The Most Important Reason Why You Need to Read

Elon Musk runs two huge companies, dabbles around with countless new ideas and is probably involved with several projects on a day to day basis. 

Does he read books? How on earth would he find time to do that? 

He does, on his iPhone because he travels a lot. And he said this in 2014 when iPhones came with tiny screens. 

“ … it may sound like it’s tiny, but it’s always with you.”

If the world’s richest and possibly the busiest man can find time to read and doesn’t care about the time or the way to go about it, then so can we all. 

Why read? Well, there are some obvious answers of course, like a number of world’s most successful people have been voracious readers. Warren Buffet has attributed his success to hours of reading every day. 

But then there are immensely successful people who’ve probably not read a lot of books. They compensated for it with their excellent people skills, extreme ambition, specific skillset etc. Think politicians, artists, sports stars. 

So why read? 

Well, firstly, no matter what you do, reading will give you an edge over others. Elon Musk and Warren Buffet are geniuses in their own right, and if they think reading helps then it surely does. 

Reading a great book is a different experience than watching a bunch of videos on the same subject. 

A book helps you focus on the details. Your mind has to do the work because there are no visual aids for it to relax (which is what happens when you watch a video). Your brain fires up its neurons to help you imagine. 

And make no mistake, imagination is critical to creativity and hence, to success.

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.” 

Albert Einstein

Read to focus. Read to deep dive. 

And, most importantly …

Read to imagine.