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Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Obama - all of the great leaders we look up to have many things in common. One of the most critical is that they never stopped learning, no matter how far they were from school.
Reading Time: 8 minutes for full analysis + key takeaways highlighted throughout
Key Question: So often, people leave school and assume their structured learning time is over for the rest of their lives. Why?
My Take: If you have a growth mindset, your education doesn’t stop when you leave school. If anything, it should increase, as you have more time and resources, and have more clearly refined the subjects you are interested in. It’s easy to get complacent and assume you’ll learn another time, but without consistent structure (like you had in school), it’s hard to do it ad hoc. Putting habits, rituals, and workstreams in place will further your chances of long-term success and increase your knowledge exponentially.
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Let’s dive in.
I graduated college at 22.
On paper, my education is done; I’ve earned all my diplomas (including preschool).
Nothing forces me to keep learning and studying.
That mindset is powerful, but it can stagnate your long-term growth.
Your education doesn’t stop when you’re 22.
It’s easy to think that whenever you finish your last official stint of education (college, high school, middle school, elementary, preschool, or other), that you’re done—there isn’t anything else out there.
I’ve seen many people with this attitude. I’ve also seen some who believe the opposite: that your education never stops, whether you have formal schooling or not.
For the second group, it could be as simple as reading a new book every month, trying new foods, or striking up conversations with new people. There are thousands of ways to continue being curious, interested, and engaged with the world around you.
The Current State of Reading
You will likely spend a lot of time on the internet today.
The average human spends 6 hours and 38 minutes a day online. Surprisingly, this hasn’t increased dramatically over the past decade; in 2014, people spent 6 hours and 23 minutes online.
Despite this, only 14.6% of Americans read more than 20 minutes per day for personal interest. In contrast, about 80% of Americans watch shows, play games, or use a computer for personal interest for more than 20 minutes per day.
More than 80% of Americans read for 5 minutes or less per day.
Why aren’t Americans reading more?
Many factors currently compete for everyone’s free time. The rise of smartphones, streaming video services, social media, and on-demand gaming has changed how adults spend their time. Screen activities offer immediate feedback loops and passive consumption options that directly compete with the active cognitive load sustained reading requires.
Current shifts toward short-form media condition habits around rapid information snippets. Long-form reading demands continuous focus and lower external stimulation, making the transition to in-depth reading harder for consistent screen users.
To be clear, Americans today read vast amounts of text digitally throughout the day, from news feeds, online articles, professional correspondence, and digital communication, but this doesn’t fall into the traditional “personal interest reading” that is tracked in the studies.
Almost everyone has time to read. Usually, you don’t read because the alternative is more appealing or easier in the moment.
If Americans aren’t reading for personal interests, how else can they learn?
While traditional long-form reading for personal interest has declined, lifelong learning has shifted into active, audio-visual, digital, and interactive formats.
Podcasts, audiobooks, lecture series, and digital audio courses allow individuals to absorb complex ideas during everyday activities like commuting, exercising, or doing household chores
High-production educational video platforms (e.g., MasterClass), specialized tutorials, and breakdown-style video essays convert dense topics into easy step-by-step explanations
Community-driven knowledge networks such as online forums, specialized newsletter channels, and industry-specific online communities provide peer-to-peer problem-solving and discussion
Excuses vs. Choices: Prioritizing What Matters
There is no good excuse, only choices.
But why should you choose to read? Why should you choose to learn?
Many of the world’s great leaders, founders, and investors consistently dedicate substantial time to reading and quiet reflection.
For instance, Bill Gates reads around 50 non-fiction books per year and takes an annual “think week” retreat, where he isolates with no distractions and dedicates the time entirely to reading academic papers, books, and other proposals.
Warren Buffett is said to spend about 80% of his workday reading and thinking. Barack Obama made time while president to read at least 30 minutes every night. Patrick Collison, the Co-Founder and CEO of Stripe, keeps a personal library of thousands of books, reading to identify long-term structural patterns.
These individuals use structural frameworks to protect their time and prioritize learning. For instance, some use the 5-hour rule: committing at least 1 hour per working day strictly to deliberate learning, reading, or reflection. Others block their calendar with strong rigidity.
For these high-level decision-makers, reading is not a luxury or leisure activity, but a critical leverage point.
Facts and models compound over time. A broad foundation of multidisciplinary mental models allows high performers to evaluate complex risk far faster than starting from scratch.
High-level executives are consistently flooded with alerts, meetings, notifications, and other stimuli. Long books and papers provide synthesized context rather than fragmented noise.
High performers distinguish between executing tasks and thinking clearly. Setting aside dedicated time to read, process, and understand ensures you evaluate strategic direction before you allocate capital or effort.
If the President and world-class investors have time to prioritize their learning, it comes down to sticking to your values and prioritizing active learning over passive consumption.
What to Read: Building Your Unique Mindset
Author Haruki Murakami, in his book Norwegian Wood, provides an incredibly valuable perspective:
The better I got to know Nagasawa, the stranger he seemed… He was a far more voracious reader than I, but he made it a rule never to touch a book by any author who had not been dead at least thirty years. “That’s the only kind of book I can trust,” he said.
“It’s not that I don’t believe in contemporary literature,” he added, “but I don’t want to waste valuable time reading any book that has not had the baptism of time. Life is too short… If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking. That’s the world of hicks and slobs. Real people would be ashamed of themselves doing that. Haven’t you noticed, Watanabe? You and I are the only real ones in the dorm. The other guys are crap.”
Nagasawa is only half right. You don’t have to avoid new or popular things entirely. They serve their own purposes in the grand scheme of life.
So what should you read?
Start by building a strong foundation in time-tested historical literature. Read Plato, Socrates, John Locke, Milton Friedman, Adam Smith, and more. These will form the base layer of your knowledge – the core beliefs that solidify others and that change slowly over time.
From there, engage with current ideals, philosophies, and events that will help refine how your foundational layer directly applies and works with the world around us.
This methodology combines the best of both worlds, similar to an 80/20 approach: most of your knowledge comes from historical texts and time-tested approaches, with only a small portion drawn from the current nuances of today’s environment.
Finding Your Learning Spark
There are many times in my life when I wish I had kept playing the piano longer. My parents were the type of parents who made you “required” to learn the piano as a kid and play until you graduated high school.
From the time I started until I stopped around sophomore year of high school, I don’t think I ever truly enjoyed playing the piano for any long stretch. My hypothesis is that I never was playing the types of music I would truly enjoy.
I never entirely meshed with the highly technical classical music I was playing - I would have much rather played piano versions of current radio songs or other hits that I was more familiar with.
Learning and book reading are the same way. There are so many ways to learn, and so many different genres of books out there.
The trick is to have the patience to try enough to find “your type.” Reading books and learning about topics that truly excite and interest you makes it much easier to keep going. Trying to understand topics that aren’t engaging won’t work in the long term.
Often, the main barrier isn’t a lack of time or ability. It’s that you just haven’t found the best subject matter for you yet.
Stop settling for low-value internet distractions. It’s tough—I know from personal experience how hard it is to choose to read for 30 minutes at night vs. rotting on my phone in bed. The exponential payoff of reading is so much higher in the long run, but the short-term pain can sometimes be more than you’re willing to bear in the moment.
Habits are critical, routines crucial. Spending 30 minutes reading every day, no matter what, will create a habit that is incredibly hard to break.
This principle matters whether you’re 5, 15, 22, or 75. No matter where you are in your life, your education hasn’t stopped. You should always strive to learn and grow.
Imagine for a second how much you would know if you truly studied like you were in school every single day of your life. How incredibly far along would you be? What wouldn’t you know?
It’s easy to graduate from school and think you’re all done for the rest of your life. You’ve probably met people with this attitude before. Where are they at now? Likely, they aren’t as far along, as happy, or as in balance with the world around them as the continuous learners out there.
Strive to be a continuous learner. Pick up a book, find one that you enjoy, and dive in deep. Keep diving.
Remember, your education doesn’t stop when you’re 22.
That’s a wrap on this deep dive.
Drew Jackson
Founder & Writer
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