Fiction vs. Nonfiction: the WHY, the WHAT, the WHEN
& how blue-light affects our thinking capacities
Reading both genres is a necessity. Don’t listen to anyone who tells you otherwise; they’ve already put a limit on their thinking capacities. But by building upon this common knowledge, we can utilize biological responses at certain times in the day to absorb content, in order to better ‘hack’ our brains.
This is a concept I first learned from mastermind, Tim Ferriss (Tim Ferriss), but then dug in a little deeper and found some research to support this hypothesis.
Here’s the gist: read nonfiction during the daylight hours to wake up (preferably in the morning), and then read fiction just before bed (after sundown) to put your brain back to sleep.
Do not misinterpret that into “fiction is boring” or “reading fiction is frivolous.” We ought to know that fiction is important by now. Listen to Albert Camus, french philosopher and author of The Stranger: “Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.”
Rather, there is a cognitive processing response that differs in our minds when we are analyzing versus empathizing. Both of these harness our brain power…
