Why reading books makes you smarter.
Reading books not only makes you smarter, it's also really smart to read books for your overall quality of life and health. Tweet
Highlights
Read all about it! Because there's no better way to gain information you can use.
Books make you smarter better than almost anything. Plus, lifting a stack of ten will make you stronger, too.
Intuitively, you know it’s true:
Reading books makes you smarter.
But have you ever wondered why reading books makes you smarter than, say, listening to lectures or watching YouTube videos?
Have you ever wondered why reading books makes you smarter than, say, listening to lectures? Read this.
Based on this article from Healthline, the world’s fastest-growing health-information site, here are some key ways reading a book is for your brain like lifting weights for your biceps:
1. Reading exposes you to new ideas.
This seems obvious, but let’s drill into it a bit:
- Reading can expose you to ideas that are completely new to you, for instance when you pick up a book about the Civil War when you know almost nothing about it.
- Or reading can expose you to new ideas about something you already know about it. For instance, if you do know a lot about the Civil War you can learn about a battle or set of troops that you didn’t know about buy reading a new book about the Civil War to expand your knowledge.
2. Reading exposes you to different cultures and types of people.
And keep in mind that cultures and types of people who live halfway around the world; culture can also apply to people who simply live or work in a place, even nearby, that is different than how you live or work. So, for instance, if you work in a large office with lots of other people in cubicles doing the same thing you do, another company across town that is small and collaborative has a completely different culture than where you work. And you might want to learn about how their culture (and people) are different because you might prefer to work someplace like that, too.
3. Reading will expand your vocabulary.
If you think vocabulary doesn’t matter, go have a conversation about something important to you with a three-year-old. Even if the three-year-old understands what you are trying to say, he or she probably won’t be able to respond or engage in any kind of meaningful way, and that may frustrate you and prevent you from trying to continue the conversation with this three-year-old. What you’re experience here is the impact of limited vocabulary. And if you don’t do things to expand your own vocabulary, there may be people in your life (colleagues, bosses, friends, girlfriends) who sometimes write you off the same way because trying to have a conversation with you about some things is limited by your limited vocabulary.
4. Reading makes you a better problem-solver.
Reading quickly immerses you into other situations you might never otherwise experience, and you don’t even need to leave your chair. This means that within hours or days, you can immerse yourself in many different situations and also learn about how others managed those situations. And then you get to apply the wisdom of experience from reading about those situations to your own circumstances, even though you never lived through those situations yourself. All of that combined experience, both lived and read, will make you a far better problem solver.
5. Reading is good for your brain.
Your brain is a muscle. Reading exercises the muscle like lifting weights exercises your biceps. When you exercise your brain by reading, it can help prevent cognitive decline and memory loss down the road.
Bottom line:
Reading books not only makes you smarter, it’s also really smart to read books for your overall quality of life and health.
Don’t believe what you just read? Here’s a video explaining it all:
