A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To My Life® with Laura Muirhead
Welcome to A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To My Life®. This is THE place to be for stories to inspire and uplift when life doesn't go according to plan. I'm Laura Muirhead, your host and the reigning queen of A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To My Life®. I can't wait to share my plot twist stories and the stories of my guests with you!
A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To My Life® with Laura Muirhead
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to My Life® with Nick Hutchison
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What if reading more isn’t the goal? What if the real goal is to actually use what you read?
In this episode of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to My Life®, I sit down with Nick Hutchison, founder and CEO of BookThinkers, to talk about books, attention spans, and why the way we consume information matters more than ever.
We get into reading with intention, physical books vs. audiobooks, our increasingly short attention spans, AI, and why finishing a book isn’t nearly as important as what you do with what you learned.
And then there’s this: Nick actually TEARS PAGES OUT of his books.
If you love books, want to get more from what you read, or simply need to know why anyone would willingly rip apart a perfectly good book, you’ll enjoy this conversation.
Join us in the BookThinkers Book Club
Connect with Nick & BookThinkers
I'd love to hear from you. Send me Fan Mail!
Welcome to a funny thing happened on the way to my life. This is the place to be for stories to inspire and uplift when life doesn’t go according to plans. I’m Laura Muirhead your host and the reigning queen of a funny thing happened on the way to my life. I can’t wait to share my plot twist stories and the stories of my guests with you!
Find out more at lauramuirhead.com
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Welcome And Guest Introduction
SPEAKER_00Hi, welcome to this episode of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to My Life. I'm your host, Laura Muirhead, and I am thrilled to have today as my guest, Nick Hutcheson of Book Thinkers, to talk all things books with him today. So, Nick, come and introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do.
SPEAKER_01Laura, thank you so much. Before I introduce myself, can I flip the script here a little bit and ask you a question?
SPEAKER_00Sure, let's go.
SPEAKER_01We're recording this in September of 2026. So we're about eight, nine months into the year now. I'm curious, have you read a book this year that's had a big impact on you? Or another way of asking my question is like, what's your favorite book from 2026 so far?
SPEAKER_00In 2026, so here's the thing. I I am not as much of an avid reader reader as people might think. I am a writer, and people always say, Oh, well, who's your inspiration? What's your inspiration? You know, and I'm I I just it's not my it's not necessarily my thing. However, in 2026, so I I would say so far, just the beginning of what is in Book Club, in Book Thinkers Book Club, and that is Limitless Daily by Jim Quick. So I would say so far this year, that would be my top one coming going forward.
SPEAKER_01I think that's a great answer, and and that's my answer for the year so far as well. Although I am what most people would consider to be a pretty voracious reader. But I I love the structure of Limitless Daily by Jim Quick, and I just I love nerding out on it. So to answer your original question, my name is Nick Hutcheson. I live in the Boston, Massachusetts area. I'm the founder and CEO of Book Thinkers, which is both a book marketing agency. I've got a team of 20 people that help authors promote and market books. But now on the reader side of things, we have the Book Thinkers Book Club, and that's become one of my biggest focuses, I guess you could say. I'm loving it. I'm having so much fun. And that's because most people don't read, and I'm trying to help solve that problem.
SPEAKER_00And I want to get into this a little bit more in a minute because I want to talk about some of the statistics. We I was first introduced to you through my amazing publisher, Karen Weaver, KMD Books. She connected with you somehow, and she was she suggested that I go to Book Thinkers Live, which was in Boston a couple months ago. And I really am so grateful for that weekend with everyone there. I feel like you put together just a top-notch event and was so inspired coming off the back of that. I want to talk a little bit in a minute about some of the statistics you shared about people reading and about children reading. But first,
Favorite Read Of The Year
SPEAKER_00I want to ask you how you got so involved and so passionate about books and what your a funny thing happened on the way to my life story is about that.
SPEAKER_01It is. So the story starts by painting the picture of who I used to be. When I was in high school, I was more of the athlete stereotype, not really much of the academic. And a good way to highlight that example is I was a football player, I was captain of the wrestling team, I loved going to the gym after school, participating in sports, hanging out with my friends. Not my academic work. I was always capable. So I took AP calculus, for example, but I had a 0% homework average because I learned that I could still pass the class without doing my homework. So I was one of those kids. And that behavior followed me into college as well. I, you know, I was an RA. I showed up to class most of the time. Like I was a good student as far as making sure that I at least passed the class. But I was out having fun with my friends, going to the gym, hanging out in the dining hall for hours and hours, watching a lot of Netflix back then. Another way of saying this is I was living under my potential, Laura, in a lot of ways. And so everything changed for me when I took an internship going into my senior year. I had just come off of running a house painting business for two summers in a row. And although it was a pretty cool program and I got some leadership and management and sales experience, I was sort of the lowest performing out of the other students that ran their house painting businesses. So, like the lowest performing out of the high achievers. And so I decided, hey, rather than do that again, I want to go work for somebody else. So I meet this software company CEO at a career fair. He hires me to go work for his company as a sales intern. And I show up on day one of work that summer, going into my senior year. And the director of sales, Kyle, really wants nothing to do with me. It wasn't his decision to hire me. He didn't want a sales intern. But he was asked by the CEO to kind of show me the ropes. So in those first few weeks, we would go on these local sales trips to customers of the business. And on the way to and fro, he would play these business podcasts where successful people would show up and talk about how they became successful.
Nick’s Shift From Athlete To Reader
SPEAKER_01And I think he was playing those podcasts so that he didn't have to talk to me. I was this like young, arrogant, 20-year-old, know it all. I wasn't a lot of fun to be around at the time. And I certainly was not curious. I was more judgmental than anything. And so Kyle would play these podcasts. And the one thing that I did pick up was that most of these successful guests were sharing how they became successful. And a big part of each one of those stories seemed to be the books that they had read. Now, here I am, too cool to read books, right? Not much of a reader, more of a partier. Yet all of these successful people are saying their journeys started by reading and implementing books. And so I started listening to these podcasts on my way to and from the internship that summer. I had about an hour drive each way. And I kept hearing the same book titles pop up over and over and over and over again. Like a lot of the personal development classics, books like Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill or How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. And so I just made the decision one day to kind of end this story that I would go to my local Barnes and Noble and I would grab a stack of books, whatever I felt called to read. And I would read them and I would see what was so special about these books. And I'll tell you what, that trip to Barnes Noble changed my life. I went from non-reader to obsessed with reading almost overnight. And for the last 10, 11 years, I haven't looked back.
SPEAKER_00That's amazing. I I think that for a lot of us it it's kind of like that. Where, you know, I I would say because I was thinking about my book journey over the years a little bit. And you know, I've written books. Like I said, I I'm an author, but I'm I'm can't tell you who as a who who in who was inspirational to me as an author when I was growing up. But having said that, I would say I took books for granted in a way. It was just part of it. It was just part of growing up. And back then we w to the library at school. I I I don't remember how often, but maybe once a month. Maybe it was once a month. And we were, we were supposed to check out a book and we learned the Dewey Decimal system. We did all this stuff, right? We how to find a book in the library. And you know, the librarian read to us. I don't specifically remember my parents necessarily reading to me so much, but I was fortunate as well to have a relative that was a school librarian. And so when she would order the books for her school, she ordered the cool books and gave them to us. So, like I said, I I feel like there's a hashtag in this, like books were taken for granted, like hashtag, you know, don't take me for granted. But I was never the one in the corner reading the books or you know, all the but again, just similar to you, in the last probably 15 years, the the personal growth and the personal development books, like you said, you know, the Think and Grow Rich and The Big Leap was big was big for me by Gay Henriks, though that one I you know comes to mind quite often. But I love that you were so sold on it. Like once you realize like the opportunity between the, I guess, be you know, between the pages really stuck with you. And obviously, you know, you've developed this incredible company and business. And but this is where I want to go with this too, is like taking books for granted. Share the statistics
The Scary Reading And Literacy Stats
SPEAKER_00about literacy, children and children and adults that you that I've heard you share before.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, they're kind of scary. So the audience needs to brace themselves or maybe sit down if they're standing up. There's a lot of different data out there, but a couple of the things that stick out to me. Number one is that 51% of US adults read zero books last year, which means that 50% of us are reading zero books every year. That's pretty scary. Number two is that only 16% of adults claim to read something useful on a daily basis. And so that one's scary to me because I think we all consume so much social media content, like a lot of us seven or eight hours a day of that content, yet we're not reading anything useful. We're just being entertained. Like there's a really big difference between deciding to read something useful, which is a proactive activity, and then just passively consuming social media content and listening to the loudest voice screaming on social media that day. Literacy has declined by 43% over the last 20 years, which is really scary too. I just saw recently, Laura, that the average graduating senior in the state of Illinois is reading at a fourth grade reading level. That's mind-boggling to me and really scary because reading has thousands of benefits in the developing mind. I also, I've been really, you heard me say this yesterday, but I I stumbled across this really scary data that says there's a researcher out of UC Irvine named Gloria Mark, and she's been studying attention span for over 20 years. In 2004, we'd stay on one screen for an average of two and a half minutes, which doesn't seem like a long time, but it is compared to today. Today, the average person spends 40 47 seconds on a screen before deciding to move on, which represents a 70% decline in attention span over the last 20 years. And so, of course, that's happening through short form content and outsourcing our thinking to AI and all those things. And so, yeah, I'm a little worried that literacy and and like cognition and attention span are all just declining so rapidly. And then to wrap it up, and I kicked off the book thinkers event talking about this IQ is decreasing for the first time in human history. Since we've been able to measure IQ, it's increased slightly generation over generation. And now Gen Z has a lower average IQ than millennial, which has never happened before. And so IQ is decreasing. And so, yeah, like I'd love to raise awareness to all of these problems because I think we need to become more aware of them in order to stop them from happening.
SPEAKER_00I it really is scary and and shocking. I was when I heard you talk about that at the book Thinkers Live, and that's the first I've heard those statistics. And I'm glad that my my children are older, but I do you can't help but see some of the kids. And I I have a my my best friend has grandkids now, and so that those were the kids that came to mind right away. What were was how yeah, like let's make the parents aware of this so that they can they can be proactive in in helping their children to to have good reading habits and to not let their IQ slip, you know. We we do. And I, you know, I have to say I'm guilty of sitting in front of the screen with a screen, you know, partially because we wanna we want to relax in the evening. And so maybe we've got TV on or movies, something streaming, but at the same time, you know, maybe I want to check my email, maybe something's happening, you know. So I'm guilty. I I can sit and yeah, yeah. It's it no judgment on people. This is what happens, this is what we do.
Screens Shrink Attention And Patience
SPEAKER_00And I do think that the screens have become a great babysitter for a lot of people because it's easier to let the kids, you know, play on the iPad than you know, it keeps their attention. And I don't blame parents, you know, for that either. But I think the awareness is key to this. And also, you know, I love that you're, you know, for adults, like besides the children, what can we do for adults? And I love that you've created the Book Thinkers Book Club and that community.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, thank you. I, you know, so many parents they say, How can I get my kids to read more? And there's a great quote that I heard Ed Milette say one time. He said, Behaviors are caught, not taught. You can tell your children to read more books, but if you're just sitting there like this, yeah, read more books, they're really great for you. They're going to see the behavior of scrolling on the phone. That's what they're going to adopt, not vice versa. And to get a little bit more technical into the developing mind, when we had that childhood literacy panel at the Book Thinkers event, that was one of my favorite things that we did. And Michael McLeod, who wrote a book on executive functioning, described to me that with the developing brain, the prefrontal cortex develops from back to front. And it's responsible for a lot of the executive functioning that happens in the brain. So the ability to have interpersonal communication, the ability to delay gratification, to so to say, well, if I hold off on this cookie, I'll be thankful for that tomorrow. Or if I read this book instead of scroll on social media, I'll be better off later in life. Like that, that all gets filtered through the prefrontal cortex. And what screens do is they delay the development of the prefrontal cortex. So two 10-year-old kids, one could be operating as a 10-year-old should be with a fully developed prefrontal cortex. And another who's constantly on screens might be delayed by up to 40%, meaning they're operating with a six-year-old's brain when it comes to certain levels of decision making. One of the best ways to make sure that you're exercising and developing that prefrontal cortex is through reading books, long-form content, lengthening your attention span. And so it's very important for kids to be reading. That's how our brains develop. And they've been developing that way for a long time now. It's it's the act of like, yes, long-term thinking, but also like boredom and then making up games or thinking about the things that you just read compared to just passively scrolling on social media. You're in a mindless kind of doom-scrolling state when that's happening. And just to highlight again how how twisted our society has kind of become. And by the way, I'm guilty of that double screen thing too. I heard Ben Afflack and Matt Damon on a podcast recently talking about a movie that they had just made. And they said when they signed the deal with Netflix to produce the movie, Netflix had a requirement that they had to restate the plot out loud every 10 or 15 minutes because they knew that the movie was not the primary screen that the audience was focused on. It was their phone. So we're using our phones, maybe scrolling social media, checking email, answering text messages, playing games like chess. That's what I do a lot. I play chess while I watch TV. So we lose track of what's happening in the primary movie. So they have to restate who the characters are, what's happening, what the mission of the movie is out loud so that we can stay, we can stay up to date, which is just so crazy. Like that's why no great movies are being made anymore. They have to dumb them down for us.
SPEAKER_00And and it's frustrating for people who I I still love watching movies. I like to even uh imagine this go to a movie theater and sit for a couple hours and watch a movie. I think that we've lost a lot of that. Like, even when you think about it, the just the time that like we're setting our phone down for that two hours to watch the movie and to pay attention. And I I don't know about you, but I'm so irritated when the person next to me is checking their text messages in the middle of the movie. And I'm thinking, what what is so important that you you've got to check your, you know, it and I feel like actually this it's the same on an airplane right now that nowadays. And I'm completely guilty of this. Get the Wi-Fi on the plane so you don't miss a thing. And I think there's this level of instant, and I think Chris Green was talking about this a little bit yesterday, too, of like, who needs me right now? Who needs, you know, somebody needs me, somebody must need me right this second. I can't, I can't take 10 minutes to in the morning to, you know, read Limitless Daily and think of how I'm gonna apply it and be inspired because I better check my email. And again, I'm really guilty of this because Karen Weaver, my publisher, and who I collaborate with her on so many things now, beyond beyond books, is in Australia. She's 12 hours ahead of me. So when I wake up at six in the morning, I'm like, what did she do all day? What message did she maybe send me? But there is this like level of we need to respond instantaneously to everything versus hey, take a couple minutes, take a take an hour and not respond.
SPEAKER_01Yes, and people are having a really
Practical Ways To Cut Phone Noise
SPEAKER_01tough time managing that. It takes a level of self-awareness and ability to zoom out to even recognize that it's a problem. And then it takes another whole level of sometimes it's willpower or strategy to make sure that you don't fall victim to it. I love to keep my phone on do not disturb so that I'm not getting those notifications. Because if I pop up and I see I have 42 emails sitting right there and another 42 text messages, I can get pulled into them. But when they're not showing up on my home screen, I I notice that I'm a lot less likely to click into them. And then to manage screen time, I've started using this device called a brick. Have you heard of this?
SPEAKER_00I I heard I I have heard about it a bit. Yeah, but but but tell us about it.
SPEAKER_01So you can you can within the brick app, you can set up different rules. Like when you're when you're bricked, you can eliminate Instagram, for example. And it's a physical little cube that you have to scan with your phone in order to re you know to turn it off. So in that moment of awareness when you go, I need to stop using Instagram, you just turn it on. And let's just say it's two floors down in the in the kitchen. Well, you go to open up Instagram, it says, Hey, get back to living. And in order to block that and get into Instagram, you have to go all the way downstairs. Like that's enough of a of that's enough friction for me to go, okay. Yeah, you're right, phone. Like, let me get back to my work. So I like that it's a physical disruption. And I was showing it to a friend. I was so I'm from Boston, but I was at a wedding in LA a couple of months ago, and I was showing a friend, and I bricked my phone, so I turned off Instagram and chess because that's my biggest distraction. When I was in California, I literally could not access them until I flew back home to Boston and scanned my brick, which is in the kitchen. So it was it was a funny example, but I knew I was at least leaving the next day, so it wouldn't be that disruptive.
SPEAKER_00Maybe. Maybe a little bit extreme on that one.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think so.
SPEAKER_00That's
The Brick Device For Friction
SPEAKER_00great. The other thing I wanted to ask you about is I've thought about this. We talked about this yesterday on the Book Thinkers Book Club. Again, you have been known to tear a page out of a book and take it with you. Tell us tell the listeners a little bit about that and and and why why you do that and and you know the horror, the horror that that we feel from that.
SPEAKER_01It all started with a book called The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holliday. And that book is kind of like Limitless Daily. It has 366 meditations on wisdom, perseverance, and the art of living. And I got into Stoicism 2018, 2019. It's a very actionable philosophy and it draws from a lot of sort of ancient philosophers. I say ancient, but a couple of them 2,000 years ago, 1500 years ago. And so you read these little passages, and if if they strike you, like I would want to reread that passage all day long. I'd want to be reminded of what I just read. And one of my mentors, Kevin Horsley, he's a memory grandmaster. He says repetition leads to retention. And so I figured if I had that passage with me all day long, I could repeat the passage and internalize it more effectively. So I would start, I would rip out the page and I would carry it with me all day. So every time I'd reach in my pocket, I'd feel the page. And that was sort of a physical disruption or a physical reminder to open up the page and reread it. And so that's how I started doing it. And then of course I talked about that a couple of times on social media, and people went crazy. You can't do that to books. That's horrible. I'm on people literally, I'm on following you. I can't believe you would disrespect a book like that. And here I am thinking, no, no, no, no. I'm respecting the book. I'm respecting the book by taking it to a whole nother level, by carrying those pages around with me all day, by using them. I could put the page back, I could tape it back inside of the book, right? It's my book, I own it. And to Chris's point yesterday, he said, we treat these books like there are a finite number of them. But most of these books are printed on demand.
Why Rip Pages Out Of Books
SPEAKER_01If you want a hundred more copies, order a hundred more copies. Like you're not damaging this uh very finite resource where there's only one of one. Like with the Daily Stoic, there's probably been 25 million copies printed. I can get another copy if I need to. So that's that's sort of the defense of it. But yeah, when I share that, people are like, oh, I can't believe you do that.
SPEAKER_00Well, and I was trying to think after after the got that conversation yesterday, because yeah, it's true. So what? So go on Amazon and get another one or you know, whatever. But I was kind of trying to think, where did we get that? Like the the honor that we have for books. And I, you know, even I don't know if it came from this books that we had in school, where if you you got somebody's book from last year and they've marked it all up, you're like, oh, you you know, somebody wrote all over this book. I, you know, there is a certain level of respect that we have put in place for books, and I would never have thought you're like, you're such a rebel, tear the page out, take it with you, and and have it be your reminder all throughout the day. Why not? Like that's it, that's it's amazing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we get to choose the belief systems that serve us as individuals, and sometimes we forget that. And so we hold, you're right, like we were conditioned to treat books and keep them in pristine condition because we knew other people were going to read them, whether it was a textbook in school or a book that you took out of the library that you had to return. And then we forget as adults, oh no, no, no, I bought that book, I own that book. It's pretty unlikely that anybody else will ever read this same exact copy. And so, which belief system serves me the best? Well, the belief system where I get to write in the margins, I get to highlight things, maybe I spill my coffee on the book. No big deal. I can still read it. Maybe I'll even tear a pair a page out because I know that repetition leads to retention. And when you add something new or novel, like an action, like ripping a page out, you're probably going to remember what's on that page forever. And so there was there was actually a page in the Daily Stoic that I read to my wife one day. And she thought, wow, I need a daily reminder of that. I ripped the page out and I taped it to the wall next to her side of the bathroom sink so that every single day she could read it. And eventually, over the first couple of months, she internalized that message, helped shift a paradigm. And eventually I took the page down when she was blinded to it because she already understood it so well. And so, yeah, you get to choose the belief system that serves you the best. And look, if for some reason never ripping a page serves you as a reader, excuse me, great. But for me, I like to rip pages out every once in a while. And so sometimes I'll open up a book and just, you know, like rip a page out. And this is the back of a Jim QuickBook, so there's nothing, nothing relevant on this page, but that even will get some people riled up.
SPEAKER_00Well, and isn't it actually potentially more of an honor for the author if the book is worn, is tattered, is you know, well used and read, that instead of keeping it in the perfect condition, I let's I say that's that's the honor.
SPEAKER_01I'm going to search this right now in real time because I I've looked it up before and it's crazy. What percentage of books that are purchased are actually read? Let's see what it says. It says there's no one point of data, but about 50% of purchased books are never read. Only 13% of books that are sold are actually read from cover to cover. Oof! That's tiny. So, roughly speaking, if you sell a hundred books, 87 of them will never be read cover to cover, which is pretty crazy. You're right. I don't want you if you buy my book. I wrote a book a few years ago called Rise of the Reader. If you buy my book, I don't want it behind a velvet rope with six feet of distance so that it never gets dust on it or the cover doesn't get creased. Like I want that book to look like it's been to war. I want coffee stains, highlighter, pens, dog eared pages, ripped out pages. I want you to take the dust jacket off and throw it in the trash because it's not helping you implement the material. Somebody said yesterday on our book club call that my limitless daily book looks funny because I don't have the dust jacket on. That thing doesn't serve me. I'm getting rid of it. Now it'll go back on when I put it back on my shelves when I'm done with the book. But I want this thing to look like I'm actually reading it.
SPEAKER_00And I think that's funny because I have mine right here. And I didn't know until I saw your book yesterday that that's what it looked like underneath, that it was just a white cover, because so many times the you take the dust jacket off and it it's the same. So yeah, you're right. I'm using mine as a as a bookmark for the page we're on. But it's a good idea. You certainly it I certainly feel like you know, take the dust jacket off and it's not gonna get in your way. Use use an actual bookmark, or like
Do Audiobooks Count As Reading
SPEAKER_00you have your your amazing little light that you use. So yeah, there's different different ways around that. The one so on kind of on this same topic a little bit, what are your thoughts on reading a book versus audiobooks, which are so popular now?
SPEAKER_01I have a lot of thoughts. And this is another area of controversy. Sometimes I get myself in trouble. I was actually on stage with Jim Quick last week at his event, and he asked me that same question, and then I kicked it back to him. I asked him a different question. I said, Hey Jim, do you think that listening to an audiobook counts as reading the book? And he said no, which was really interesting. He said, listening and reading are completely different things. And I tend to agree with him. I think they're completely different things, they're different ways of consuming the same information, but they're completely different things. Depending on the person and depending on the data that you read, somewhere between 60 to 80 percent of the inputs to our brain in any given moment are visual. So the strongest way to relate to information, regardless of who you are, is visually. And so if you're only listening to something and you're multitasking, because we all know we listen to books in the car at the gym while we're doing chores, while we're doing busy work, that's not the default input. The input is the road while you're driving or the weights at the gym or the mop while you're while you're mopping, right? That's the default input. So the the majority of the information that our brain is connecting to at any given moment is visual. If you're only listening to something, you're at a disadvantage. It's more difficult to form enough of an emotional connection to what you just heard while you're multitasking. It's difficult. It's more difficult than if you're just reading. So I like to monotask. I like to read a physical paper book with no other inputs. If I'm reading and listening at the same time, that's the exception. Like actually listening to the audiobook while I'm reading the physical book, I think that's a great hack. But nobody sits down with an audiobook and a notepad and a pen and sits there and just listens and takes notes. So I get it. Audiobooks are convenient. That's what they are. They're convenient, they're easier, but they're not the best form of learning. I still listen to 30 or 40 audiobooks a year, but I like to choose the books that I listen to and make sure that they're not supposed to solve a problem or build a skill. Most of them just satisfy curiosities. I listen to fiction, I listen to memoirs or biographies that play more like a movie in my head. I'm not using those books to make a change in my life. I'm using those books to pass the time in a productive way.
SPEAKER_00I I love this. And I'm actually surprised because I don't spoiler alert, I don't listen to audio audiobooks because I don't drive drive a lot. I don't drive long distance. Well, I do, but even when we drive long distance, I don't listen to audiobooks. And I I tend to do what you're saying. I kind of tune it out and go, wait, I missed that. What did they say? Because I'm not doing just one thing. So I I love that you shared that and your thoughts on it, because I tend to agree that if you really want to internalize or implement the information, I think it it has to, it should be read. And I know for me, I'm a visual learner. If you do something and show me how to do it, then I I can a lot of the times do that. So I love the statistics that you shared
Book Club Challenge And Accountability
SPEAKER_00there. I'm thinking, just as we're, you know, maybe about ready to wrap this up a bit, what if we put a challenge out to our listeners for maybe reading something from now till the end of the year?
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah, I love it. I I think it would be fun for your audience to join the book club that we're both a part of. And you can use the link in the show notes below to learn a little bit more about it. We are reading a book every single month as a group. We're inviting the author in to do a live QA with the with the actual group. I mean, you and I know we have Jim Quick in September. We have Vanessa Van Edwards who's launching her next book. It's called Conversation for October. We just locked Robert Green for November. He's launching his next book, The Law of the Sublime. So we've got some great content in there. And I'd love to challenge your audience to join the book club and take reading seriously with us. Make sure that we read with intention, we all discuss the key ideas with each other, we implement what we're learning, and then we get to chat with the author, which is just going to help us create more of an emotional connection to what we've read.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think that's great. I think, yes, please join us in that. And once again, I I've never been a book club, you know, fan necessarily, but I did this is my second virtual book club that I've joined. And I do find so much value in hearing the other people's take on what we're reading, because they will the the just the conversation and the thoughts that even yesterday when we're not even in really into the book yet. So you're not late if you join us, you're not late to the party. Come and join us, but just there's so much value in having other people's opinions in there. And also, how cool is it that the author of the book will be there each month with us? And I I am great so grateful for you putting all that together.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, Laura, I believe that we are all one or two great books properly implemented away from living a better life. One or two great books away from solving the biggest problems that we're dealing with as human beings. And it starts with setting a better intention for every book that we read, and then sharing our goal with other people who can hold us accountable. We reviewed that data yesterday that said you are 42% more likely to achieve a goal if you write it down when compared to just thinking about it. And then you're 77% more likely to achieve that goal if you not only write it down, but also share updates with people. And there's no better format for that than a book club. So yeah, I'm having so much fun with it. It will grow and evolve, and the early members of the book club will get to shape how we build it over time. So yeah, I'm I'm happy that you're in there. Thank you for the opportunity to talk about books with you today. I just I believe books are the solution to so many of the problems that we're facing in life. And I just I think it's becoming my mission to get more people to regain control of their attention span and their cognition by reading books.
SPEAKER_00It's important. And I also think just to add on to that, is stories, our stories are important, and sharing our stories and sharing our voices are important. So not just, you know, not just the self-help books, but our stories. And I think on some level, that's become a little bit of a lost art as well. And at least my my hope for my books is that somebody would be inspired or connect with a story that I share. And I think it's important. I love I love what you're doing. I appreciate what you're doing. Thank you for joining me today.
SPEAKER_01Do you have, I mean, do you have any one
AI, Cognitive Debt, And Learning
SPEAKER_01last thought or I always have have more to share. I'd like to just talk a little bit for a minute about AI as well. There's a study done at MIT at the end of last year where they put EEG caps on the brains of their participants to measure brain activity, electricity in the brain, and they have them do different tasks. So one group had to write essays using AI, and one group had to write essays using only their own mind. And the group that was able to use AI showed the the weakest brain activity and remembered the least of what they had just written or produced with AI when compared to the other group. And a similar study showed that workers who trusted AI more and more thought less for themselves. And so I get the question sometimes, like, well, what about using AI to learn instead of reading a great book? I think you're missing the point when you read AI content instead of long-form physical paper books. AI tosses out all of the stories, the anecdotes, the background information, because it just wants to give you the solution. But when you don't have all of that extra context, the background about why the author wrote the book, what problem they were struggling with, what didn't work, the case studies, the solution, how they eventually got there, how it can be applied. Like all of that information helps you form a deep relationship with what you're trying to change in your life. And it also helps you retain the information at a much higher level. So outsourcing our thinking to AI, learning from AI, we're just not the it's not the same. And the data is supporting that. And so if you're somebody listening, like, yeah, I don't really need to read books because AI can solve all my problems for me, you're becoming weaker as a result of AI, not stronger. All the data is pointing in that direction. We have to put AI down, use AI inside of your business, operate task, you know, automate tasks, all that kind of fun stuff. But the physical paper book is where you build your brain. Marianne Wolf calls that cognitive patience instead of lose your brain, which the researchers after that MIT study call cognitive debt. So patience versus debt, like which one do you want? Right. So thank you for giving me the opportunity to share that one last thought.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that was important. And I'm glad you did. So again, we will have check the show notes for ways to join Book Book Thinkers Book Club and find Nick
Where To Find Nick And Closing
SPEAKER_00on your mostly on Instagram, is that right? On BookThinkers and Nick loves books. Imagine that. So the everything will be in the show notes, and you'll find them. But I am so grateful again. What a wonderful conversation and love the opportunity to talk about books with you. And I'm also want to thank our audience for for being here today and and listening. And go get a book. Join us. Read.
SPEAKER_01Yes, read.
SPEAKER_00Let's do it. Thanks so much, Nick.
