The Best Investment You'll Ever Make

The Books I Wish I'd Read Earlier

Not because they would have helped me clear another exam. But because they would have helped me think better.

Every few months, a student tells me, "Bhaiya, I wish I had started reading earlier." I understand exactly what they mean. When you finish a truly good book, you don't just feel that you've learnt something new. You wonder how many mistakes you could have avoided if you had read it five years earlier.

Reading Builds Judgment, Not Just Knowledge

That's exactly how I feel even today. The biggest benefit of reading isn't knowledge. It's judgment. A good book doesn't just give you answers. It changes the way you ask questions. It teaches you how exceptional people think through uncertainty, make decisions, build businesses, lead teams, manage risk and solve problems.

The Highest-Return Investment You Can Make

You're not simply reading 300 pages. You're learning from decades of someone else's experiences, mistakes and reflections. Experiences that would take you years, sometimes a lifetime, to accumulate on your own.

That's why I look at books as one of the highest-return investments I can make in myself. Today, we live in a world of summaries, reels and short videos. They are useful for discovering ideas. But they cannot replace reading.

The value of a book isn't the conclusion. It lies in the reasoning, the examples, the failures and the thought process that lead to that conclusion.

Read Beyond Your Own Field

I've always encouraged my students to read beyond finance. Strategy. Psychology. Leadership. Communication. History.

Keep in mind that your career will never be limited only by your technical knowledge. It will be shaped by the quality of your thinking. That's why I've put together a list of books that have genuinely influenced the way I think, teach and make decisions.

How Reading Compounds

Don't feel pressured to read everything.

Choose one book at a time. Read it with patience. Underline it. Make notes. Think about it. Apply it.

Years from now, you may not remember every chapter. But you'll realise that many of your best decisions were influenced by ideas you first encountered in a book.

That's how reading compounds.