What is Read365?

Read365 is a year-long journey to read 365 books in 365 days.

I must admit that reading a book a day on average is not the casual reading pace that I’m used to. Way beyond it. That’s why Read365 is actually a self-experimentation, driven by the seductive curiosity to test myself.

Oh, and also it is a spark for a collective reading experience, a warm invitation to you, should you choose to contribute to it anytime you want… Well, technically it has to be some time in year 2024. But you get the message.

What is wrong with you?

See, that’s the point. I really don’t know, and I was just hoping to find an answer in books…

The goal of Read365 is two-fold:

1. To build a solid foundation of knowledge to effectively help humanity.
2. To inspire you to read actual books.

But why?

I have a cold shower thought-turned hypothesis:

If each individual on Earth read one book per month, all our current regional and global issues would vanish.

Think about it for a moment.

No more domestic violence. No more energy waste. No more terrorism. No more water & food waste. No more climate crisis. No more cold showers…

Well, I should warn you that my hypothesis doesn’t promise to solve any future problem that humanity doesn’t even have yet. So, don’t expect a WD-40 here. But still, any chronic global issue we’re facing right now as we enter 2024 would definitely go away.

But why is that so? Because any problem of humanity is driven by the scarcity in perspectives at an individual level. Access to perspectives is a human right, as much as access to water or internet is a human right.

And the premise for that is simple: You always need a new perspective in order to solve your existing problem. Your existing perspective will only grow your existing problem further, because it is your existing perspective that has led to your existing problem in the first place. Forgive me for using the word “existing” excessively. But I can’t help it, they just keep existing… (Sorry!)

And what’s more, by switching back and forth between different perspectives, you actually build a perspective muscle. You gain a meta awareness of perspective abundance. Such a shift in your paradigm is in and of itself a new perspective, one that transcends and includes your previous perspective, and it increases the chances that whenever you bump into a new problem, you’ll more likely to stop and think that there’s probably a perspective that would help you solve the problem, even when you don’t have such perspective yet. And I hear you. There’s a lot of perspectives going on in this paragraph too.

Anyway… You have to somehow earn that new perspective to solve your problem. And guess what’s the cheapest medium to store perspectives and to effectively deliver them to people at scale, so that people could synthesize new perspectives to solve existing problems?

What books do you plan to read?

I will be reading mostly non-fiction books that seemingly have advices that I could immediately test in my own life. The book Atomic Habits is a typical example. Also I will sprinkle some quality fiction here and there. I mean I should be needing to entertain myself at some point. Just a guess.

I am used to read multiple books simultaneously, and I will probably be doing the same throughout the year. That said, I will limit the books I am actively reading to 7. Why 7? Because 7 is my lucky number.

I will be choosing a bunch of books at the beginning of each week, to explore the questions popping from my previous reads. E.g. whilst I’m reading a book on how to establish a strong organizational culture, I might notice that the author emphasizes adopting a particular attitude, behavior or strategy in a domain that I’m not even remotely familiar with. And that means I will most probably be digging into that suggestion next week via some new book about the subject, even when the context might be slightly different.

Cool, but what's in it for me?

Well, by following the Read365 experiment throughout the year, you can benefit it in number of ways.

1. Think of Read365 as a harbor for reading together, that you could visit anytime when you feel the need of an initial push to grab the book you’re curious about, and to read a couple pages.
2. Check my weekly book picks that you might be interested. I see each book as a ground for us to synthesize new perspectives together, whether you have some intent to serve humanity at a global scale, or you’re just curious about sharpening yourself in relatively softer skills such as communication, systems thinking, storytelling, gathering people, creating self-managing teams, marketing or writing for self-expression.
3. You can read my weekly synthesis letters that naturally emerge as I read books, by subscribing to Write52, a newsletter with a little bit try-hard name I literally just made up so that the two sound like a cool duo. The opt-in form will appear somewhere on the website very soon.

How can I actively contribute to this experiment?

First off, let me clarify this: you don’t have to read hundreds of books to be part of Read365 act. Even a single book in a year is a win… Well, maybe not if you read at least one book last year. Remember, a good rule of thumb is to read one book each month. That means 10 pages each day. Means 10 minutes each day. Don’t tell me you can read only one book in an entire year while some random guy on the internet is able to devour a book a day on average.

That said, there are a number of ways to contribute to this experiment and to help grow it:

1. Grab your book and join us in our daily reads sessions, streaming every day on our YouTube channel. Just keep in mind: Reading is the only way to help others read. Maybe writing too. And probably proofreading and editing as well. And publishing of course. And there’s also the distribution channels, marketing, the light bulbs and everything… Anyway, you get the point.
2. If you’re a Turkish human being interested in expressing yourself globally, you’re invited to our private Discord space (which I’ll be announcing soon) where we together learn and practice how to express ourselves online for the better. (Just as I’m doing right now.) This private space will have a nominal membership fee as a paywall to keep the not-so-relevant people outside, and to nurture a psychologically safe place for us.