Why is Reading Valuable?

Welcome back to weekend coffee chats were we discuss business, corporate, and random ideas. This week we’re stepping away from the office and discussing why reading is valuable. I got thinking about this lately as I’ve found myself reading more and writing content less. I’ll be talking more about that in next week’s post so make sure to come back, but for now let’s dive in and discuss reading.

Reading is usually a crowd splitter, it’s either people love it or hate it yet recently with youtube and self help as popular as ever reading is being seen as cool again and advertised as mind opening and interesting vs your previous school boring read. However, depending on who you watch or listen to, certain forms get pushed more than others. Some push for physical books, others for audio, others for electronic and the debates go on and on. Why am I mentioning this? Because I as well was driven to consider one format over the other and I’ve come to realize it takes away from what’s actually important, actually reading (or listening to it as an audiobook)

First things first whether its audio, electronic or physical format this doesn’t affect the book itself but it can help us have more flexibility that fits our lifestyle. We don’t have to choose, we can use audio when we’re commuting, electronic before bed (especially if you have a reader without blue light), and physical when on holiday and not wanting to be distracted by our devices. Trying to choose one format and force yourself to use it over the other based on the popular opinions is just unnecessarily annoying. I’ve now learned to look at when and where I have some time to read this month and then choose the format I want the material to be in based on that.

Now why is it valuable? Of course you know, so I won’t bore you with the usual stuff. Mainly reading gives you more knowledge, but there’s so much more to it. Reading can open your eyes to areas you didn’t consider before, it can help you understand situations and people you didn’t before, or it can even give you that push you needed at that time or the break you were looking for an excuse to take. Most importantly in my opinion, reading helps you think in new ways and adds to the collage of ideas and values you have in mind. A misconception is that you have to remember as much as you can from what you read, and I understand it’s important in non-fiction but we need to realize that remembering the knowledge itself is not as important as the change our mind and character go through because of what we read that we don’t even notice at times.

This reminds me of a book I read a while ago “disrupted” by Daniel Lyons and even though I don’t remember a lot of it word by word, I remember the feeling of solidarity I felt by reading that book as I was in a somewhat similar situation to the author. It also gave me the push I needed to move on to a new company. Looking back at that I can see how the change or support that book gave me is far more valuable than being able to remember it word by word for example.

What’s also important to mention, is that many forms of reading are valuable and one without the other isn’t incomplete. As I mentioned in the beginning, for a short while I was reading only non-fiction convinced by the latest podcaster or YouTube how valuable it is. Yet I kept missing reading fiction and other online stuff and I’ve to realized one without the others leaves you with a lot of blind spots, so it’s healthier I came to conclude to read a bit of each per week or month (not day of course, that’s not the vibe around here)

• fiction books —> great to relax or understand human experience and behavior in various scenarios and lives, but alone would leave you uninformed about the world
• non fiction books —> Pro: good to get specific knowledge or understand people’s stories (biographies). Con: alone can be very dull and taxing to read
• online articles —> Pro: most recent trends, Con: as trends they could be fast fading as well
• blogs and newsletters —> most recent ideas, and if your industry is fast paced this one is a gold mine because if we’re being honest even a book published last year can seem outdated if it’s about certain industries, but can be a rabbit hole or one sided arguments
• social media such as twitter and insta (Written posts) —> Pro: discussion areas with others and interesting threads, but well you know twitter can become toxic very quick

I think in the end it’s important to remember that the value of reading is that it changes us, challenges us, and re-sculptures our minds and souls.

What’s something you recently read that left you thinking? Let me know in the comments.

Don’t forget to follow “@weekendcoffeechats” on instagram to get notified when a new post drops, and you can check what I’m reading there. Till Next time 🙂 !

Disclaimer: None of this information is to be used as advice, it’s just for entertainment purposes. Additionally all information used is publicly available.