With everything getting consumed faster last few decades, starting with fast food, we grew more and more impatient. Remember the dial-up internet connection for which you would have to wait at least a few minutes to have your browser up and running? Nobody has that patience anymore. Nobody wants to read anything more than a couple of short paragraphs. Even videos longer than 30 seconds are too long to invest our time. Our attention and concentration spans are getting shorter and shorter.

Maybe it’s because we have an abundance of meaningless and repetitive videos and texts that we get bombarded by every day. Maybe life gets so crazy and hectic that extreme multitasking became our new normal. Maybe we should slow down a little. Maybe we should pick a good book and enjoy reading for a couple of hours without interruption.

Reading activates neurons in our brain that no other activity can ignite which leads to improvements in our cognitive skills. Keeps our memory alive, reduces stress, broadens our imagination and creativity, develops critical thinking skills, helps with concentration. Reading takes less time than listening. So as a result, the brain processes both visual and verbal information much more effectively. This improves our decision-making and planning capabilities. It makes us smarter.

Reading has also been reported to delay dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. And interestingly, it improves our social skills by expanding our ability to articulate our thoughts. It helps us to stay in the moment. It allows us to focus on the road during the journey.

Make reading a book part of your daily routine. Don’t say you don’t have time for it. You always have time for anything you really want to do. Just make sure you chose a book that is interesting for you, that will take you to another world. And make sure you just read while reading, stay at the moment. Be aware of what you are doing. Give all your attention to your reading activity.

If you have the habit of reading regularly, every day, you are already there, but if you don’t, I would suggest you give up a little bit of your screen time and start reading an actual book.

By the way; I also would suggest you try and see if you can get your books from a local library. I have been getting all my books, including paper books, e-books and audio-books from the library for more than a year now and I cannot believe I didn’t use the library more efficiently in the past. I was very pleasantly surprised by the variety of resources libraries provide. Movies, online courses, all versions of books, newspapers and magazines are all available to the public. If you have access to it, you might as well benefit from it.

Happy reading…