Let me tell you about the time I nearly gave myself a headache trying to read 50 books in one year.
It was January. I had just seen another one of those posts. You know the ones. Bill Gates reads 50 books a year. Warren Buffett spends five to six hours a day reading and recommends 500 pages daily. Elon Musk learned rocket science from books. The caption was always the same: “No excuses. Read or stay broke.”
I screenshot it. I set a reading goal on my notes app. I calculated how many pages per day I would need. I was ready to join the billionaire book club.
By March, I had finished three books and felt like a failure.
Here is what I wish someone had told me before I turned reading into another impossible standard. The billionaire reading meme is not entirely wrong. Reading is valuable. Successful people do read a lot. But the meme is also not entirely right. In fact, in ways that matter for ordinary Nigerians with full-time jobs, limited budgets, and realistic schedules, the meme is dangerously misleading.
Let me explain what the meme gets right, what it gets wrong, and why you should ignore the number entirely.
What the Meme Gets Right: Yes, Rich People Read
Let us give credit where it is due. The meme is not pulling facts out of thin air.
Bill Gates has publicly stated that he reads roughly 50 books a year, or about one book per week. Warren Buffett reportedly spends five to six hours a day reading, including five newspapers and 500 pages of corporate reports. Mark Zuckerberg once set a challenge to read one book every two weeks. When asked how he learned to build rockets for SpaceX, Elon Musk famously replied, "I read books".
According to a JPMorgan report cited by Fortune, reading is the most commonly cited behaviour tied to long-term success among a survey of more than 100 billionaires with a combined net worth exceeding $500 billion.
A survey of top 5% corporate performers across multiple industries found that they read an average of 43.2 books per year, with 63% reading 35 books or more. The average businessperson, by contrast, reads only about 2.4 books per year.
So yes. The data shows a clear pattern. People who achieve extraordinary success tend to be serious readers. Reading exposes you to new ideas, sharpens your thinking, and expands your understanding of the world. Research has shown that higher reading skills improve long-term prospects, lead to higher incomes, and contribute to better decision-making.
But here is where the meme starts to fall apart.
The Hidden Ingredient the Meme Never Mentions: Time
Let me ask you a question. How many hours a week do you have to read for pleasure?
If you are a Nigerian student preparing for WAEC or JAMB, your answer is probably close to zero. If you are a young professional working in Lagos, spending three to four hours daily in traffic, your answer is also close to zero. If you are a parent juggling work, childcare, and household responsibilities, your answer is zero.
Now let me tell you about Warren Buffett’s schedule. He does not commute. He does not cook. He does not chase children. He has staff for almost everything that distracts ordinary people from reading. When he says he spends five to six hours a day reading, he is not sacrificing sleep or family time. He is doing what his wealth has allowed him to do: outsource everything else.
The meme presents reading as a matter of discipline. Just try harder, it implies. But the real difference between Bill Gates and the average Nigerian is not willpower. It is structural advantage. Gates can afford to retreat to a secluded cabin for “Think Weeks” with a stack of books and a notebook. Can you?
The average working professional in South Korea reads about 4.5 books per year. The average American reads about 12 books per year. In Nigeria, estimates suggest approximately 3 books per person per year. These numbers are not evidence of laziness. They are evidence of lives filled with work, commuting, family obligations, and economic stress.
A 2023 survey by the African Polling Institute found that 62% of Nigerian workers felt overwhelmed weekly. Only 7% had access to workplace mental health resources. When you are in survival mode, reading 50 books a year is not a goal. It is a fantasy.
The meme does not mention this. It just tells you to try harder.
More Books Does Not Mean More Learning
Here is another thing the meme never tells you. Reading fast is not the same as reading well.
The billionaire meme often comes with implied advice: read faster, read more, consume more books. But research shows a clear trade-off between reading speed and information retention. The faster you read, the less you remember.
A psychology professor once tested two speed readers who claimed to read over 100,000 words per minute. After finishing a college-level textbook in mere minutes, they took a comprehension test and performed terribly. The professor’s conclusion: “The only noteworthy skill exhibited was a remarkable dexterity in page-turning."
Decades of cognitive science research have confirmed that speed reading does not work. The human eye cannot take in whole blocks of words at a glance with full comprehension. Silencing your inner reading voice, which speed reading programs encourage, comes at the expense of understanding because sounds are key to language.
Reading is not a race. A single book read slowly, with reflection and note-taking, is worth ten books skimmed and forgotten. Bill Gates himself takes notes in the margins of his books because the habit helps him concentrate better, especially with non-fiction. He reads 50 books a year, but he reads them carefully, not frantically.
The meme turns reading into a performance metric. How many have you read? It asks. But the question that actually matters is: How much have you learned?
The Nigerian Reality: Reading Is a Privilege, Not Just a Choice
Let me bring this closer to home.
For a Nigerian earning the minimum wage of ₦70,000 per month, a single novel costing ₦15,000 to ₦20,000 represents a significant portion of disposable income. A Kindle Paperwhite priced at ₦389,000 is not a reading device. It is a luxury item. As we have documented in our previous post on why buying a Kindle in Nigeria might be a terrible investment, the numbers simply do not make sense for most readers.
The billionaire meme assumes universal access to books. It assumes you can afford to buy whatever you want to read. It assumes you have a quiet space, reliable electricity, and uninterrupted time. None of these things can be taken for granted in Nigeria.
A child in a rural community whose nearest public library is 100 kilometres away is not reading 50 books a year because she lacks discipline. She is reading 50 books a year because the system has failed to provide her with books. As we explored in our article mapping Nigeria's library crisis, the country has approximately 0.15 public libraries per 100,000 people. That is not a reading problem. That is an infrastructure problem.
The meme individualises a structural issue. It turns a systemic failure into a personal failing. And that is not just inaccurate. It is cruel.
The Hidden Message: Hustle Culture Disguised as Self-Improvement
The billionaire reading meme belongs to a larger family of internet content that I have come to recognise as hustle culture in a cardigan.
You have seen its cousins. The “5 AM club”. The “no days off” posts. The “sleep is for the weak” quotes. The billionaire reading meme is the same beast, just dressed up with books instead of gym sessions. The message is identical: you are not successful because you are not working hard enough. Try harder. Read more. Grind more.
A 2025 study on hustle culture and pacesetting leadership found that this relentless pressure leads to increased work-life conflict, psychological strain, and reduced autonomy. In Nigeria, this harmful culture is particularly prevalent due to job insecurity. With unemployment high, people feel pressured to overperform and constantly prove their worth to avoid being replaced.
The meme does not tell you that 50 books a year is unsustainable for most people. It does not tell you that rest is productive. It does not tell you that reading four deeply engaged books a year is better than skimming forty you will not remember.
What the meme really sells is anxiety. It makes you feel behind. It makes you feel like everyone else is reading more, achieving more, becoming more. And that feeling of inadequacy keeps you scrolling, keeps you consuming, keeps you trapped in a cycle of comparison that benefits no one except the algorithm pushing the next post.
I am not saying reading is unimportant. I am saying that the way the meme frames reading is toxic.
What Actually Works: Read Slower, Reflect More, Ignore the Number
So what should you do instead of chasing 50 books a year?
Let me offer a different model. It is less glamorous than the billionaire meme, but it works. I know because I have been using it since my failed 50-book experiment, and I finish more books now than I did when I was obsessing over quantity.
One book, properly absorbed
Stop counting. Seriously. Delete the reading tracker if you have one. The number of books you finish is not a measure of your worth or your intelligence. One book read thoughtfully, with notes, with reflection, with application to your life, is infinitely more valuable than ten books rushed through to hit a target.
The five-hour rule, Nigerian edition
Benjamin Franklin created a habit of reading for one hour each weekday, accumulating five hours of learning per week. You do not need five hours. You need consistency. Fifteen minutes daily is over ninety hours of reading per year. That is enough for ten to fifteen books annually, depending on length. The key is not the duration. The key is the regularity.
Reading what you actually enjoy
The meme implies that you should read serious, educational, business-focused books. Gates reads mostly non-fiction on public health, engineering, business, and science. That works for him. It might not work for you. Reading fiction, poetry, thrillers, or romance is not a waste of time. Reading anything at all is what builds the habit. The best book to read is the one you cannot put down.
Taking notes
The most successful readers do not just read. They engage. They underline. They write in the margins. They summarise key ideas in their own words. This transforms reading from passive consumption to active learning. You will remember more from one book you take notes on than from five you do not.
Rereading
Here is something the meme never mentions. The mere-exposure effect can trick you into thinking you understand a book simply because you have seen it before. Familiarity is not comprehension. Rereading a great book reveals layers you missed the first time. Some books demand to be read twice.
Counter-Arguments: But What If I Actually Want to Read a Lot?
Let me address the objection that is probably forming in your mind.
Some people genuinely can read 50 books a year. I know people who do. They read fast, they retain well, and they enjoy the process. The problem is not the existence of high-volume readers. The problem is presenting their habit as a universal standard.
Reading 50 books a year requires either a job that includes reading, very low external demands on your time, or a reading speed that is genuinely above average. For most people, none of these conditions apply. A 2016 study on top 5% corporate performers found they read an average of 43.2 books per year, but those performers were selected precisely because they had unusual discipline and likely jobs that allowed for reading time.
There is also a difference between reading for work and reading for leisure. Warren Buffett’s daily reading includes corporate reports and financial documents that are directly relevant to his job. That is not the same as reading a novel for pleasure. Both are reading, but one is professional maintenance and the other is personal enrichment. The meme conflates them.
If you want to read more, read more. Set a goal that challenges you without breaking you. But do not let a number on a screen make you feel inadequate. The only person you should compare yourself to is the person you were last month.
The Best Readers Are Not the Fastest
Let me tell you how my 50-book year ended.
I did not finish 50 books. I finished twelve. But I remembered them. I took notes on three of them. I still think about passages from two of them, years later. One of them changed how I think about money. Another one gave me a phrase I use almost weekly.
If I had focused on hitting the number, I would have rushed through all twelve, remembered nothing, and felt like a failure anyway.
The billionaire reading meme is not entirely wrong. Reading is a superpower. Successful people do read. But the meme is dangerous because it turns reading into a competition you cannot win. It ignores the structural advantages of billionaires. It confuses quantity with quality. It weaponises a healthy habit into a source of anxiety.
Here is my challenge to you. Ignore the number. Pick one book you actually want to read. Read it slowly. Take notes if that helps. Talk about it with a friend. Then pick another one.
Do not count. Just read.
And the next time someone posts that meme about billionaires reading 50 books a year, send them a link to this article. Because the only thing worse than not reading is turning reading into another reason to feel like you are failing.
Let us talk. What is the last book you actually finished, and what did you learn from it? Not how many books you read last year. Just one. Drop the title in the comments. Share this with a friend who needs permission to read at their own pace.
Also read our pillar article on the real reasons Nigerians read less than Kenyans or Ghanaians.