We have all heard the stories about how most of the people we admire attribute much of their success to the thirst of knowledge and their love of reading books. Even in our own lives, we have all had experiences which hit home the impact of reading.
Our favorite childhood story, an inspiring writer, that one novel. Still, I don’t think most of it internalize quite how much and how subtly what books we read determines who we become.
What We Input to the Brain Shapes Our Output!
Language is the primary tool of communication that builds and organize our knowledge and allows us to interact with each other. As it is English is the language that I use to convey my thought through Nyasa's Book Shelf.
Outside of the direct experience, it is also largely how we create our perception of the reality. The information absorbed by our senses through our surroundings combines to creating linguistic models in our mind and subconscious. It helps us understand how the world works and the helps in creating the best way to interact with it. One part of this occurs through verbal conversation, or listening to something but for most knowledge workers as well as an average person in developed countries, a larger part of it is directly the result of what they consume- reading books.
So, you become the book you read. The information that you take as an input to the brain informs your thinking pattern and shapes your output- or simply put it influences your decisions, the work you produce and the way you interact.
Isn’t this a huge incentive to prioritize a block of time to think about what and how you consume, I mean shouldn’t you be analyzing whether or not to read adequately in association with the progress you wish to make. Now this definitely gives us a good reason to pause and consider if we can do anything to purposefully shape our minds.
Here, input doesn’t necessarily mean quantity but the correlation between how much you read books or what you can or who you become to begin after a certain point. So, more isn’t always better. So, our discussion will focus not on the number of books you have read till now or intending to read in future but the quality of your predominant sources of input as their importance can’t be overstated.
You Don’t Have Time to Read Books?
I know most of us lead busy lives, with so many other commitments that there isn’t always time in the day left to read. But is it really so? Maybe this holds true for a very small minority of people. However, it is just an excuse for a majority of us. The reality is we haven’t analyzed how we spend our time and what we can do about it to incorporate reading books in our daily schedule. We can think about all the time we spend on social media and watching television, it points to the truth about “we don’t have time”. So, it is more like we don’t make time to read books.
In fact, it maybe you are reading my blog post while randomly surfing and killing time but at the same time feel that you don’t have enough hours in the read what you want. The point is that even when we are thinking that we don’t have enough time to read, we are still reading on the internet, while scrolling down our Facebook feed and clicking on an enticing title from a questionable news source.
The difference is that this kind of reading isn’t intentional as when we choose a book of a specific genre to read. So, this kind of reading can negatively warp our experience on how we see, think about and analyze the world around us. What I want to say is reading shouldn’t be something that happens to you but it should be something you are actively involved in with awareness. If you still don’t feel you have time to read book, then it’s time to think twice.
Read Books as Per Your Choice
As we have the power to choose the food we want to eat, so should we read books as per our choice. There is no dearth of books being published every year. We live in the age of information overload, and reading books can help us to build the ability to distinguish value from noise. Most of us don’t always pay attention to what our brain is processing and go along in whatever direction the world guides us. As we have already discussed about the effects of reading books, we now know that is not the way ahead.
At the end of the day, reading is an important skill in our life that affects how we think. It impacts everything from what you produce to how you see the world. This speaks volumes on the importance of choosing the book when it comes to consuming valuable input.
Again, it doesn’t necessarily mean you should cut out anything which is directly relevant to your life. We should reduce aimless browsing, social media feeds and pointless news.
Read some good fiction, add some classics and learn from people who think deeply. The quality of our mind depends on the books we read.
Choose wisely- aim for quality input for a better output.
Feel free to share your thoughts!
Until then, this is Nyasa signing off.
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