The Power of "Reading Books"

Have you found yourself saying,

• Books are not my kind of a thing! I have finished all of my reading in school
• I do not have the time to read! I would rather do other things in the time I get
• I don't care....! Reading is often overrated

Even if one, and not all of the above statement resonate with you, think again. A small caveat would be, books can be a various shapes, sizes and formats. I do not in any way prescribe that you must read books, with x-number of pages, or sheer weight. In fact I would say it would be best to start with whatever is comfortable to you, this is not only to do with the size of the book, but also the subject, and perhaps the author of the material.

To clear the air, I must confess, I have not been a voracious reader through my life, however in spurts I have read through my life as a professional, and in the last 5+ years I have found a huge amount of value in reading, thus I would like to share a little bit in this piece about WHY one must read, even if a little, more regularly, and the second part of this piece would enumerate some of my experiences, as to HOW. I would end with a short note on WHAT you could pick to read if you aren't already into it. Another short caveat, coming from a professional with a decade and a half experience in L&D, Your learning styles could be different, and you would enjoy learning via other modes, however the most accessible, and in your control mode would be reading, I mean the maximum away from this rule could be listening to "audio books", but that's still a book :)

WHY Books:

1. In our lives we take some decisions, make some choices, meet people, build perspectives every single day. Some of these work and some don't, and you learn through these. You may have heard the popular quote by Nelson Mandela, "I do not lose, either I win or I learn.

And you would have probably have also heard the quote by Tom Bodett, "In School, You're taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you're given a test that teaches you a lesson".

In essence I would say what better way to work through life to maximize from not just your life's lessons but those of others.

2. In life, we do want to know things which we wouldn't have access to, this could either be because of a geographical constraint or a constraint of time or perhaps any other constraint you cannot get over. To give you an example, One of the best books I have read is, "Man's search for Meaning", written by Viktor Frankl. He died in 1997 and I would never get to meet him - but his writings have triggered some thoughts that have left an indelible mark on my life. That's one of the beauties of reading. Dr. Carol Dweck's seminal work on Mindsets has been penned down in her book "Mindsets", where she talks about growth mindset, and how can one implement her findings for yourself and as a parent, I hope to meet her one day to exchange thoughts, but even before this her work has left an indelible mark on how I look at situations in life, and how I let this pass on to my family, friends and colleagues. One would argue that you can google and find most of what you would want to know (and I wouldn't debate it). But if you would really want to know the real stuff it would have to be "from the horses mouth"

3. Now specialists in their own domains, or thought leaders , whether academics, authors or analysts, base what they say on years of emperical data, so if you would want to know about evolution of Competencies for an HR Professionals over the decades you would reach out to the findings of "Dave Ulrich", if you would want to know more how industries and organizations have and will learn in the future you would read "Josh Bersin". If you would want to read how people could work on their natural strengths, you would pick up "Tom Rath". If you would like to know more about Coaching, you would definitely pick "Marshall Goldsmith". And of course there would be many other thinkers and authors who ground their work on emperical data which may not be available or accessible to us.Quite frankly you may start to get your data together today, and someday build credibility, but at the moment to know what the world is doing it would have to be books that particular authors may have written.

4. Any topic you would be interested in would have contrasting views from others, or at the least atleast perspectives that could fit from one end of the continuum incrementally toward the other. To quote an example, I got interested in the topic of Happiness, and as I started to read on it, realised how multiple experts had different scientific names, viz. Life Satisfaction, Subjective Well being, and so on. To get to know more it helps to read perspectives from different people.

5. The world's wealthiest read voraciously. An article on the "Blinkist website" quotes that Warren Buffet spends 80% of his day reading. It is a wellknown fact that Bill Gates reads on an average 50 books a year, in fact for those who may not know, he has a well established blog www.gatesnotes.com, where he shares his observations from what he has read, what he is currently reading and infact recommends reading lists for the "Summer holidays", and "Winter holidays", etc. Quoting again from the "Blinkist website" - that Mark Zuckerberg reads one book every two weeks. Clearly there is one thing common amongst the wealthy of the world.

6. The average time to commute for professionals across the globe is pegged at 30 min one way, and that commute back home would be 60 min in a day. Now, there are some people who are able to use this time daily to read. But even if you cannot use 60 min every single day, for sure you can pull out 10-15 min a day to read. Why would I say this? Every day your interaction with people, could fill you up with motivation or drain your energies, the tasks that you do could either help you get a sense of achievement or on days a sense of loss. Your travels can either leave you with things you would want to cherish, or perhaps want to forget at the earliest, and all of this is not completely in your hands. But the common thread that could bind your days, whether it is to have worked with anybody, done any task, traveled to any place with a book alongside you, can clearly help you learn at least one new thing through the day. That to me is reason enough to pick up some book.

HOW to read:

1. My first recommendation would be to find out if e-books are your kind, or the good old hard copies, I would say experiment with both to find what you are most comfortable with. One of the things that made life difficult for me early on was handling hard copy books. I feel a lot more at ease with the Kindle. I must confess though that most books you would want would be available on the Kindle, there is a rare possibility that you would have picked may not have a kindle edition, in which case I would say make that exception to pick the hard copy. One word of caution would be, with all things going digital I am not sure how long we would actually have hard copy books, I would definitely ask you to explore an e-book reader, Kindle works well.
2. Look for how much time would be able to pull out through a day, a week, or a month. While it may not be the best idea to be rigid with this. However if you do not have an initial plan, I would think it would be difficult to get it off the ground. Also if you are looking to build a habit, consistency does help. You needn't start too ambitiously with wanting to read a significant part of your day, I mean we all have jobs, and tasks to do. Start small, and increase it based on your comfort. Do not make it about making yourself uncomfortable as this would be a sure shot way of pulling yourself away from reading.
3. Find out which part of the day works well for you. I have know a lot of my bosses, and peers who have been comfortable waking up very early in the morning everyday to read. I've know some who prefer to read just before they go to bed. And I have known people being most comfortable investing their time in transit to catch a quick read. Whatever suits you, just make the most of it.
4. Try to design triggers for you to read. For me, I keep the Kindle visible to me at home, so every slot of a few minutes that I get, I end of doing a few pages. I do carry it on a work day and on travels, so I could read at almost every opportunity available. I must add a caveat here, I do use a lot of my break time to relax and rejuvenate. However to me reading clears the clutter in my mind, build perspective and also motivates to take action, that is also a form of rejuvenation for me.
5. Have broad goals of reading for yourself. This needn't be ambitious but again, you cannot improve anything that you do not measure. So if you would like to build a habit I would say put a small goal to it. It could be as small as 12 books in a years, that's how I have started. You can of course revise this based on how the year goes by. If you do get hooked on I promise this revision would be only upwards.
6. The last tip would be, to create a list and start adding to it based on recommendations. For me a favourite is books that successful professionals recommend for example Satya Nadella recommends reading "Mindsets" and I found it immensly useful picking that book after having read Nadella's "Hit Refresh". Bill Gates, recommends reading Factfulness, quite frankly I haven't picked that book yet, but that has made me follow Hans Rosling's work, on how the world can be understood, not just above and below the poverty line but in 4 parts.

WHAT to read:

1. You can create a list for yourself and keep adding on to it (and strike off whatever you would finish. You could take inspiration from www.gatesnotes.com

2. You could subscribe to Blinkist. This app converts books in the form of short blinks. Often not longer than 10 minutes. The free version of the app recommends you 1 book everyday. While there are a whole lot of critics for this app, I have found it useful to know if a book is worth picking up to read. And some Blinks were good enough without having to pick that book.

3. Read interviews of people you aspire to be like or follow, you would often find them recommending some books that have inspired them, and never hurts to read what inspired your inspirers.

Still feeling stuck. Take a minute to read further...

Years ago, it was extremely difficult to get access to books. Today however you find a lot of book chains, libraries. I am mighty impressed by the National Library Board set up by the government of Singapore to encourage reading. Where ever you are, you may find such public or private libraries, they often welcome suggestions for books you want to read, but may not be in their collection. Technology of course has made books easily accessible, this could either be ordering them on an Online book store or even reading e-books. I would encourage you to build this habit in yourself, and if you do have kids encourage them to read as well.