Biographies Are Boring: Here's How They Could Be Better

Can we adopt a new rule? Every successful person who may be the subject of a standard biography should consider writing a principles-based book instead.

Let me explain.

I love to read a good autobiography or biography but the format isn't all that helpful. After many pages of facts, stories, and timelines, the reader is often left to infer key principles or takeaways from the subject's life.

Instead, I would prefer to read a book that is similar in structure to Ray Dalio's Principles.

Principles is structured around the key principles that Ray Dalio has used to guide him throughout his career and life. With each principle, he provides examples or stories that either show the origin of where the principle came from or how it could be helpful for the reader's life. You still get the biography content but it is packaged up in a much more actionable way.

Regardless of whether you agree with the principles or not, imagine if every uber-successful person were to share the principles they lived by. Imagine having the principles that drove Einstein, Lincoln, Churchill, or any other highly successful person explicitly laid out for consumption, testing, and sharing.

It makes me wonder what may have been lost to the depths of countless poorly packaged biographies.