Who: Thomas Chua, 36, is the author of the best-selling The Lunch Break Investor (2026), which claims to help people make informed decisions about what stocks to buy and sell, all accomplished in an hour a day without Bloomberg terminals.

Growing up poor in Singapore, Chua read books on investing every chance he got in libraries. He has been financially independent since he was 31 and is a full-time investor. He also writes about long-term investing at SteadyCompounding.com.

His debut book is published by Harriman House, and he says it contains everything he wishes he had known when he started.

“I am now reading The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down (2017) by Haemin Sunim. A friend gave it to me and said it was a beautiful read.

I finished it in three days, and it left me with a lot to think about. Sunim writes about how to be calm in a busy world, and his point is that how the world looks to us has a lot to do with the state we’re in when we look at it.

I am always productivity maxxing, and I am guessing many people are too. Now, with everything changing with artificial intelligence, it sometimes feels like there is no room left to breathe. The book made me stop and ask what speed I am actually running at on the inside.

I have a rule for myself about reading. I am not allowed to say ‘I am too busy’ or ‘I don’t have time’. I banned them because each time I’ve caught myself about to say one of these, the truth was usually, ‘I don’t want to.’ If something matters to me, the time shows up.

Another book I have enjoyed is The Second Curve: Thoughts On Reinventing Society (2015) by Charles Handy. His idea is that most things – a career, a company, a life – follow the same shape: a slow start, a climb, a peak, then down.

When I was in the public sector, I had a lot of colleagues close to retirement, and a surprising number of them told me that they wished they had taken more risks when they were younger, chased something or reinvented themselves.