If you want to think like a billionaire, you might want to stop scrolling on TikTok and pick up a book. For venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, it’s not just a habit—it’s how he makes sense of the world and continually reshapes his thinking about business.
“I’ve always been like this, I’m reading basically every spare minute that I have,” Andreessen told the How I Write podcast in 2023.
The billionaire previously carved out two hours of reading time on most weekdays, according to a detailed version of his weekly schedule he published in 2020. However, with the business world only becoming more pressurized, he’s ramped up his knowledge intake—something made possible from “the single biggest technological leap” in his life: AirPods.
Andreessen now spends two to three hours a day glued to audiobooks—typically alternating between histories, biographies, and material in new subject areas like artificial intelligence. Collectively, his practice amounts to nearly an entire 24-hour day dedicated to learning, each week.
Research suggests that listeners retain roughly the same amount of information from audiobooks as they do from reading text, making Andreessen’s shift in format less a compromise than an optimization.
“If nothing else is going on,” Andreessen added. “I’m always listening to something.”
Andreessen didn’t respond to Fortune’s request for further comment.
Mark Cuban and Bill Gates agree: reading will drive you to success
Andreessen’s approach is far from unusual among the ultra-wealthy. Reading ranks as the most commonly cited behavior tied to long-term success, according to a JPMorgan report that surveyed more than 100 billionaires with a combined net worth exceeding $500 billion.
Bill Gates, for example, has long championed reading—often finishing 50 books a year and releasing annual lists to encourage others to do the same.
“Reading fuels a sense of curiosity about the world, which I think helped drive me forward in my career and in the work that I do now with my foundation,” he told TIME in 2017.
Former Shark Tank star Mark Cuban has similarly cited reading as a critical habit that helped set him apart—and put him on the billionaire path.
“I read more than three hours almost every day,” Cuban wrote on his blog in 2011.
“Everything I read was public,” the now 67-year-old added. “Anyone could buy the same books and magazines. The same information was available to anyone who wanted it. Turns out most people didn’t want it.”
Reading, as a whole, remains a cornerstone of nuanced thinking and communication—skills that are increasingly critical for business leaders, according to Brooke Vuckovic, a professor at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management.
“Reading long-form fiction, biography, and history demands focused attention, tolerance with ambiguity and unanswered questions or unrevealed nuance in characters and situations, and a willingness to have our preconceptions upended,” Vuckovic previously told Fortune. “All of these qualities are requirements of strong leadership [and] they are in increasingly short supply.”
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