Crack a book … turn those pages … feel the burn!

This article from Woman’s World cites research which demonstrates that reading a book for just 15 minutes per day can keep one’s mind sharp and even stave off disease.

Quote of Note:
“Another bonus: Dr. Willeumier says you don’t have to pick up a specific genre, like classic literature, to see the benefits. Instead, you can read whatever you want! Not only are you more likely to focus and actually pay attention if you’re invested in a book, but there’s a better chance you’ll read for longer if you actually enjoy what’s in front of you. Whether romance novels or biographies are your jam, crack open that book and set a timer for 15 minutes if you need it.”

Why books, in this age of screens?

Why not? While screens are crazy-convenient [and, also, addictive], they don’t afford you the nutrient-dense heft of a book. [Unless we get into ebook, Kindle country … those work, I guess. But right now, I’m kicking it paper-tome olde school.]

In his kick-ass [you guessed it] book, The Art of Impossible, Steven Kotler expresses why he prefers to learn from books.

Per Kotler: “Let’s take The Rise of Superman, my book on flow in the science of ultimate human performance. The book is around 75,000 words long, so it takes the average reader about five hours worth of effort. So what do you get for your five hours? In the case of Rise, about 15 years worth of my life.

Look at these figures listed below:

Blogs: three minutes gets you three days. Articles: twenty minutes gets you four months.
Books: five hours gets you fifteen years.

So why is it better to read books then blogs? Condensed knowledge. If you go on a blog bender and spend five hours reading my blogs, at 3 1/2 minutes per blog, you’ll manage to slog through about 86 of them — thus you’re treating those five hours for 257 days worth of my effort. Meanwhile, if you had spent those same five hours reading Rise, you would’ve gotten 5,475 days. Books are the most radically condensed form of knowledge on the planet. Every hour you spend with Rise is actually about three years of my life. You just can’t beat numbers like that.”

In the FastFulcrum courses I stress the value of focusing on a given activity for 10 minutes per day … at the end of a year, you’ve racked up 60 hours [2.5 days]. Viewing this 15 minutes of reading per day through this lens gives this approach a bit more weight.

After a year, how much might we know about a subject upon which we choose to focus if we read about it for 15 minutes? [AND we’re exercising our brains in the process!]

In the Remain Relevant 2.0 course we cover the distinction between “death by a thousand cuts” and the “journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Not trying to be dramatic or hyperbolic, here … but how much time do we allow to bleed away via frittering with our screens? Rather, if we took a measured, focused step towards something we want to master instead, where [and who] will we be after just a year?

Books. Can’t beat ’em. Get after one today.

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