1. Mental Stimulation
Just like any other muscle in the body, the brain requires exercise to keep it strong and healthy. Reading is a great cognitive stimulate.
2. Stress Reduction
No matter how much stress you have at work, in your personal relationships, or countless other issues faced in daily life, it all just slips away when you lose yourself in a great story. A well-written novel can transport you to other realms, while an engaging article will distract you and keep you in the present moment, letting tensions drain away and allowing you to relax.
3. Knowledge
Everything you read fills your head with new bits of information, and you never know when it might come in handy. The more knowledge you have,
Here’s a bit of food for thought: should you ever find yourself losing everything—your job, your possessions, your money, even your health—knowledge can never be taken from you.
4. Vocabulary Expansion
This goes with the above topic:
The more you read, the more words you gain exposure to, and they’ll inevitably make their way into your everyday vocabulary.
Being articulate and well-spoken is of great help in any profession and knowing that you can speak to higher-ups with self-confidence can be an enormous boost to your self-esteem. It could even aid in your career, as those who are well-read, well-spoken, and knowledgeable on a variety of topics tend to get promotions more quickly (and more often) than those with smaller vocabularies and lack of awareness of literature, scientific breakthroughs, and global events.
Reading books is also vital for learning new languages, as non-native speakers gain exposure to words used in context, which will ameliorate their own speaking and writing fluency.
5. Memory Improvement
When you read a book, you must remember an assortment of characters, their backgrounds, ambitions, history, and nuances, as well as the various arcs and sub-plots that weave their way through every story. That’s a fair bit to remember but brains are extraordinary and can remember these things with relative ease.
Amazingly enough, every new memory you create forges new synapses (brain pathways) [3] and strengthens existing ones, which assists in short-term memory recall as well as stabilizing moods.[4] How cool is that?
If you want to learn more about how to increase brain power, boost memory and become 10x smarter, check out this technique!
6. Stronger Analytical Thinking Skills
Have you ever read an amazing mystery novel, and solved the mystery yourself before finishing the book? If so, you were able to put critical and analytical thinking to work by taking note of all the details provided and sorting them out to determine “whodunnit”.
That same ability to analyze details also comes in handy when it comes to critiquing the plot; determining whether it was a well-written, the characters are properly developed, if the storyline ran smoothly, etc.
Should you ever have an opportunity to discuss the book with others, you’ll be able to state your opinions clearly, as you’ve taken the time to really consider all the aspects involved.
7. Improved Focus and Concentration
In our internet-crazed world, attention is drawn in a million different directions at once as we multi-task through every day.
In a single 5-minute span, the average person will divide their time between working on a task, checking email, chatting with a couple of people, monitoring their smartphone, and interacting with co-workers. This type of ADD-like
When you read a book, all of your attention is focused on the story—the rest of the world just falls away, and you can immerse yourself in every fine detail you’re absorbing.
Try reading for 15-20 minutes before work (i.e. on your morning commute, if you take public transit), and you’ll be surprised at how much more focused you are once you get to the office.
Additional information: if you find staying focus hard and re trying to improve your focus, it’s possible you’ve been doing it wrong.
8. Better Writing Skills
This goes hand-in-hand with the expansion of your vocabulary:
Exposure to published, well-written work has a noted effect on one’s own writing, as observing the cadence, fluidity, and writing styles of other authors will invariably influence your own work.
In the same way that musicians influence one another, and painters use techniques established by previous masters, so do writers learn how to craft prose by reading the works of others.
Winter-Hébert, Lana. “10 Benefits of Reading: Why You Should Read Every Day.” Lifehack, Lifehack, 18 Oct. 2018, www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/10-benefits-reading-why-you-should-read-everyday.html.
“10 Benefits of Reading: Why You Should Read Every Day”