You've probably seen this quote floating around the internet:
"Read 500 pages like this every day. That's how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest."
It's attributed to Warren Buffett, one of the most successful investors in history. And yes, he did say something like that. But there's a catch: most people got the number wrong.
It was 500 pages a week, not a day.
The quote traces back to a talk Buffett gave to Columbia Business School students around 2001. A student named Todd Combs was in the audience and recalled Buffett holding up a stack of annual reports and trade papers, saying he read 500 pages a week. Over time, the story got retold, and "week" quietly became "day."
Even fact-checkers at Quote Investigator couldn't pin down the exact original wording. The version that went viral, 500 pages per day, was likely an exaggeration passed from blog to blog.
Who is Warren Buffett?
Warren Buffett (born 1930) is an American investor and businessman, widely considered one of the greatest investors of all time. As the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, he built a fortune that made him one of the wealthiest people in the world. He's known for his long-term thinking, his simple lifestyle, and one habit above all: reading. A lot.
So what does Buffett actually do?
He estimates he spends about 80% of his working day reading and thinking. That's still a lot. But it's mostly financial reports, newspapers, and trade publications, not novels. This is his job, not his hobby.
His former protege Todd Combs, who took the advice seriously, reportedly worked up to reading 600 to 1,000 pages a day during his career as an analyst. But again, we're talking annual reports, not books.
What would 500 pages a day even look like?
Let's put this in perspective. The average reader reads about 250 words per minute, or roughly 1 page per minute. At that pace, 500 pages would take over 8 hours of non-stop reading.
That's a full workday, just reading. No breaks, no eating, no looking out the window.
Even fast readers, around 400 words per minute, would need 5 hours. Every single day.
The lesson that actually matters
The exact number isn't really the point. What Buffett was saying is this: most people dramatically underinvest in learning. Reading consistently, even just 30 minutes a day, compounds over time. You get smarter, you make better decisions, and that edge adds up.
500 pages a day is a myth. But the habit behind it is real.
What's a realistic reading goal?
If Buffett reads around 500 pages a week, that's roughly 70 pages a day. For a 300-page book, that's about 4 days per book, or around 90 books a year. Not bad for someone who also runs a multi-billion dollar company.
For most of us, even 20 pages a day adds up to 15 to 20 books a year. That's already more than the average person reads.
Curious how many books you could read with your current schedule? Find out with the calculator →