If we are looking to start or grow a business, we must first grow ourselves. When it comes to growth as entrepreneurs, we need to increase our knowledge, develop our skills, gain perspective, boost our creativity, learn from others, manage stress, improve communication skills, and fine-tune our decision making processes.

All of this leads us to…. reading.

In the short-term, reading helps ease stress and provides us with information and inspiration. Over the long-term we gain expertise, refine our skills, and become more creative. Sadly, many of us are probably not reading a whole lot. In fact, Americans on average read about one book per year, whereas most CEOs read over 50 per year! Let’s shoot for reading one book per week to keep pace with those whose success we wish to emulate or at least learn from.

Let’s take a moment to go over the 5 main ways reading benefits us as budding entrepreneurs. Once we can understand the importance of adopting this habit it’ll be easy to see why it’s well worth our time to commit to it for the long haul. 

Knowledge and Skill-Building

This one probably comes as no surprise to anyone – books help you learn things. What’s fantastic though is how much variety there is and how deep the expertise goes within just a few hundred pages. While you could spend a whole college semester just beginning to cover a topic, you could read so many more books in that time and gain a vast amount of knowledge.

There are few other ways I can think of to gain experience more quickly than reading. When we read we can learn from decades of others’ experiences in a matter of hours or days. That sort of experience crunch gives us a huge advantage as we can learn from their mistakes and triumphs as we plan out our own course of action.

Books also offer this information in a very structured format, unlike learning from random blog posts or podcasts. In writing a book, the author takes great care to organize the content in order to best transfer their wisdom onto the reader. Getting all of the same information from multiple articles and podcasts may be possible, but would be less organized and polished.

And while reading may provide us with answers to the questions we’re asking, we may even find the answers to questions we haven’t even thought of yet! Reading expands our concept of what is out there, what is relevant, and what is possible.

Mentorship, Perspective, and Communication

Reading is a great way to expose yourself to a wide range of topics – and even better – find things that you wouldn’t have even known to look for in the first place. By reading the works of experts and sages we build a ‘library’ of mentors and advisors, all available whenever we need them.

While reading we naturally increase our empathy by exploring different perspectives, improving our social perception, and recognizing that what we’re reading comes from someone who is just as human as we are – even if their view is different from ours. Expanding our viewpoint and exposure in this way enables us to better understand and connect with our teams and customers.

And from all of this, we begin to develop better communication skills. Reading gives us exposure to different writing and language styles which we can incorporate into our own verbal and written content. We learn how to relate to others’ viewpoints and therefore how to craft our message accordingly.

Cognitive Function

Reading is very beneficial to our cognitive function. An important distinction between learning through reading and learning in other forms is that the information in books is offered in a structured manner. Authors go through a thorough planning and editing process to ensure that what they are providing for you is delivered in a logical and effective format. This can aid in both the comprehension of the material as well as your retention of it.

Learning in this way also gives us the tools to make better and more informed decisions. Not only are we taking in more information, but we improve our analytical thinking and decision making process. Reading guides us through the steps of identifying a problem, developing alternate solutions, testing our assumptions, validating our ideas, and then learning from the whole process. These skills can then be seamlessly applied in other areas of our lives.

Stress Management

Perhaps a more unexpected benefit, reading is an extremely effective stress relieving activity. Why? Getting into ‘reading mode’ puts us into a thorough state of relaxation. As we read we begin to visualize the information, connect with the characters or author, and slowly forget about everything else that was worrying us out in the ‘real world.’ Settling into the narrative melts away the stress of our everyday lives and is considered an effective method for treating anxiety.

A study from the University of Sussex found that “even 6 minutes of reading a day is enough to reject ⅔ of the daily stress a person faces,” and this 6-minute reading session is enough to slow your heart rate and reduce muscle tension, leading to a bonus physical relaxation. A 2009 study found that reading lead to a 68% reduction in stress levels – more than other stress management techniques such as listening to music, drinking a cup of tea, playing video games, or going for a walk. And reading for at least 30 minutes per week was shown to improve overall life satisfaction by 20% – just 30 minutes per week! Now that’s amazing!

Synthesis and Creativity

Our final benefit opens up endless possibilities going forward – synthesis and creativity. Entering what is essentially an altered state of consciousness while we read encourages our brains to be more open to accepting new viewpoints as well as better able to organize and process them.

When we read we have the ability to very easily delve into a vast array of topics. Self-education is encouraged, or almost assured, through reading. Books can provide sources of not only information but also inspiration – while reading we tend to visualize and imagine the story or settings in our minds, improving our ability to ‘see’ things that do not exist in front of us. This stimulates the imagination, which is another way of saying creativity, which is the key to innovation. The stress-reducing aspect of reading also makes more mental and emotional space for creativity to occur.

Synthesis involves bringing together multiple ideas, information, or viewpoints. Reading stimulates the part of the brain that is responsible for memory, which then aids in information retention and enables us to begin to piece together multiple ideas from a variety of sources. This is yet another way that reading contributes to innovation.

If You’re Still Not Convinced…

… try it for yourself! Commit to reading just a bit each day (maybe 6 minutes?) and see how it goes. Take notice of any changes you notice in any of the categories listed above. After sticking with it for a bit, do you now think it’s worth continuing?

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