Then – a reader
I’m a reader from way back. My father loves to tell a story of how one evening many years ago, as he drove the family home from a night out he noticed a light go on right at the far back of the station wagon. Looking in the rear view mirror he saw me, aged 10, crouched over a torch and a book – desperate to finish one last chapter before we got home and my book was confiscated before bedtime.
Not much has changed since then – though my husband knows better than to try and confiscate my book regardless of how late I might be reading! I’m still an avid reader and I’ll find every opportunity to read.
Now – a reader
What has changed though are the books I read and how I read them. Then, it was all Nancy Drew and Anne of Green Gables, borrowed from the library as a physical book, and the time I had in which to read them was almost unlimited. After all as a kid, most of my time after homework was disposable – I could spend it doing whatever I wanted.
Now I am more likely to be reading a non-fiction book on management, leadership, technology or productivity which I’ve either bought or borrowed as an e-book primarily from Amazon. And I’m probably reading it in ‘stolen’ moments (micro-reading periods if you like) – waiting for a conference call or hangout to start; waiting for a friend to join me at lunch; or whilst at the hairdressers – rather than as one solid chunk of dedicated reading time.
But why steal those moments to read? Well it’s because I firmly believe that the more one reads, the more one learns and the more one learns, the better one becomes at one’s business.
And why read books rather than websites? Obviously I get a lot of my information from websites and I read those voraciously as well but I just find there’s three very good reasons for continuing to read books as well.
3 reasons why I read books not websites
1. Consolidated format
The longer, consolidated format of a book means authors have the chance to develop ideas, provide examples and go further into concepts than they can on a website.
Plus, if I’m not clear on something, or need to revisit an idea, I can easily do that in a book by using the search capability. Sometimes, in a website that original idea might be ‘hiding’ in a older article or section of the website, making it very difficult to find.
2. Offline reading
I know this reason sounds insane, but I might not actually have internet access when I want to read. A downloaded book (or physical book!) is obviously ideal for these situations and with Amazon Kindle, your reading location will sync across all devices. Start reading offline on your phone, pick up where you left off on your tablet and then finish up via the cloud reader web access. So convenient and definitely not something you can do with a webpage!
3. Mark ups and notes
When I’m reading I love to take notes, highlight bits and bookmark pages so I can refer to the ideas and thoughts over and over again. Bookmarking is possible with a webpage and Google Keep but with a book the sky’s the limit. I dog-ear pages, stick on post-it notes, and highlight paragraphs in both my physical and e-books – and again, the consolidated format of a book makes it easy to keep the linkages between ideas.
Let me know what you’re reading
I’d love to know which books you’re currently reading! Drop the title and author name in the comments and we’ll come up with a crowd-sourced reading list to help all of us.
By the way – if you’re looking for a book to read AND you want to get up to speed on using Google Keep, may I suggest checking out Mastering Google Keep by yours truly? It is designed around the principles of just-in-time learning and can definitely be absorbed over many micro-reading periods no problem.
(Image via Prasanna Kumar on Unsplash)