Yesterday, I slept in.  Sleeping in is a luxury I try to deny myself every day.  When I sleep late, bad things happen.  If I lose an hour in the morning, I will spend the rest of the day searching for it.

So, why do I rise early every morning?  I rise early to read.  With an online business, and a website to run, a family to feed, math lessons to teach (my kids have my brain when it comes to math), bills to pay, online classes to teach, real students to teach, old cars to repair, piles of paperwork to burn, emails to respond to, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, there is often little time left in the day to read.  Yet, reading is critical.  I cannot skip it.

This post in “Early to Rise” reminded me that I cannot afford to skip reading.  Neither, by the way, can you.

Given that Mark Cuban reads three hours per day; given that Warren Buffett reads 500 pages per day; given that Mark Zuckerberg has set his personal goal in 2015 to read a book every two weeks; given that the most successful are learners; and given that we work tirelessly to identify the best business authors of the best dozen books (Lean, Sales, Tribes, Billionaires, etc.) and bring these authors to our events, why are you missing an opportunity to learn and network with some of the best mid-market scale-ups around the world? Yes, we’re all busy – and I imagine Zuckerberg and Buffett and Cuban have plenty on their plates. So why do they keep learning? It’s about making sure you avoid the mistakes that come with NOT knowing. Nothing creative can come out of your brain that wasn’t put in first. And learning isn’t linear. It’s about piling in as much as you can (see Bill Gates’ infamous Think Weeks) and then letting the magic happen. I never know when I’m going to need to access an idea – but I have to know about it in the first place. 

– Verne Harnish

As quoted in the ezine “Early to Rise.”  March 3, 2015