If you want to know what separates successful people from everyone else, former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci has a straightforward answer: teach yourself stuff, and do it by reading everything you can get your hands on.

The Case for Buying More Books Than You'll Ever Read

In a video Scaramucci posted this week, he laid out his philosophy with characteristic bluntness. "The number one thing you need to have is the capability to teach yourself. You have to be autodidactic in life," he said, standing in front of shelves packed with books.

Here's the interesting part: Scaramucci admits he buys books at a "10 to 1" ratio compared to what he actually finishes reading. But he doesn't see that as wasteful. Even skimming a book, he argues, can give you "a fun story," a valuable "piece of information," or "an application of historical context to your current life."

His pitch is pretty compelling when you think about it. Books can compress roughly "ten years of experience" into about "ten hours of reading," he says. These days that costs closer to $30 than the $10 he used to quote, but it's still a bargain for distilled expertise.

Scaramucci's prescription is ambitious: read at least one book per week and carve out two to four hours every day for reading. That includes audiobooks while you're driving or working out. "Force yourself to read a myriad of different subjects," he urges, framing wide-ranging curiosity as non-negotiable.

Curiosity as Your Competitive Edge

The SkyBridge Capital founder connects this reading obsession to something he calls intellectual curiosity, which he's described as the ultimate "superpower." The logic is straightforward: the world keeps changing, and people who stay curious keep adapting. Scaramucci has made similar arguments while promoting his new course, "The Resilience Lab," where he positions optimism and continuous learning as essential traits for growth.

He's in Good Company

Scaramucci isn't alone in his reading evangelism. Warren Buffett famously spends most of his workday reading and once told a group of students, "Read 500 pages like this every day. That's how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest."

Investor Naval Ravikant takes a slightly different angle but arrives at the same destination: "Read what you love until you love to read." His point is that only genuine curiosity can sustain the kind of lifelong learning habit that actually matters.

The through-line here is pretty clear. Whether you're running a hedge fund, building companies, or just trying to stay sharp in a fast-moving world, reading broadly and constantly might be the closest thing we have to a cheat code.