Two months into 2024 and I’ve demolished 10 books on my way to the goal of reading 20. Some of this is attributed to hunger, extra time, and the insatiable appetite of a lifelong learner.

Uncle Drew | March 19th, 2024

In the new year, people set out with lofty goals and expectations.

These can included a regiment of going to the gym, picking up a hobby, opening a business, or traveling around the world. You name it, it’s on someone’s list.

Like many of these people I did as well, but I do my best to have an organized plan of attack that helps me to see things through. Working as a Certified Life Coach helps with the process, but I’ve always been motivated when it comes to self improvement.

My history in sports caused for constant goal setting from in-season to off-season (and vice versa) as well as building from the past season. My time in sports carried over to my personal life where I constantly look at my life and surroundings, asking questions like…

• How can I improve?
• What areas am I weak/below average in?
• What did I enjoy doing last year?
• What didn’t I do enough of last year?
• Where do I want to excel this year?

One goal I set for myself the last two years was to read more.

In 2023, I set out to read 34 books coupled with turning 34 in January. I deemed it a worthy and achievable goal that I would push myself towards while challenging my focus and determination. I can humbly say that I feel short of that goal and only read 33 books (plays the worlds smallest violin).

I don’t hang my head on the fact that I read 33 books, I smile and accept that things in my life happened that allowed me to get as high as 33. There were times I read books that I thought would never end and there were times I blew through reads in a matter of days (Like Heat 2 by Michael “MF” Mann & Meg Gardiner recently). But I can unequivocally say that I’m a lot smarter from those books and I can pass along the recommendation “to read or not to read” (a little Shakespeare).”

List of Books read in 2023 (33)

• Monetize your Message – Will Baggett 
• Dressing the Man – Alan Flusser
• The Light We Carry – Michelle Obama
• Scene From My Life – Michael K. Williams 
• The Dating Playbook for Men – Andrew Ferebee
• The Work of An Actor – Michael Woolson
• The Fighter’s Mind – Sam Sheridan 
• Identity Switch – April Mason
• Kansas City Lightening: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker
• Grit – Angela Duckworth
• 50 Thing Every Young Gentleman Should Know
• That Will Never Work – Marc Randolph
• You Owe You – Eric “ET” Thomas
• Uphill – Jemele Hill 
• Ideas for Actors – Jon Jory
• Laid – Shannon T. Boodram 
• Unlocked – George Mumford 
• Kitchen Confidential – Anthony Bourdaine
• The Beautiful Ones – Prince 
• Mastery of Love – Don Miguel Ruiz
• Homey Don’t Play That – Davis Peisner
• Chop Wood Carry Water – Joshua Medcalf
• DJ Screw: A Life in Slow Revolution – Lance Scott Walker
• American Hookup – Lisa Wade
• The Incel Rebellion – Lisa Sugiura
• All The Pieces Matter – Jonathan Abrams
• Killers of the Flower Moon – David Grann
• American Immigrant – Yves Abota
• Sixty-One – Chris Paul 
• The Creative Act: A Way of Being – Rick Rubin 
• Game of Shadows- Barry Bonds, BALCO, and the Steroids Scandal 
• The Greatness Within You – Alex Toussaint
• The Great Gatsby- F. Scott Fitzgerald 

WINS

Win, win win. Win win. Win, win win. Win win.

Jeezy | The Real is Back – Win

I have variations of the mantra/affirmation I love to say and post to social media often…

• All the wins matter
• Celebrate the wins
• All the wins matter… BIG or small

People found out about my 34 book goal and followed up with “so are you going to read 35 books next year?” Which I myself thought I would do. But after some thought, that would be too easy. I take that back, not too easy, but that would be the easy way out.

Quality over Quantity is the name of my company. I don’t just use this for my business. Long before this was the name of my business, I would often use this phrase with friends or student-athletes I worked with. We get so wrapped up in the process of making something quantifiable, we forget about the quality of what we should be trying to achieve.

I would have friends complain that only four friends showed up to their dinner. I would respond by saying “I guess those were the only four you needed.” I wasn’t trying to disregard their pain of those who were missing, but rather bringing the attention to the people who were there to enjoy the time together this evening.

We often take too much time in considering the people that are not in attendance instead of those that made the effort to come. Those are the people your focus and attention should be on. Those are the people you should be pouring into and pulling from. It’s the hard truth, but the truth none the less.

So instead of me worrying about getting to and reading 35 books, I decided to set the goal at 20. A drastic difference but needed.

The goal I set was never about reading a large quantity of books, it was about reading more. I’ve shown that I can read upwards of 30 books, now the focus adjusts to books I’ve been wanting to read and people/areas I’ve wanted to learn more about.

Will I stop once I get to 20?

Hell nah!

I will most likely still reach the threshold of 30+ books, but I’m sure I’ll be happier in the process to reach those 30 books.

I’ve also put other safeguards in place.

I currently have a book about the life of great jazz artist Sonny Rollins containing well over 700 pages! The thing that sucks about reading a lengthy book is it only counts as ONE BOOK!

On average, the books I read are usually around 250-300 pages. This means I could read roughly 3 books in the time it takes to read this ONE BOOK!

But again, I wanted to focus on the reads and not the amount read.

Safeguards

• Read for 15 minutes a day
• Read 10,000 pages (2024)

The added safeguard of reading for 15 minutes per day, allowed me to extend my reading streak to 63 weeks & 434 days (as of March 19th, 2024).

Hopefully I can make it to two consecutive years of reading everyday. But again, that wasn’t the goal. If I read for 15 minutes per day, I’ll get there. So I need to enjoy the process and not focus on the outcome (thanks for this Ali).

The added safeguard of having a 10,000 page goal for 2024 gives me the reassurance that I can still hit this goal even if I miss the goal of reading 20 books.

My books will be a lot thicker this year which means they will be longer. I referenced earlier the 700+ page Sonny Rollins books but I also have a few more on my TBR list (To Be Read) like Barack Obama’s A Promised Land, that was given to me a couple years back for a birthday present (thank you for the gift). This book is 700+ pages as well.

I’m not afraid of these larger books, I want to make sure my focus keeps the main thing, the main thing. And the main thing is reading.

Back when I set out to read more in 2023, the goal wasn’t to read EVERYDAY. The goal was to read more days than I didn’t (reading at least 4 days a week or roughly 15/16 days per month) and to read weekly. But once the year began and I looked down, I realized it was possible to read daily if I carved out the time. Even a small amount of time.

From that point on, I built it into my schedule to do my reading first thing in the morning after waking up before heading out the door. Most days my reading got done. There were times when life happened and I ended up knocking it out later in the evening. The kindle app does wonders as far as marking off the day of reading once completed.

There were definitely days where I swore up and down that I was sure I read that morning but to quote a great street philosopher “ball don’t lie” (or I guess you can say book don’t lie). This was why I chose to keep track of the reading through the kindle app, to have a definitive place to keep track of this reading journey.

Lifelong Learner

I’ve always used the term lifelong learner.

Lifelong learners are people that are constantly finding ways/areas to improve.

What areas you say?

ANY AREA!!

I don’t care if those areas are underwater basket weaving, coloring, Jeopardy questions, cooking five course meals, health and fitness or black history. The quest to find and digest information is imperative when one is a lifelong learner.

THANK YOU ALI ABDAAL!!!!

For this blog post, I want to thank Ali Abdaal.

I recently finished reading Feel-Good Productivity by Ali Abdaal with my guy Ed Jones II. In the last section that I read, Ali talks about how it took him 7 years to start his YouTube channel. He goes on to hit more areas discussing fear and why procrastination takes over the majority of humans. Fear is a major reason for this but it is also the judgement of others as well as worrying whether it’s right/perfect.

He specifically pointed to the reasons for him taking so long to write his book along with many others who find excuses to NOT do something rather than ways TO DO something. I post on my blog site sporadically because I struggle with the same thing.

People see this TDH (tall, dark, and handsome) man and think I have it all figured out. They see the beautiful skin, picture perfect teeth, Hollywood smile, wavy grade A+ hair, chiseled muscles, and striking resemblance to Denzel and automatically put me in the category of mastery. Okay let’s back up a little bit, maybe I don’t look like Denzel but you get the sense of what I was building towards.

I often spend too much time thinking…

How will people view what I write about? What about not having a strong knowledge of grammar/sentence structure? What if no one clicks this article I’ve worked so hard to write? What if I get information wrong that I’m writing about?

The truth is, people really don’t give a fuck.

They’ll either read what I’ve written or they won’t.

They’ll either like what I’ve written or they won’t.

They’ll either find a spelling error and continue reading or they won’t notice it at all.

Reading that section really helped me write this as well as the work I will continue to produce moving forward in 2024.

So if you needed a sign to do whatever it is that you’re a little insecure/not ready to unveil… this might be that sign.

Links to more blog topics:

MY TOP 5 BOOKS

ACTING WORK – MANIFESTO

DEATH TO THE PAC 12