The Why and How Of Developing a Reading Culture

Like most people, our reading habits center around tweets, Facebook updates, or the directions on our instant oatmeal packet. If you’re one of countless people who don’t make a habit of reading regularly, you might be missing out.

Entrepreneurs and other successful people usually start out small, but if they get the right kind of traction, then their success can even skyrocket overnight. These folks live on the edge of immense profit and total loss and need to change constantly and adapt to the ever changing market trends to survive and make profits as well. Although, it is a known fact that entrepreneurs are natural leaders and possess many unique skills that make them capable of great success.

But just like every other skill you too need to be honed and polished to maximize the efficiency and the benefits derived from you.

If you are also starting out on this path or are already established and successful entrepreneur, then reading up on market trends and basics is absolutely essential for you. After all, what better way is there for entrepreneurs to be good at what they do than by reading entrepreneurial and business management related books?

E-book or Hard Copy?

Although more and more people own e-books, it seems safe to say that real books aren’t going anywhere yet. Eighty-eight percent of the adults who read e-books continue to read printed ones as well. And while we’re all for the convenience of digital downloads and a lighter load, we can’t bring ourselves to part with the joy of a good, old-fashioned read.

There’s nothing like the smell of old books or the crack of a new one’s spine. (Plus, you’ll never run low on battery.) And it turns out that diving into a page-turner can also offer benefits toward your health and happiness.

However, I encourage you to have a bunch of both e-books and hard copy ones. Although the benefits of e-books cannot be looked down upon in terms of convenience and flexibility, having a real book brings more personal engagement.

Apart from newspapers and magazines which in some cases are only available in digital forms, I recommend you buy, own and read hard copy books. Establish a library for yourself.

Why should you then read books? Well, the answer is simple, if you dream and aspire to build a tremendously successful life/business, where you call the shots, then reading up on market trends along with basic and advanced business management books is a great investment of your time. This will enable you to make better life and business decisions and stay up-to-date with the latest trends.

Reading business management, self-help books and other related books will help you to better understand the numerous intricacies of life, business and strengthen basic and advanced elements of your life and business. It will help you to gain tremendous insight on how to optimize your business processes for maximum productivity and efficiency without diminishing or dominating the other factors and elements at work.

Benefits of Reading Books

1. Books Increase Your Knowledge and Imagination

You are only limited by what you can imagine, and the worlds described in books, as well as other people’s views and opinions, will help you expand your understanding of what is possible. By reading a written description of an event or a place, your mind is responsible for creating that image in your head, instead of having the image placed in front of you when you watch television.

Books offer an outstanding wealth of learning and at a much cheaper price than taking a course. Reading gives you a chance to consume huge amount of research in a relatively short amount of time. Anne E. Cunningham and Keith E. Stanovich’s “What Reading Does for the Mind?” also noted that heavy readers tend to display greater knowledge of how things work and who or what people were. Having books at home have been strongly linked to academic achievement.

Everything you read fills your head with new bits of information, and you never know when it might come in handy. The more knowledge you have, the better-equipped you are to tackle any challenge you’ll ever face.

Additionally, here’s a bit of food for thought: should you ever find yourself in dire circumstances, remember that although you might lose everything else – your job, your possessions, your money, even your health – knowledge can never be taken from you.

2. Slows Mental Stimulation

Studies have shown that staying mentally stimulated can slow the progress of (or possibly even prevent) Alzheimer’s and Dementia, since keeping your brain active and engaged prevents it from losing power. Just like any other muscle in the body, the brain requires exercise to keep it strong and healthy, so the phrase “use it or lose it” is particularly apt when it comes to your mind. Doing puzzles and playing games such as chess have also been found to be helpful with cognitive stimulation.

In their book Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, Maryanne Wolf explains that “Typically, when you read, you have more time to think. Reading gives you a unique pause button for comprehension and insight. By and large, with oral language “when you watch a film or listen to a tape, you don’t press pause.” The benefits of this increased activity keeps your memory sharp and your learning capacity nimble.

3. Reading Helps You To Discover Yourself.

In his book How to Read and Why, Harold Bloom says that we should read slowly, with love, openness, and with our inner ear cocked. He explains we should read to increase our wit and imagination, our sense of intimacy–in short, our entire consciousness–and also to heal our pain. “Until you become yourself, what benefit can you be to others?” With the endless amount of perspectives and lives we can read about, books can give us an opportunity to have experiences that we haven’t had the opportunity to, and still allow us to learn the life skills they entail. Books are a fast track to creating yourself.

4. Improved Focus and Concentration

In our internet-crazed world, attention is drawn in a million different directions at once as we multi-task through every day. In a single 5-minute span, the average person will divide their time between working on a task, checking email, chatting with a couple of people (via gchat, skype, etc.), keeping an eye on twitter, monitoring their smartphone, and interacting with co-workers. This type of ADD-like behaviour causes stress levels to rise, and lowers our productivity.

Unlike blog posts and news articles, sitting down with a book takes long periods of focus and concentration, which at first is hard to do. Being fully engaged in a book involves closing off the outside world and immersing yourself into the text, which over time will strengthen your attention span.

When you read a book, all of your attention is focused on the story—the rest of the world just falls away, and you can immerse yourself in every fine detail you’re absorbing. Try reading for 15-20 minutes before work (i.e. on your morning commute, if you take public transit), and you’ll be surprised at how much more focused you are once you get to the office.

5. Improvement of Vocabulary

Although it doesn’t always make you a better communicator, those who read tend to have a more varied range of words to express how they feel and to get their point across. This increases exponentially with the more volumes you consume, giving you a higher level of vocabulary to use in everyday life.

Exposure to published, well-written work has a noted effect on one’s own writing, as observing the cadence, fluidity, and writing styles of other authors will invariably influence your own work. In the same way that musicians influence one another, and painters use techniques established by previous masters, so do writers learn how to craft prose by reading the works of others.

6. Reading can make you more empathetic.

Getting lost in a good read can make it easier for you to relate to others. Literary fiction, specifically, has the power to help its readers understand what others are thinking by reading other people’s emotions, according to research published in Science. The impact is much more significant on those who read literary fiction as opposed to those who read nonfiction. “Understanding others’ mental states is a crucial skill that enables the complex social relationships that characterize human societies,” David Comer Kidd and Emanuele Castano wrote of their findings.

According to studies made by researchers from University of Toronto, reading can change some personality traits. Romance novels, for example, are likely to promote empathy. Not only romance novels though. Reading any artistic literature can make people more empathetic and understanding, because the process itself is like a conversation, getting to know a person. It also encourages readers to examine their own emotions and behaviors and makes them more open to new experiences.

7. Stronger Analytical Thinking Skills

Have you ever read an amazing mystery novel, and solved the mystery yourself before finishing the book? If so, you were able to put critical and analytical thinking to work by taking note of all the details provided and sorting them out to determine “whodunnit”.

That same ability to analyze details also comes in handy when it comes to critiquing the plot; determining whether it was a well-written piece, if the characters were properly developed, if the storyline ran smoothly, etc. Should you ever have an opportunity to discuss the book with others, you’ll be able to state your opinions clearly, as you’ve taken the time to really consider all the aspects involved.

8. Reading Will Help You To save The World

Sounds too much? It isn’t. What this world needs the most are educated, open-minded, self-aware people, inspired and full of ideas. Reading surely creates such people, especially when it’s done in a varied way, with openness for different topics and concepts.