Another activity in the Read to Lead Challenge I’ve come to love is to pick a Book of Wisdom and read one page a day.
Sounds simple. But it’s deceptively powerful.
This isn’t about cramming information. It’s about slowing down. Choosing a book where each page carries a single idea—short, often no more than a paragraph or two—and letting that idea sit with you. You don’t just read it. You chew on it. Sometimes, you stop mid-paragraph and think, Whoa. That’s enough for today.
(If you prefer listening to reading, and with added images…)
The first Book of Wisdom I chose for the challenge was The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday. I’ve read it daily for four years now. One page a day. And it still surprises me. Some days, it feels like it was written just for me. On other days, it helps reframe something I’ve been wrestling with. Every time I reread it, I highlight new passages, jot down different notes, and see connections I hadn’t seen the year before.
Another favorite of mine is How to Live by Derek Sivers. It’s not structured for a one-page-a-day format, but it works. I’ve read it four years in a row, a few pages at a time, scattered across the year. It’s short—just over a hundred pages—but it packs a punch. Derek originally wrote around 900 pages and edited it to just the essentials. Often, I’ll read one paragraph and have to stop. I’ll highlight something, take a note, or cross-reference another book I’m reading. It becomes a silent conversation in my mind between the authors and myself.
I’m planning to revisit a few other books this way, too. Excellent Advice for Living by Kevin Kelly is full of short, tiny bits of insight that are perfect for slow reading. And The Creative Act by Rick Rubin is one I’ve been dipping into again. I may turn that into a one-page-a-day habit as well.
Another book the Read to Lead Challenge and a few friends recommended is A Calendar of Wisdom by Leo Tolstoy. That one’s next on my list.
This idea of daily wisdom isn’t new to me. Growing up in Brazil, I had a tiny pocket-sized book called Minutos de Sabedoria—Minutes of Wisdom—by C. Torres Pastorino. It was everywhere. It followed the same principle: one short daily passage to reflect on. This challenge reminded me of that childhood memory.
There’s a practical side to this, too. When I travel, I always take a Book of Wisdom with me—physically if it’s light, digitally if not. When I was vacationing in Europe, I’d wake up just a few minutes earlier than needed just to read a single page. That little ritual helped ground me, even when my days were filled with the chaos and joy of travel.
A true Book of Wisdom is born from lived experience—lessons learned the hard way. It’s not just advice. It’s reflection, distilled. When we read those reflections slowly and try our best to apply them to our lives, we absorb wisdom and start to build our own.
And that’s the other hidden gift of this practice: over time, as you annotate, journal, and make connections across books and life, you might find yourself writing your Book of Wisdom. Not necessarily to publish. But maybe to pass on—to friends, family, even future generations.
Some of these books pull from ancient sources, like the Stoics. Others are modern, like Kevin Kelly’s. Some capture lessons from just the last decade—on creativity, on technology, on what it means to live in a world that’s moving fast. And yet, they often echo age-old truths.
Because wisdom, at its core, is timeless.
So pick your book. One page a day. And see what grows from there.
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