0:00 The single best definition of intelligence I've ever heard comes from Naval Raakant who said, "The only true test of intelligence is if you get what you want out of life." So, for the purposes of this video, our goal is not to increase our intelligence so you can flex how smart you are at trivia night. No, it's so that you can get more of what you want out of life. So, I'm going to give you 13 books to help you do just that. And we're going to break this into four parts. how to think, what to think about, how to apply what you think about, and perhaps most important of all, how to know what to want in the first place. So, let's start at the beginning with four books that are going to teach you how to think more intelligently.
0:49 Book number one is The Art of Learning by Josh Whiteskin. Skill acquisition is the single biggest definitive advantage that humans have over every other creature on this planet. I mean, just think about it. A baby deer is born and within like 30 minutes it's up. It's scamping around doing more or less all the things that a deer can do because its hardware is simply running the be a deer program. But a baby human on the other hand is utterly useless. Not just like 30 minutes after birth, but for a lot of us for like the next 30 years. And that's because our hardware doesn't come pre-programmed. Thanks to this little thing called neuroplasticity, the human brain is actually malleable. And it can be trained to do pretty much anything. The key then is knowing how to train your brain. Truly, your ability to
1:35 learn is your single greatest advantage in life. And the people most successful at getting what they want out of life are the ones who've mastered the skill of learning itself. Which brings us to the book, The Art of Learning. So Josh was a child chess prodigy. The movie Finding Bobby Fischer was actually about him. But he eventually gave up chess. He got bored. He moved on to become world champion in Tai Chi push hands. Then he got bored and he became a black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. Then he got bored again and he went on to become a world class surfer. It's like pretty crazy life. Well, fun little side fact actually. I competed against Josh back in the year 2000 when we were just wee little whippers snappers at the National Chess Championships in Sou Falls, South Dakota. back then I was the South Dakota state chess champion and he was a whole lot better. And part of that I attribute
2:21 to the fact that he was just a better learner than me. In this book, Josh shares that most people think learning is about accumulating more information, but it's not. It's actually about compressing feedback loops by setting an intention, taking action, receiving feedback, reflecting on that feedback, and then iterating as quickly as possible. The faster you cycle through that loop, the faster you acquire any skill. And listen, in the game of getting what you want out of life, learning is the meta skill. If you master it, you can master anything. All right, let's get to the second book on our list for programming your mind on how to think. It is The Road Less Stupid by Keith Cunningham. But first, quick confession. In another video, I dumped all over Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiasaki, and I didn't give much explanation as to why. So, here's the
3:07 thing. The rich dad that Kiasaki writes about is actually the author of this book. I figure instead of just reading about the rich dad, let's just go straight to the source and hear what he has to say for himself. So, here's the core idea of this book. In life, we all pay something called the dumb tax, which is what happens when we make a bad decision based off of bad information because, you know, we're just we're human and that's just what happens sometimes. But here's the thing. You should only ever pay the dumb tax once. The mistake that many of us make is we keep paying the same dumb tax over and over again because we fail to extract the right lesson. So Keith's solution is something he calls thinking time. It's a very simple process where you sit down with pen and paper and you work through a series of questions designed to mine the gold from both your failures and your successes. Questions like what
3:52 happened? What did I miss? What would I do differently this time? What's the single principle I can carry forward into the rest of my life? And I know it sounds like deceptively simple, but this exercise is incredibly powerful and it's also mentally exhausting, which is why most people won't do it. But if you can commit to doing this for even 1 hour a week for the next 90 days, I promise you're going to start thinking more clearly. You'll start seeing patterns. You're going to stop repeating mistakes, and you're going to start looking like a genius because questions truly are the debugging protocol of the mind. Which brings us to book number three, Thinking in Systems by Danella Meadows. Most people look at a complex problem and all they see is chaos. They see a tangled mess of variables that they can't possibly hold all in their head at once.
4:38 And so they either get overwhelmed and they freeze or they oversimplify and they miss the thing amidst the madness that actually matters. So this book, Thinking in Systems, it's going to teach you to see the world differently. It's going to teach you a formal process for visualizing systems and all their their inputs, their outputs, the stocks, flows, the feedback loops, all of it that will enable you once you understand this language to start seeing points of leverage everywhere. Not because you're necessarily smarter, but because you have improved pattern recognition. And that idea of pattern recognition is incredibly important when it comes to increasing your intelligence and getting what you want out of life. See, it's like chess. Grand masters don't necessarily have more processing power than amateurs. They just recognize patterns faster and they ignore the bad
5:25 moves sooner so they don't waste unnecessary cognitive bandwidth just running down dead ends. Systems thinking will give you the same edge in business and health, relationships, everything. You stop worrying about all the things that need to be fixed and instead you zero in on finding the one place, that small shift that will have the biggest impact. That alone will give you a massive cheat code that most people never even realize exists. All right, let's get to book number four, How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big by Scott Adams. Scott shared a number of ideas over the years that have had a pretty profound impact on my life. And this book encapsulates one of those ideas that's helped me most in getting more of what I want out of life. It's simple. The difference between people who get what they want out of life and the people who don't simply comes down to their systems, not their goals. Scott
6:12 says it bluntly. He says, "Goals are for losers, systems are for winners." After all, everybody at the Olympics has the same goals, right? But it's ultimately their systems that makes the biggest difference. A system in this context is simply what are the repeated actions you take on a daily basis that increase your odds of success over time. If you want to be a best-selling author, what's your system? What's your process for putting words on the page every single day, for building a platform, for reaching out to agents? It's this system of daily activities which will eventually get you to the place you want to be. Because at the end of the day, a goal without a system is simply a dream. Okay, so that wraps up part one of the books that will teach you how to think. Next up are three books that will teach you what to think about. Starting with one of my favorites, The Fabric of Reality by
6:59 David Deutsch. Now, if you truly want to understand how something works, you have to understand the source code, the fundamentals. Because the person who understands the basic building blocks of an idea is more able to use that idea in a real world context than the person who is simply regurgitating a complex but memorized formula for a test. And this in a nutshell is the idea of first principles thinking. Unfortunately, most people only ever operate at the surface level. They see effects without understanding the causes. They turn the crank, they get the output, but they don't really understand why. This book, The Fabric of Reality, is going to help you bridge some gaps of understanding by breaking down what David Deutsch calls the four fundamental strands of reality. That includes quantum physics, epistemology, which is just the theory
7:45 of knowledge, computation, and evolution. I know it sounds dense, and truthfully, it is, but here's why it matters. The universe is fractal, which means the macro tends to resemble the micro. And the more deeply you understand how reality operates at its most fundamental level, the more clearly you can extrapolate that out to see how everything else works, whether it's in your business, your relationships, your own psychology, whatever, they all follow the same patterns that echo the deeper structure of the universe. And when you understand that, you'll start to see exactly how to get more of what you want out of life. Okay, next book number six. This is a big boy. Basic economics by Thomas Sow. Listen, your ability to get what you want out of life is in many ways dependent on how you
8:31 work with and through other people. Therefore, understanding what makes people do what they do is pretty damn important. Which is why I recommend reading this book, Basic Economics, because economics isn't really about money. It's about incentives, which means it's really about applied psychology at scale. My favorite thing about this book is it will teach you to think in second and third order consequences. Not just what happens next, but the and then what and the and then what after that. And that single upgrade in thinking will separate you from 90% of people who can never see past the first thing that's right in front of them. You couple first principles thinking with second order consequences and you're practically unstoppable. But let's keep going and make sure the deck is really stacked in your favor because book number seven is
9:16 pound-for-pound the highest leverage book on this entire list. It is lessons of history by Will and Ariel Durant. The reason it's so high leverage is because the author spent 50 years writing an 11 volume history of civilization that I actually have right up there on that shelf. It is tens of thousands of pages long. It is an absolutely mind-boggling achievement just to read the damn thing, much less write the thing. But Will and Ariel knew that most people would never actually sit down and read that damn thing. So they distilled all the most important lessons from 11,000 pages of those books into a 100 pages called the lessons of history. That is 5,000 years of human behavior. Wars, empires, revolutions, collapses. It's all just
10:02 compressed into a tiny little book that you can read in a single afternoon. So why is that important? Because the thing is history never repeats itself, but it always rhymes. And at this very moment, you are personally living through a pattern that has already played out thousands of times before. If you can recognize those patterns, then you can position yourself ahead of the curve to actually take advantage of whatever life has in store for you next. Not bad for a book that'll take you like less than an hour to get through. All right, so now we know how to think and we know what to think about. But, and this is crucial, knowledge is only power when applied. So next up, I'm going to give you a handful of books that will help you actually take what you know and do something useful with it in the real world. This is how to apply your intelligence. The first book in this section is skin in
10:48 the game by Nicholas Nasim Taleb. And the reason this book is here is because to get what you want out of life, things have to get done. And there are only two ways to do anything. Either you do it or you get someone else to do it for you. That's it. Either way, you have to understand incentives. that is how can you make someone including yourself want to do a thing. The better you are at aligning incentives with your desired outcome, the more quickly you're going to move towards your goals. In fact, incentives are such a powerful concept that Charlie Mer, the famous former business partner of Warren Buffett, once said, "I think I've been in the top 5% of my age cohort all my life in understanding the power of incentives. And all my life, I've still underestimated it." You cannot take
11:35 incentives too seriously. And then this book, Skin in the Game, it's all about what happens when people are put in position to bear the consequences of their actions. Put another way, when you put your ass on the line, you tend to get better results. You tend to think more deeply, more carefully, and more clearly about what you should do next. So, if you want to increase the probability of getting what you want out of life, start by asking, "What are my incentives?" That single question can save you years of wasted effort. Because intelligence isn't just about knowing things. It's about seeing reality clearly. And nothing will distort reality faster than misaligned incentives. As the famous saying goes, it is impossible to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it, which is pretty much politics in a
12:21 nutshell. But never mind that. Let's get to the next book on our list, which is unfortunately a very rare hard book to find. So you're probably not going to be able to get your hands on it. That's okay because I actually did a deep dive breakdown of all the best ideas from this book over on my business channel which I'll link to above around here somewhere. That book is the mind of Napoleon. This book is a collection of all of Napoleon's letters, his speeches, private reflections on war, leadership, power. And the reason I include it on this list is because Napoleon said something in here that rewired my brain permanently. He said, >> "Sir Godfrey of the Nessie Alliance summoned the help of Scotland's local wizards to cast a protective." >> He said, "Is it because they are lucky
13:08 that great men become great?" No. But being great, they have been able to master luck. And the truth is, if you want to get what you want out of life, it really doesn't hurt to get lucky every now and then. Now Napoleon defined luck as the ability to exploit accidents, not necessarily to have like good fortune, but to see when an opportunity appears and then to act decisively. So the question is how? And his answer is by being so thorough in your preparations, so exacting in your calculations that you've already accounted for every variable within your control. Which means when that moment arrives, the opportunity, the accident, the opening, your entire focus is available to exploit it. And that more than practically anything else is going
13:54 to make you look like a freaking genius. Which brings us to book number 10, Olgvie on advertising by David Olgvie. Victor Hugo said, "There is nothing in the world more powerful than an idea whose time has come." And as an intelligent person, you probably got a number of ideas that could potentially make a pretty big impact on the world. But Hugo was actually only half right. Because you see, ideas are only as powerful as your ability to communicate them. All the intelligence in the world is worthless if it stays trapped inside your head. You can understand systems, you can see patterns across history, and you can think strategically at the highest levels. But if you cannot transmit that intelligence, if you can't move it from your mind into the minds of others, you are never going to get what you want out of life. Because almost everything you want requires in one way
14:40 or another somebody else. Whether that's friends family customers partners investors, collaborators, it doesn't matter. The bridge between your idea and them taking action in alignment with what you want hinges on your ability to communicate. And when it comes to communication, to influencing perception, to conjuring desire, to driving action, there is practically nobody better to learn from than the godfather of modern advertising, David Oglevie. which is why I recommend this book Lee on advertising because in here he lays out the principles that he used to pioneer the way that we engage, educate, and persuade using nothing more than words on a magazine page. But here's what most people miss. Great advertising isn't about clever tricks or manipulations. At its core, it requires
15:25 clear thinking coupled with a deep understanding of human psychology along with the ability to distill a complex idea into a message that lands with impact. In other words, it is applied intelligence. You can be the smartest person in the room, but if you cannot communicate with clarity and move people to take action, someone less intelligent but more persuasive is going to get what they want, not you. Which brings us to book number 11. And I'm not going to lie here, guys. This is a really weird book, but stick with me because I actually think it's really worth reading. It's called Reality Trans Surfing by Vadim Zaland. Vadem was a Russian quantum physicist and he wrote this book to explain how your internal state shapes your external reality. I'm going to be honest here. This framework that he proposes is so woo woo that it's kind of
16:13 hard to take seriously at times. But here's the thing. While his framework might not be technically true, I found it to actually be a really useful analogy for understanding the way the world works. We call this useful not true. Plus, this book will give you some practical mechanical tools that you can use to orient your mindset in the most advantageous direction possible. One of the core concepts in this book is that of importance. See, whenever you attach what he calls excessive importance to an outcome, you create resistance. you tighten up and you start forcing things and in the process the thing that you want slips further away. Reality trans surfing is going to teach you how to let things that you want in life just come to you rather than chasing after them with clenched fists. All told, this is
16:59 one of the most woowoo books I've ever read. And still, I highly recommend giving it a read. Just make sure that you do so with an open mind. And while your mind is open, go ahead and give the 12th book on our list a read as well. That is Mind Magic by James Dodie. I read this book last year while living in a van after my life had recently fallen apart. If you haven't heard that story, by the way, I'll link to a video where I break down how I lost millions and filed bankruptcy last year. But anyways, this is one of the only books I have ever finished and then immediately started rereading because the ideas in it were so damn helpful for me in that moment. See, this book is all about the neuroscience of manifestation. And again, I know very woo woo, but the thing that attracted me to this is the author, James Dodie, is a neurosurgeon
17:45 at Stanford. So, I figured he's probably bringing some level of scientific rigor to this topic, right? His core idea is simple, but it's profound. Your mind is programmable. Like, not in a metaphorical sense, but in a literal neurological way. The thoughts you repeat become the patterns your brain defaults to. And then those patterns shape what you notice, what you pursue, and ultimately what you create. It's like that old saying, first we shape our tools and then our tools shape us. And this calls to mind like the definition of the magic word abracadabra. Like that's not just a fun sounding word. It's actually Aramaic and it means as I speak so I create. Dod's insight is that this isn't magic. It's biology. The way you talk to yourself, the words you use, the images you hold in your mind, the emotional states that you rehearse,
18:30 these aren't just feelings. They're instructions. and they are programming your mind for either success or failure. I highly recommend you give this book a read so that you can actively start recruiting and programming your subconscious mind to work for you and not like it does for most people against you. Which brings us to the last book on the list. What I consider to be the most important section of this entire video. Cuz intelligence isn't just about knowing how to get the things you want out of life. Even more foundational than that is simply knowing what things are even worth wanting in the first place. And I know that doesn't sound like that big of a deal, like how hard can it really be to figure out what to want in life? But when I look around, I see the vast majority of people are playing
19:16 games they hate to win prizes they don't actually want to impress people that don't even care. And so if you don't want to waste your life climbing a ladder only to get to the top and discover too late that it was leaning against the wrong wall the entire time, do yourself a favor and read the 13th and final book on our list. It is The Lion Tracker's Guide to Life by Boyd Vardy. Boyd grew up tracking lions in the South African bush, which is like just about the most badass childhood I can imagine. But this book isn't really about tracking lions. It's about tracking your path through life. Here's the thing about tracking. You don't ever really see the lion until you you're right on top of it. You just see signs. You see a bent blade of grass here. You see a print in the sand over there. You see some birds fluttering off in the
20:02 distance. And you follow these signs, not really knowing exactly where they lead, but trusting the process. Most people most people want certainty before they move. They want to see the destination before they even take the first step. But that's not how finding your path works. You can't see around the corner until you actually move forward. Vardy calls this the first track. You don't need to see the whole trail. You just need to find the next sign and follow it and then the next and then the next. And this is how you find what you actually want in life. Not by planning the whole route in advance, but by developing the sensitivity to notice what's calling you and then having the courage to follow it into the unknown. Which brings me to the single most important thing I hope you take away from this video. The first step to
20:49 getting what you want out of life is to admit what it is you actually want. And that's actually quite terrifying for a lot of people because when you admit what you truly want rather than simply accepting what you already have, it means you have to do something and that means you might fail. And in the process, you might look stupid. But the people I've met who are the most successful at getting what they want out of life are the ones who have the highest tolerance for public failure. They don't care how dumb they look in the process of chasing their dreams. So, just remember, these books won't give you the answers, but they will give you some useful tools. But all tools are only as good as the craftsman wielding them. So, go ahead and read these. Level up your thinking, get smarter, but then don't be an idiot and just sit around doing nothing with it. Take what you
21:34 learned, go apply it, and start getting exactly what you want out of life. And I'll see you in the next video.
