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Comment by ohduran | Hacker News Reader

I have a contrarian view about reading productively, which is: READ WHAT OTHERS AREN'T READING.

It's as if there is a similar process as the Efficient Market Hypothesis happening with books: the best-sellers define our shared reality, and apparently (at least for me), they aren't worth reading.

For example, think of Outliers, by Malcom Gladwell. Virtually everyone has heard of the 10'000 hour rule. That means that the first thing you have to do to be more productive in your reading is start by NOT reading Outliers: all its content is already common knowledge.

Which brings me to this post. No matter how many books the author is reading, he is simply reviewing what everyone else (Atomic Habits, Thinking Fast and Slow, Grit) is reading too. So there is little value in what he reads, because it's discounted by what "everyone" knows already.

What do you guys think about that? Am I too off course?

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I think you're right when it comes to finding new and original ideas by reading less popular texts. This helps you get an alternative perspective than the mainstream. I do feel it depends on whether you're reading to address something personal, or reading for advancing the subject as a whole. If I'm struggling with habits, then Atomic Habits is a good book to read, even if everyone else is reading it. It's not the only one, but a good recommendation saves me time.

I remember one person in the HN comments a while ago say that they would rather than see a list of all the books someone recommends, they want to see the list of books they don't recommend. You can make a better assessment of whether this person has value to add by showing their exclusions in their line of thinking.

If you're paying attention to what people are saying about the books "everyone" is reading, then sure, you can probably skip them. Lots of popular books I never read because I got 90%+ of the content from a podcast interview. But this doesn't answer the question of what you should read. Simply "not the popular stuff" could land you at an amazingly insightful but ignored classic, or a celebrity gossip tabloid you picked up at the grocery store checkout.

"If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking." - Haruki Murakami

Yes, the 10,000 hour rule is known by many. For the lack of a better term, the "10,000 hour rule" is a label for an idea. And this idea is as misunderstood as it is popular. Simply spending X hours of time on a skill does not an expert make; indeed, Malcolm Gladwell specifies that these 10,000 hours need to be spent as what he calls "deliberate practice".

How do you find books that others aren't reading (and are interesting to read)?

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