Why you should read daily
A book is the words, the ideas, mindset, advice and experience of another person wrapped into a convenient, portable, always available…
A book is the words, the ideas, mindset, advice and experience of another person wrapped into a convenient, portable, always available collection of papers.
This is one of my favourite videos on YouTube and I don’t think I could have expressed the idea any better myself. I highly recommend that you take those three and a half minutes of your hectic and extremely busy life to watch it. Of course, the quote above gives you a reasonable summary as well.
As an employee in most corporations, you’ve likely run into the idea of having a mentor at work. Someone who is senior to you, frequently older or more experienced. They are expected to share their knowledge with you to help you progress in your career. This is a wonderful system (at least in theory) since we can learn from past mistakes and seek advice from more accomplished colleagues.
It sounds great for those 40 hours a week you spend at work. What about the other 72 awake hours you have? How come we don’t seek out mentors for that larger portion of our lives? Of course, if you do, more power to you. I personally don’t know anyone who has successfully maintained such a relationship.
This brings me back to the video above. Since about the age of 20, I’ve been reading all sorts of non-fiction. I never had a good reason to. I just knew that I enjoyed it. Since watching the video, The idea of mentorship opened my eyes to much deeper reasoning. Here is why.
Each time you read a book, you get to pick a topic, any topic and learn from a world class expert in the field about all the lessons and mistakes they’ve encountered, in a concise and rigorous way. The book can usually be consumed in about 7–30 days. Rinse and repeat.
Books are the ideal kind of mentorship. Through the filter of time and amazon reviews, all the garbage will die out and you’ll be left with the gems. The topic is up to you. The depth of the topic is up to you. The quantity is also up to you. Finally, the schedule is up to you. No single human mentor can live up to that.
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