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In this episode, I speak with author Tom-Butler Bowdon. While Tom was working as a government advisor in Sydney, Australia, he began reading and taking detailed notes on a variety of personal growth books in an effort to further his career.

He had an idea to organize these notes into a book and worked on this for four years. In 2001, he released 50 Self-Help Classics, which has been translated into 15 languages.

Since then, he has distilled the most important ideas from hundreds of other classic books across multiple genres, including psychology, spirituality, and philosophy (my personal favorite).

The 50 Classics Series has been immensely valuable to me in understanding the landscape of ideas in a particular field and making complicated philosophical and psychological works more accessible.

Tom’s mission is simple: more people knowing more.

Topics covered

• Why Tom equates success with truth

• The missing element from most self-help and success books

• How Tom’s job as a government advisor sparked his writing career

• Why reading books and writing about them are two very different things

• Tom’s reading and note-taking process

• The surprising benefit of physical books

Notable quotes from Tom

• “Reading a book and taking notes on it are two completely different things.”

• “There are many ways now that you can learn about something, from Wikipedia to podcasts to documentaries. But for me, nothing really replaces the experience of reading a book from beginning to end that someone has thought about for years—often even for decades—and poured their life into.”

• “Ideology, at the end of the day, is intellectual laziness.”

• “Unless you keep questioning yourself and remain open to new ideas, you will get stuck in an intellectual rut.”

• “For something or someone to be successful, it has to reveal some sort of truth.”

• “The simple act of thinking in terms of years and decades will mean that quality is invested in whatever it is you are offering the world.”

Selected links & resources

• Tom’s podcast: Book Insights (highly recommend)

• Tom’s website

• Tom’s 50 Classics Series on Amazon

• Tom’s note-sharing app memo’d

• Tom’s Instagram

• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig

• Tom’s book Think Long: Why It’s Never Too Late To Be Great

• Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

• Deep Work by Cal Newport

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Ruben Chavez is a writer and host of The Think Grow Podcast.