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21 Reasons to Start Reading Daily

by Miguel on 23/08/09 at 7:45 am

reading by rachel sian

I often meet people who seem to have the intention of getting started with the reading habit - but never get to it.

Here are 21 reasons to consider the next time you tell yourself “I don’t have time to read books”.

1. Makes you smarter. Yes, what you put in does influence what comes out. If all you are feeding your brain is soap operas, gossip magazines and the free metro newspaper… your chances of building elaborate thoughts diminish. An easy way to verify this is by reading biographies - you will be surprised by how many great men and women were influenced by great books.
2. Sparks your creativity. Reading can be seen as collecting worthwhile ideas and storing them in your personal mental library. They will be there for subconscious retrieval at any time. If you read broad topics you automatically make connections that would have been impossible otherwise.
3. Makes you a better conversationalist. Storytelling requires good material. Unless your life is constant traveling, chances are routine will make a big chunk of your day. Books can give you that plethora of stories, anecdotes and interesting facts that make good conversationalists.
4. Buys you time. Some insights you will get from reading would have taken you 10 or 20 years to find out on your own. You got the benefit without the pain of a decade of misunderstanding. There are many insights I would never have experienced in my lifetime if they hadn’t been laid out by giants of the past. Stand on their shoulders and shave years off your learning curve.
5. You learn faster. Learning is a process of making a connection between what you know and what you don’t know. The more references you store in your long-term memory, whether from real life experience or intellectual learning, the easier it will be for you to find that link between your known universe and the unknown.
6. It’s cheap. Books are still the best value for your money of any paid product in existence. Reading is dirt-cheap. Amazon is partly to blame for: you can get virtually any second hand book for less than $5. Most books for the Kindle are under $9.99. I got Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations for 99 cents. Enough said.
7. You can read anywhere. All you need is a book or a magazine article, and some light. No excuses.
8. Buys you respect. I found this to be shocking, almost funny, but it’s true. Being an active reader is such a rare thing that most people will look up to you and assume you are a “learned person”. Of course that is a relative term. I believe I know very, very little of most things… but that may not be the case when compared to the masses of non-readers. Give yourself that edge.
9. No more dead time. Never leave home without a pocket edition. Grocery lines, underground connections, late dates. We are always wasting unforeseeable open windows of time. Even if you only read during those time slots you would no longer have lack of time as an excuse.
10. Increases your income. No matter your formal academic background, becoming a well read person is likely to increase your financial standing in the long term. Just look at many of the points in this list: reading can make you a more value-giving person. Income is directly related to your capacity to create value. In the words of Charlie Munger “In my whole life, I have known no wise people who didn’t read all the time-none, zero. You’d be amazed at how much Warren (Buffet) reads - and at how much I read.”
11. Improves your writing. I dare say the one thing 100% of good authors have in common is that they read. A LOT. By osmosis, some of the good stuff will rub off. If you start reading daily, you will soon be surprised to have someone compliment you on your writing: an email, a letter, a note. Becoming a better communicator through the written word is the power to influence.
12. Improves your vocabulary. Picking up a dictionary and studying random words by heart is a weak a approach to expanding your vocabulary. Reading new words in their context and marking them for future look-up is the best way to utilize them without sounding pedantic.
13. Protects your grammar skills. Instant messaging, rapid emails and SMS are destroying our respect towards grammar. By reading well structured text you can protect yourself from bad habits that may slip into your formal writings.
14. Expands your thinking. Whenever I’m reading quality material I can’t help thinking bigger and wider. We are influenced by what other people say, it’s human nature. Books are also what other people say. But most of us don’t get to hang out with roman emperors, mystics or military strategists that often. Let them into your peer group.
15. Humbles you. Despite the list preceding this point, if your reading repertoire is broad enough you will realize how insignificant you are in the grand scheme of things. This has the nice effect of grounding you. You realize all of the greats ended in dust, and so will you. It gives you a perspective that prevents you from the delusion of thinking you have it all figured out. Ignorance is embarrassingly daring.
16. It connects you to deceased people. You don’t need a psychic reading. Fortunately, many of the great minds in History decided to put their insights on writing. Short of a time machine, reading from historical figures is the best way to understand how little human nature has changed despite our great technological advances. Don’t be scared to pick up the classics, choose a modern translation and you’ll be soon connecting with Seneca as if he were alive.
17. You become better at your own craft. It doesn’t matter what your passion is: books can make you stronger, faster & better in a fraction of the time. Granted, you have to apply what you learn - but no matter how small your field of interest there is a volume devoted to it.
18. It’s edutainment. Modern society makes a split between entertainment, which is fun, and education, portrayed as dim at best. Once you develop the knack of reading you no longer have that split. You source of education becomes a source of pleasure.
19. Helps you refocus. Like good music, a good book can quickly shift your focus. I find reading a few lines of a philosophical or spiritual text early in the morning helps me gain the right perspective. Some books are important not so much because of the content, but rather the quality of consciousness they were written with. Words have a contagious vibe. When you read you are putting yourself in the same field of awareness the author was. Use this to your advantage.
20. Increases your information gathering skills. In the information age, this is a fundamental strength. The problem is not information overload, it’s information filtering. Like a muscle, the more you sort through vast amounts of written text, the faster you become at separating the wheat from the chaff. It’s not just a matter of speed reading - it’s value detection.
21. It rocks!. Reading daily is a transformational habit, a lifetime commitment you will be extremely grateful to have picked up. Try it for 30 days, reading only on subjects you are interested in, and then decide whether to continue. Starting is the hardest part. It’s not about becoming a bookworm, it’s about understanding the world you live in in a deeper, wider, and richer way.

Do you have a different reason?