publications, newsletters, and news outlets that can be a good way to spend your reading time. But you’ve got to be careful about it. Reading the news obsessively can completely destroy any time you had devoted to reading, and throw it away in favor of doom scrolling, easily leading you down a Twitter rabbit hole instead of leading you down Lewis Carroll’s rabbit hole.<br>Sometimes you’re going to want to read something that isn’t going to make you smarter.<br>Sometimes, you’re going to want to read something that doesn’t challenge you.<br>Sometimes, you’re going to want to read pure trash.<br>The good news?<br>Even reading trash is better than watching it.<br>Even reading trash is still giving your reading muscles a quick workout. That’s never a waste of time. I’m not saying that you should spend the majority of your time reading Star Wars fan fiction. That would be ridiculous, and it might give you some odd ideas (yes, there’s a fanfic where the Almighty Sarlacc gets it on in quite a graphic scenario)<br>I’m saying that you should give yourself space to read what you want.<br>It’s the reading that matters.<br>It’s the journey, not the...