When reading is bad for you

It is assumed that there are many benefits of reading, but are there some instances when reading can be a waste of time? Is reading a double-edged sword? What do you think?

How many of us have ‘reading’ files on our computer or ‘reading piles’ in our office? And I’ll bet they never get emptied.

Reading has an insidious way of filling all the cracks in our day. If we are reading, we can tell ourselves that we are actually working. In fact, there’s a good chance we are simply wasting time.

No matter what we do, we are constantly reminded of the benefits of reading to stay on top of developments in our field and to have our finger on the pulse of what our industry and customers are doing.

As a solopreneur I have spent many hours doing just that – subscribing to relevant newsletters, reading two newspapers a day, flicking through magazines and checking out websites. And if you are in the blogosphere, you are well acquainted with the inviting nature of other people’s blogs on topics that interest you. Before you know it you are scanning 20 blogs per week!

My question is does all this reading actually add any value? One thing is certain, it is very time consuming.

As solopreneurs our time is valuable. If you are an avid reader, perhaps it’s time to take up the challenge and evaluate whether that the benefits of reading contribute to the success of your business.

Let’s take a two week window and see how much time is spent reading. Log the hours you spend:

reading the paper during business hours (reading while having breakfast or lunch is okay in my book);
reading on-line newsletters, blogs and other computer based material; and
reading magazines.

If you are reading for more than four hours a week, I’d suggest cutting back. You could be spending those four hours doing revenue generating activity, such as actually talking with clients or developing new products.

I felt somewhat vindicated in my views after reading The 4 Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss. One of the key strategies he mentions is to quit reading!

I’m not suggesting that all reading is worthless and that there are no benefits of reading, but I do believe we can be much more structured in our approach. Why not decide how much time should be spent on reading? In that context you may want to allocate only two hours per week to this activity. Then decide when you are going to do it and schedule it in to your diary like any other task.

Megan Tough runs Complete Potential, a company that helps businesses solve their strategy and people problems. She loves being a solopreneur, and when she doesn't have her nose to the grindstone, is fulfilling her other passion of fitness and health.

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Good point, Megan. I think many of us resort to reading on the job as a way of self-sabotage. It helps us avoid doing the things we know we need to do in business. I allocate an hour in the morning, first thing, to catching up on my on-line reading. That's it. No newspapers except on the weekend, no magazines, except last thing at night, and definitely no books during the day. It is all too easy to get side-tracked. And when faced with the stark realities of running a solo business, it is so tempting to do things that make us feel busy when we should be concentrating on income-generating activities. Just my own view. But I have another reason for avoiding too much reading: I am an author and can't afford to risk using anyone else's ideas, no matter how unintential that may be. Grant McDuling from Brisbane
At school we were required to do a speed reading class – which I thought was quite bizarre at the time – but has come in immensely useful, and probably saved me heaps of time. We were given a book – the biography of Prince Phillip (just what a 16 year old girl wants to read) and a machine that we put the book in. The machine ran a ruler horizontally down the page of the book. Initially the ruler went down the page slowly. We were instructed that as we looked at a paragraph we had to identify one key concept of the paragraph. After practising for a while, you sped up the machine, the ruler went down the page faster, and you had to identify the key concept in the paragraph faster. In a short time I had the machine operating at full pace. I had learnt the art of speed reading, and it has enabled me to read and absorb an enormous amount. Perhaps if you think you are spending too long reading you should consider practising skimming or speed reading. Heather Smith from Brisbane
I find that the headlines pretty much tell you everything unless its a topic that you really want to know about in-depth! Grant Hyman from Sydney | Read my articles
Is it April Fools' Day or something? This surely has to be some sort of joke. Reading a waste of time? Not part of a work day? Not wanting to learn from other people's ideas? How will what you bring to your work tomorrow be any more learned, considered, insightful or profound than what you offer today if you don't read anything new (or old)? Read two hours a week? Is that less time than TV watching (although I'm a fan of that too)? Was using a reference to a book as evidence of the merits of not reading the punchline? Karen Morath from Melbourne | Read my articles
As a freelance journo and book reviewer I have to read! Reading other people's stuff in the 18 farming papers a month I get (free) gives me ideas for my own articles and keeps me up with developments. Being a book reviewer gets me free books! I do use mealtimes and evenings mostly, just to keep up. Sue from Eureka, NZ
I'm kind of with Heather - I don't agree with skim reading, but my current speed reading skills mean I read around 750 words per minute (with NO loss of comprehension - I take in EVERY word). In real terms? If you don't speed read, you probably read around 200-250 words per minute - so I read around 3 times as fast as you do. And my speed is going up every day with practice. This means I can get through Uni course work in a quarter of the time it takes everyone else (while maintaining a Distinction average). I can read a book in a few hours. Articles and magazines are nothing. If you find your spending too much time reading (or if you read at all) - you HAVE to learn to speed read! Go and take a course ....ASAP ... this is a skill EVERYONE should have. Do it today!!! And Grant - as an author myself, I find it NECESSARY to read other authors. They inspire me ... help my imagination. No man is an island ... often, I'll get an idea from someone elses book that will spark a whole new direction in thought and turn into my own book. Leela. www.leelacosgrove.com Leela Cosgrove from Melbourne, Australia

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