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Career Resources
Based on the most helpful WSO content, reading habits in high-pressure finance roles like IB or consulting vary widely, but here are some insights:
How Much Do People Read?
What Topics Do They Read About?
When Do They Read?
Other Reading Habits:
In high-pressure jobs, the key is to prioritize reading that stretches your knowledge and aligns with your career goals.
Sources: Advice for an ex-IB MD: What to read if you want to go into finance, Reading List for the Incoming Analyst, 11 Steps to Becoming a Finance Jedi, Leaving IB to read books for a year and maybe join a start-up
Nowhere near as much as I should, but about 8-10 books/yr but would like to personally increase that. I'm in a book club that meets virtually/over dinner sometimes and it's been all kinds of genres.
Interesting. I feel like 8-10 is decent in a finance career tbh. Most people I know barely read. I am hovering around 5-7 and feel like it's not enough. It's non-fic mainly though so it takes longer to read than novels.
50+ books a year, 5 or so of which are non-fiction. It sounds like a lot, but it isn't really. An hour or so a day and you can crush a book a week without really trying. Last year I hit 60.
I used to only read those same 5 non-fiction books per year, but then I realized that knowledge accumulation is only one reason for reading and you're really limiting yourself if you only approach it that way. Guys have a habit of thinking about reading like it's homework, but it can be a lot of fun too.
In a world where TV shows take 2-3 years between seasons, maybe 4-5 movies a year are actually good, maybe 1-2 video games per year are actually good, streaming services are increasingly slop, and social media is a black hole of time wasting, fiction books are an excellent source of entertainment. There is something for everyone and there are DECADES of backlog to catch up on.
Is that 50+ physical books or e-books a year?
If yes, good for you - that's a solid achievement.
If it's audiobooks, meh.
I've lost count of the number of people who have told me they read 50+ books in a year, but when I dig deeper, it turns out it was all audiobooks.
It's just not quite the same in my view.
Physical books, but there's not much difference, no? Still the same words on a page whether it's a paper page or a kindle "page."
As far as audio books go, I'm too ADHD for that. I like having the words in front of me.
That just seems like such a huge amount of books. Especially if some of them are on the longer side like 400+ pages. How do you find the time to read so much? I find it hard to slot so much reading with an active career, social life etc.
Being married with no kids yet certainly helps, as I’m neither chasing women in bars nor toddlers around the house, but really it just sounds like a lot of reading.
50 pages an hour is a fairly normal reading speed according to the internet. So if you read for an hour a day during the week and maybe two hours on the weekends, that’s 450 pages, or a pretty hefty book. Plenty of novels are 250-350 pages too.
You might think you’re too busy for an hour a day, but check your phone’s daily screen time. I bet you can find an hour. Like anything, you have to be intentional about it until it becomes a habit.
And even if you cut that in half and just read a book every other week, you’re still at 25+ books a year, which has to be in the top 0.1% of Americans.
Impressive damn. Not a wrong analysis at all. Think most people could find an hour a day to read.
More people need to. Our world is increasingly illiterate and unimaginative.
Any recommendations for fiction? I got into Rebecca Yarros' Dragon book series which has been... an interesting read. A really old series I loved was the Pendragon series. I pick up a good murder mystery every now and then, but always looking for ideas.
Lmao yeah I wouldn't bother with Romantasy. Tiktok smut reading isn't my style.
If you're looking for fantasy specifically, check out China Miéville, Christopher Buehlman, Hiron Ennes, and Joe Abercrombie.
For thrillers and the like, SA Cosby and Gillian Flynn write good stuff.
For general fiction, you can't go wrong with Cormac McCarthy.
50 books a year???? Assuming they’re 250 pages a book (not significant reads) that’s 34 pages a day. Which calls for some discipline and nearly everyday reading.
They're probably more 300 on average. Maybe 350.
But 34 pages a day isn't that much at all, man. Goes by fast.
4-8 books/yr. exclusively non fiction.
Most time spent reading online - articles/research papers/reports,
I am a big fan of reading insight pieces and industry advancements.
Any good sources or sites to get insight pieces?
If you're into geopolitics, Foreign Affairs magazine is really high quality and a lot of their journalists have been government advisors or worked for reputable security institutes / think tanks. Foreign Policy is good too but my paywall remover doesn't work on that
Second that, you get some good articles from some think tanks / institutes which can be heavy to read (some 20-30 minute reads) but you pick up a lot of that. I've been listening to a lot of podcasts and now listen on 1.5x speed so I can fit more episodes in, particularly on the Iran conflict atm
What books?
90% of my reading is diligence, financial articles and professional literature, so when I actually pick up a book it defaults to finance anyway. More Money Than God is phenomenal though.
The real problem is growing up on Bulgakov and Dostoevsky then spending years deep in finance lit. Your brain rewires for bullet points and executive summaries, and suddenly classics feel like switching from a sprint to a marathon mid-stride.
Still, I force myself through at least 2-3 philosophical books a year (Leo Strauss on esoteric writing is a hidden gem) and 2-3 classics. Genuinely the best antidote to your brain shrinking to the size of a DCF model.
I'm in school, so it is mainly textbooks and HBR case studies.
30-40, depending on the length of the book in question. Almost entirely nonfiction, but if there is some good scifi/fantasy being published, I'll definitely go after that too.
I think it is really important to read full-length books that aren't related to whatever field you work in. First off, reading is a skill, and valuable one, and even if you read fiction novels, you're stretching your brain in a different way that cannot help but be useful.
Second, being well-read is an exceptionally useful thing for a career. At some point, most people on this site will live or die by the business they bring in, not how quickly they can build a DCF model, so having some ability to relate to other people, especially for more "highbrow" topics like books or art, is actually quite important.
I try to get through at least 2 books a quarter. Normal topics include philosophy, history, and sci-fi/fantasy. Will pick up a classic if I have the time. I reread books too, mainly if on break.
Last year I was a book-worm for my standards, think I read 12-15 books from Jan-Nov. Stopped over the Xmas period as I got a bit busier and then went home for the holidays and I've actually struggled to read more than 10-20 pages a night. I read a lot of non-fiction; a lot of geopolitics, Ray Dalio's last 2 books, a few finance and economics ones as well as some domestic politics. I want to start reading a lot more fiction; the two best fiction books I read last year where the Wizard of the Kremlin which is semi-fiction about Putin's rise and how he established a stronghold over the Oligarchs. Fascinating book and not too long c.320 pages. The other one was Damascus Station by David McCloskey (former CIA analyst) about the Syrian Civil War which was awesome too and fairly realistic.
25-30 a year. Aim for 1 hr before bed on weeknights if I don't have plans, and at least 1 hour on the weekends. Mostly fiction as I read a lot at work that covers non-fiction. Trying to incorporate some non-fiction for pleasure this year thematically, eg. reading 3 STEM/history/etc. books in a row
3-4 books a year. Recently Patti Smith, the Idiot, the brothers karamazov, a couple Hemingway novels and his short stories (across the past 10 years really: sun also rises, farewell to arms, snows of Kilimanjaro)
Couple e books: Keith McNallys book, Matthew Mcconaugheys book.
Interested what others are doing. Need to optimize to read more functional stuff. But don’t want corny stuff
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