Reading is important!

Justin H
Dec 1, 2016
2 min read

So this isn’t as self-serving as it looks simply because you are reading these words. I state this because I was wandering around the office this week and saw on a co-workers desk one of the most famous ‘self help’ or ‘business’ books ever written: Who Moved My Cheese? I asked the employee if they’d read the book before and according to him, he didn’t even know how it got there. He also didn’t seem interested in even trying to read this very short book, and chose to put it back on our company library bookshelf.

This particular interaction led me to conclude something; the concept of voluntary reading to expand your knowledge is dying. I’m sure if I would have thought about it sooner, I would have come to the same conclusion since it’s obviously been happening for years. The way we consume media these days has become so visual-centric that we do not even consider attempting to read to discover the answer ourselves thru research. As the ‘answer guy’ for my company, it’s supremely frustrating to have someone ask me a question that they themselves can answer with a little bit of effort. I’ve taken up the practice of refusing to answer it and instead responding with ‘try googling it’. But that involves reading and effort so instead they’d rather do nothing at all and remain ignorant.

I was at a seminar a few years back and the speaker said this, “If you want to grow in business, you need to read about business”. This particular speaker was able to claim Warren Buffet as a mentor and managed to make C level status at Yahoo! He stated he himself consumes two books a week. Now I’m not advocating for that, but read something, even if it’s fiction. There’s been countless studies about the impact reading versus television has on your brain and how it essentially keeps you young and fit mentally. Essentially when you read, your brain engages and areas of the brain actively respond to the words such as the imagination and memory centers. When you watch television, the exact opposite happens: Your brain shuts off.

So, take this as a public service announcement: Help yourselves and help the world. Read, learn, do everything you can to keep yourself from being like my coworker who put an 80 page book back on the shelf because it contained words instead of a video.