Michael Saylor Releases 953-Hour Leadership Reading Plan

Michael Saylor, executive chairman of Strategy (Nasdaq: MSTR), posted a 38-work reading curriculum on X on July 25 titled “Upgrade the World.” He estimated the full program requires between 755 and 953 hours of reading and described it as a guide for leaders responsible for major decisions in business, politics, finance and technology.

The curriculum groups 38 works into eight themes and estimates completion will take roughly 13 to 31 months depending on daily reading time. Saylor assigned the largest time block to civilizational history, at an estimated 294 to 359 hours, and placed human action, liberty and political power at about 189 to 239 hours. He said the program prepares readers to oversee institutions, markets, energy systems, communication networks, artificial intelligence and monetary protocols.

The list opens with wide-ranging studies of civilization, leadership and conflict, moves through economics, institutions and technology, and closes with readings on bitcoin. The final section directs readers first to Saifedean Ammous’ The Bitcoin Standard and then to Satoshi Nakamoto’s original Bitcoin white paper. Saylor wrote, “To understand Bitcoin fully, one must understand what it protects, what it replaces, what it consumes, what it coordinates, and which forms of power it constrains.”

Selections include Will and Ariel Durant’s The Story of Civilization, Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel, John Keegan’s A History of Warfare, Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Incerto series, several works by Murray Rothbard, Ron Chernow’s biographies of John D. Rockefeller and the Morgan banking dynasty, Daniel Yergin’s history of the oil industry, David Deutsch’s work on scientific progress and Saylor’s own 2012 book, The Mobile Wave.

Saylor wrote that the curriculum draws on his education, technology career, authorship and work with bitcoin. He framed the list as a way to build judgment through exposure to competing frameworks, writing, “Human prosperity is not produced by good intentions alone. It emerges when scientific understanding, engineering, energy, capital, markets, property rights, and effective institutions work together.” He encouraged readers to “Read to remember. Read to reason. Read to build. Upgrade the world.”

He asked participants to compare perspectives, test arguments and avoid treating any single author as a final authority. Saylor wrote, “The point is to acquire several thousand years of accumulated experience before making decisions capable of affecting millions of people.”

Saylor has previously argued that bitcoin adoption will extend into credit markets, institutions and global finance. The reading list places bitcoin at the end so readers review historical, economic and technological systems before approaching the asset’s role and design.