The Deal
tl;dr: Today is the last day in 2023 to become a Four Minute Books Lifetime Member at 44% off. If you join now, you'll also get exclusive access to The Four Minute Writer Training, a short course that'll teach you how to summarize anything you learn. Bonus only for orders placed through today. Join today & secure the discount & bonus before they are gone »
Heyo, Nik here!
A daily learning habit is the best way to make your dreams come true.
Okay, way to kick in the door, but today, I'll not only prove that bold statement to you, I'll even show you exactly how to build that daily learning habit — and it'll take just 4 minutes a day.
Let's back up for a second and unpack this.
The Story of a Struggling Writer
That's me. Almost exactly 8 years ago. It was the first full year of me trying to make it as a self-employed creative — and I was struggling.
From the moment I hit "Publish" on my first blog post in 2014, I knew I loved writing. But I didn't know what to make of it. I didn't know whether to double down or back off, how I should approach getting better at the craft, how to monetize my work, or whether that was even the right thing to do. In short, I was clueless.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, a lot of aimless wandering followed. In that first year of self-employment, I grasped for every straw, and not just financially. Here are some of the things I did:
- Ran 3 giveaways to get more email subscribers
- Hosted 3 webinars for the same reason
- Wrote several guest posts
- Started coaching people for money
- Offered translation services
- Revamped a local company's branding
- Did cold email outreach for a startup
- Launched a Patreon
- Took on a high-paying but super stressful ghostwriting gig
- Created an Instagram account and aggressively grew it to 1,000 followers in 11 days
How does anyone achieve anything when they're all over the map like this? Beats me. It's a miracle I managed to pay for rent and food that year — though I definitely couldn't afford to pay for much else...
I desperately needed focus. Enter Four Minute Books.
The (Extreme) Daily Learning Project
(There were a lot of these cups, and the little fella wasn't the only one working late)
By the end of that first year, I still didn't know a lot, but I knew something had to change. What place should writing have in my life? No clue! But if I didn't spend more time doing it, I'd never know — and what better way to write a lot than to learn something new every day?
In December 2015, I designed a daily learning curriculum for myself. Every day, I would learn something new from a good book and write about it. To give myself more structure and the whole thing an overarching purpose, I bought a domain, installed Wordpress, and set up a website for my daily learning project...
That was the day Four Minute Books was born. Could I have predicted the effort my project would end up taking, I probably never would have started. Foolishly, however, I vowed to myself that for the next 365 days, I would not go to bed until I had published my learning results — aka a new book summary — for the day.
It was hard. My daily learning only took 15 minutes or so, since I was using Blinkist to get the ideas from the books, but the writing? In the beginning, it took me more than 3 hours to write a 1,000-word summary.
Of course, life also happened. As early as March of 2016, I got sick and had to sit out for several days. I ended up catching back up in May, sometimes writing as many as 3 new summaries per day. Those were some long days (and nights) spent in a café around the corner...
Ultimately, however, daily learning combined with focus and hard work paid off. By the end of 2016, Four Minute Books was making around $1,500 per month. That wasn't just enough to pay for rent and food, on an annual basis, it was almost as much as I had made in the entire year before — and from then on, that income didn't just stay steady, it slowly grew.
Today, Four Minute Books generates more than six figures in revenue each year. It has become a full-time business that can support me, and it allows me to do what I (still) love: to write every day.
Without that initial commitment to learn something new every day and write about it, none of it would have happened.
Dreams Die Without Curiosity
(This dream of mine didn't make it — but that's a story for another day.)
Here's a secret about dreams: We often don't know what our biggest dreams are until we're living them.
Here's another one: Even if we do, those dreams will die if we stop feeding them.
Daily learning is how we solve both of those problems. Curiosity is as natural as breathing. Everyone is curious about something. The question is: Will we let that curiosity out? Will we entertain it and allow it to guide us to new places? Or do we keep it in a cage until it suffocates — and so will our spirit?
When you don't know what your calling is, the best way to find out is to keep learning new things. Eventually, the puzzle pieces will click into place.
Take my case: I knew I loved writing, but I didn't know how much. In the countless books and summaries I read, there were so many other ideas and options. Had there been anything else with a bigger magnetic pull, I could have jumped ship anytime. But I didn't. I always wanted to go back and write about it. That was a useful sign.
When you do know what your calling is, the only way to realize your dream and keep it alive is to learn more about it every day. You can claim you love golf more than anything all you want, if you're not golfing regularly or at least reading golfing magazines and watching tournaments, the sport will soon be no more than a distant, faded dream.
My commitment to writing was extreme because I promised to deliver an output I was not yet well-equipped to create. The daily learning aspect, however, was fun, easy, and manageable because I used the right tools for the job. Even on the days I wasn't writing because I literally couldn't, learning something new from a book every day kept the flames of penmanship alive.
Could I have made do with a smaller writing commitment, like writing a series of tweets (or even just one) instead of a whole article? For sure. Would it have given me the same results in the same time? Probably not — but either way, hard work was only the second half of the equation.
Daily learning is the best way to both discover and fuel your dreams.
How To Learn Something New Every Day in 4 Minutes
Regardless of how long you've been a Four Minute Books subscriber, I don't know you as well as I should. I'm sorry about that. Due to the nature of online business, unfortunately, that is unlikely to change — though you can always hit reply and introduce yourself, of course :)
But while I don't know whether you've already discovered your dreams or how close you are on their heels, I do have the perfect tool for those jobs: A Four Minute Books Lifetime Membership which, until no longer than midnight PST today, you can currently still get at 44% off.
Here's what's inside the membership and how it'll help:
- Access to all our 1,200+ summaries in a brand new, beautiful, lightweight PDF format for printing, saving, and offline reading on the go, no matter where you are
- Audio versions of over 1,200 titles which you can listen to offline or via your favorite podcast app, and even download and save forever — listen anywhere, anytime
- 300 bonus audios with personal commentary from me on each book — you'll never run out of new ideas, even when re-reading and listening to the same books
- Real-time access to new titles in PDF-form via Dropbox — you'll often get new summaries a month in advance
- A copyable, customizable Evernote notebook with all our summaries for better personal learning — neatly line up all summaries on one topic for your daily learning, and customize the notes to remember your personal highlights
- Access to 10+ high-quality, beautifully illustrated PDF guides to help you become more productive, read better, remember more, etc. — put some of the things you learn into action right away
- A free copy of The 4 Minute Millionaire, a full-fledged book covering the best finance books from the last 50+ years in daily, actionable lessons — money affects us all, and this book will help you manage it in 4 minutes a day
- A free copy of 2-Minute Pep Talks, my 2nd book filled with 67 daily, short messages of inspiration — for whenever you need a pick-me-up to keep going in your daily learning journey
- Unlimited lifetime updates — because a daily learning habit is for life
If you want to keep your dreams front and center in your life, a Four Minute Books Lifetime Membership is a great way to do it.
Get this once-a-year deal now before it expires. We won't have a discount this big again this year.
How exactly can you use the membership features to find and fuel your dreams? Here are some ideas.
For Dream Discoverers: Every Day I'm Shuffling
If you're not yet sure where your dream life lies and what awaits you when you'll discover it, you might want to spread your daily learning wings as widely as possible.
With a Four Minute Books Lifetime Membership, the easiest way to do this, by far, is to listen to a random audio summary every day.
You can do so in 4 simple steps:
- On the onboarding page where you're directed after you've checked out your membership purchase, go to the "Download All MP3s" section, and click the button.
- Once you have the ZIP-file, unzip it (don't worry, we have tutorials for all of this), mark all files, and drag them into your music player of choice (mine is Apple Music).
- In your music player, create a new playlist, and add all of our Four Minute Audiobooks into it.
- Now, every morning, you can sit down with a nice cup of coffee, open your playlist, and press "Shuffle" to play a random summary. Listen, enjoy, and learn!
In the above example, I've added the Founder Edition of 300 bonus audios to my Apple Music. These are slightly longer readings of the summaries, but through their additional commentary, they offer a lot of context and extra ideas around each book's core messages.
Optionally, from your music player on your laptop or desktop PC, you can of course also sync all summaries to your phone, including your playlist. That way, you can listen to new, random books on the go, for example while walking to work in the morning or sitting on the bus.
Once you discover a topic or book that fascinates you more than any other, perhaps it's time for option 2...
For Dream Chasers: Down the Daily Notes Rabbit Hole
If you already have a topic, skill, or passion project you care about more than any other, you might want to steer your daily learning habit in that specific direction. No problem!
With a Four Minute Books Lifetime Membership, you can quickly filter for all the books we have on a certain topic, then only browse, listen to, or even customize our summaries into your own note collection around the theme you care about.
Here's how to do it in just 4 steps:
- On the onboarding page where you're directed after you've checked out your membership purchase, go to the "Create Your Own Version of Our Library" section, and click the button to access our Evernote notebook.
- Make a free Evernote account.
- Either join our notebook (to only view the summaries) or copy our entire library into a new notebook you own (there's also a tutorial for this, of course).
- While browsing the library, click on any of the topic tags at the bottom of each summary, then "Filter by Tag," and voilà — now you can browse dozens of books about productivity, for example, and focus exclusively on those.
Evernote is so convenient, you can even use it entirely in your web browser, as I have done in the above example. What's more, after you've filtered out a list of summaries to focus on, you can of course also make a playlist in your music player with just those summaries, then listen to one every single day.
And if you decide to make your own, custom copy of our library, you can even highlight, note, and edit each summary at will. You could mark all the lines that are most relevant to you and then export or save those, for example. Or, if you only think lesson 3 from Cal Newport's Deep Work is relevant, for example, you could simply just save that and delete the rest!
This all just scratches the surface, of course. Between the PDFs of the summaries, the podcast feed, bonus guides and books, there is so much more to discover!
Okay, that was a lot — but there is one more thing I really can't let you leave without.
Use What You Learn With This Exclusive, Only-Today Bonus: The Four Minute Writer Training
I know far from everyone wants to be a writer, but writing is an incredibly useful skill for anyone. Even if you don't know how exactly you'll use the information in the future, writing about what you learn — and not just from books — is the single-best way I know to understand things more deeply, crystallize your knowledge, and remember more for longer.
You don't have to write a 1,000-word article every day like me (especially if it ends up taking 3 hours). Even just the ability to craft a quick, concise 1-sentence summary of something you've just learned will go a long way in keeping your newfound wisdom accessible for any future scenarios.
To teach you how to do just that — and a lot more — I created The Four Minute Writer Training. The Four Minute Writer Training is an exclusive bonus for Lifetime Members that only comes with purchases made through today @ midnight, PST.
I originally made this training solely to help onboard new writers to Four Minute Books, but over the years, many people have asked me for it because they found it such a useful, step-by-step guide to summarizing pretty much anything.
While we're not currently hiring anyone, it is still a well-spent hour-and-a-half or so. Here's a quick overview of the lessons:
- How To Write A Great 1-Sentence Summary
- How To Find Great Author Quotes For Sharing Images
- How To Write An Intro That Gets The Reader Invested
- How To Formulate Lessons & Subheads That Make People Want To Read On
- How To Write A Compelling Call To Action
- How To Explain Lessons So Readers Can Remember & Implement Them
- Heads Up: Finding Credible, Scientific Sources
- How To Find The Original Source For Any Scientific Study
- How To Write A Short, Punchy Review That Serves Readers Well
- How To Close Out A Summary With A Specific Recommendation
- Useful Goals For Editing A Summary (Or Anything Else, For That Matter)
- Live Training: Watch Nik Edit A Summary In Real-Time
After you go through this training, you'll be able to summarize anything you learn as part of your daily learning habit, be it in the form of a tweet or a full-blown essay.
A daily learning habit is where it all begins. Working with our newfound knowledge is where the journey continues.
All You Need to Know
Okay, that was a ton. Quick recap time!
- When I started my journey as a writer and entrepreneur, I had no clue what I was doing or which direction to go in. As a result, I was struggling financially and all over the place when it came to my career.
- Committing to a daily learning habit combined with a writing practice helped me figure myself out and, ultimately, build a six-figure business.
- Whether we already know exactly what we want out of life or not, a daily learning habit is the best way to both discover and fuel our dreams.
- The Four Minute Books Lifetime Membership is a fantastic tool to build that daily learning habit and discover new wisdom and ideas every day in as little as 4 minutes. Today is the last day in 2023 to become a Lifetime Member at 44% off and start your daily learning journey for just $44.
- If you haven't yet found your dream, you can use your membership to listen to a random book summary every day and thus explore new fields and interesting opportunities until you find one you really want to hold on to.
- If you're already chasing a big goal, you can filter our library for all the books that'll help you get there and then read one a day to learn new things specifically aimed at helping you climb the mountain you seek to conquer.
- As an additional, only-today bonus, if you become a Lifetime Member today, you'll get exclusive access to The Four Minute Writer Training, a short but highly valuable course that'll teach you how to summarize anything you learn and thus improve your brain power and retention!
Regardless of whether you'll join us or not, I hope you'll remember this lesson: A daily learning habit is the best way to make your dreams come true. Even if you don't end up building that habit using our Lifetime Membership, I hope you'll work on it regardless. It'll be one of the best things you ever do, and I'm sure you won't regret it.
I hope to see you on the other side, and I can't wait to hear what dreams you'll discover and realize.
Happy reading,
-Nik
PS: Today is the last day in 2023 to become a Four Minute Books Lifetime Member @ 44% off. Get 1,200+ summaries in audio and a beautiful PDF format and a LOT more, including free updates for life. Everyone who buys today will also get exclusive access to The Four Minute Writer Training, a short online course that'll teach you how to summarize anything and thus truly master everything you learn (only for purchases through August 21st). Join today, lock in the best price for life, and get the exclusive bonus »
44% Discount & Bonus Training Gone in...
PPS: Here's a quick trailer for the Membership, if you want to get a 1-minute overview!
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