Don’t Read Books? Here Are Some Reasons

The habit of reading is perhaps the best habit one can have; a person who does not like books is indeed poor. When you don’t read good books, you shut out of your life the collected wisdom of other people and miss out on learning from their experiences. Quite likely the reasons you do not like to read could be one or more of the below

1) Ego OR Complacency – You think you know everything that is necessary for you to live your life, and there is nothing that books can teach you. You are satisfied with what you know and have no desire to learn anything new. You could also equate books with academics and thus feel that books are to read only for studies in schools and colleges. The fact is that academic books provide just a fraction of the knowledge and wisdom needed in today’s world.

2) Rigid beliefs – You are afraid that if you read you might come across something that will shake your existing beliefs, religious/cultural conditioning or worldview. Your beliefs/conditionings have created such deep grooves in your mind that they now control you, and you are afraid to explore anything new.

3) Habit – You are simply not in the habit of reading and get restless when you pick up a book to read. Nobody in your childhood encouraged you to read so the habit could not develop. Someone in your childhood could have wrongly conditioned you that reading too many book leads to confusion and so on.

4) Distractions – You get sucked in by the many distractions in our digital society, such as social media, mobile gaming, to the extent that you no longer have time or energy to read (even if you innately like to read). Also, the more you use digital technology, the shorter the attention span becomes. Thus, you find it difficult to read books that take time to complete.

 5) You are too busy and spend most of your time in your job/business, etc.

Whatever the reason for you not to read, try to rise above it and make it a point to read at least two good books a month. You will learn more about human nature by reading classics like David Copperfield, Brothers Karamazov, etc. than by reading books on human resource management.