Why I believe “Read Books” is the worst advice ever?
Since the time I began my self growth journey the advice that I have received time and again is “Read books!.”
While I agree that this actually might be the best advice but it’s incomplete.
Our generation belongs to a section of human population who has unprecedented access to information right in the palm of their hand.
Me being in my early 20s took huge advantage of that and consumed content in every possible way.
I have read books, listened to audiobooks, watched so many YouTube videos, heard podcasts. I’ve been advised to read a 100 books a year. Some YouTuber asked me to read one book/week and some even told me to read one book every day!
And I did that for a while. I consumed content like crazy. And although I agree that I know a lot of things that I didn’t know before but I couldn’t see a lot of actual growth in let’s say the amount of money I make, or my relationships, or anything that was promised to me will change when I start reading books.
And since then I’ve wondered “Huh! What did I do wrong”?
I think I have found out the answer. With information being thrown at me from every possible direction I kind of forgot to make sense of it.
You see when we watch any movie or a TV show or read a fiction novel we do not need to do anything but to consume all this content.
But when it comes to reading self help books there’s one more step to the process. We need to process it, assimilate it and then apply it to our lives.
I know your reaction. You think “Yeah Dummy. I know that. It’s kind of implied”.
Well I know you know, but just ask yourself how many times you actually did that? I used to always skip to the next video or to the next book before making sense of the previous one. And I feel I am not alone.
And this actually leads to a bigger problem which I’ve been through. I believed that I am putting in efforts to improve myself. But without actually applying whatever I read I was no better than the person who didn’t read the book.
In fact I would go a step further and say it did nothing rather than filling me up with pseudo confidence thinking I am better than everyone and it’s giving me an edge which it did not. I became well read rather than well learned. And the difference is huge!
In the fast paced world that we live in it’s not very uncommon to miss the obvious things like this.
So all I’m asking you is whenever you pick up your next self help book or anything in that genre always remind yourself that “I need to make sense of this and apply it to my life.
Make sure whenever giving a recommendation you always say this from now on “Read and apply this book”.
Because it matters:)
Keep learning.
Keep applying.
Keep growing:)
