In this blog post and video, you’ll learn more about the benefits of reading.

Life is short.

What if – like me – you are busy and have many things on your plate.

For example, a family, kids at home or a business to manage, or all of these things 🙂

Is there still time for reading books, especially novels? And why should reading ever be a good idea?

Hy, my name is Julian. I‘m a husband, dad and business owner from Berlin, Germany. On this website and corresponding YouTube channel, I‘ll share with you some proven strategies on how to live a rich and meaningful life. 

If you watch this video until the very end, you’ll know…

• how reading can help improve your life
• the two things that motivate me to read books
• how you can be very intentional about when you choose to watch Netflix or read a good book
• how you can take advantage of the power of chunking when reading books

Benefits of reading: How reading can help improve your life

I googled “advantages of reading novels” when preparing this video. The first thing I saw was a comprehensive list of why reading is good for us. 

As you can see, reading has many advantages, like it exercises the brain, improves focus and concentration, improves sleep, is motivational, and helps reduce stress.

So, despite knowing these advantages, why is it still often easier to watch a Netflix series instead of reading a book? 

Well, it’s similar to the idea that eating an Apple is better for us than eating chocolate ice cream. What makes life choices like this even more of a challenge is that, at the end of the day, there is often not very much willpower left to do the right thing 🙂

How you can be very intentional about when you choose to watch Netflix or read a good book

I like watching a good series from time to time. For example, at the moment, my wife and I enjoy watching Star Trek Strange New Worlds. 

So I don’t say Netflix is bad. However, I invite you to be very intentional about when you do what. 

For example, it might be wise to read a book on weekdays and watch some Netflix at the weekend. The idea is to know precisely when we will watch TV and when we will prefer to read a good book. 

Ultimately, it’s a personal choice, and you can do whatever you like in your free time.

However, you may like to optimize yourself for maximum performance or consider yourself a go-getter and an overachiever. In that case, you might be interested in changing one thing or the other about your daily routines. 

The two things that motivate me to read books

What I discovered, my biggest motivators to read are:

1. When I read, I am forcefully pulled into the present moment and
2. When I read, I often get to experience more than one lifetime, at least that applies to reading a good novel.

Let’s have a quick look at each one of those:

First, it’s hard to think of anything else when reading a book because as soon as we do, we need to go back to read what we just read. 

So let’s say I’m sitting on the couch after my kids have gone to bed… I might be thinking about something that happened at work that day. And this might make me a bit uncomfortable. If I decide to pick up a novel at that precise moment, these thoughts will have no chance to populate my thoughts. 

Second, it’s a shame that we will all die at some point. We cannot do everything that might be worth experiencing. There is not enough time for that. The solution is to read about the lives of others. When we do that, we can effectively extend our own lifetime. 

Someone might say that experiencing something second-hand is not the same as experiencing something first-hand, and that’s right! However, with some fantasy, we can still come close to experiencing another life. 

The same thing can happen when we watch a good series on Netflix, so that’s also true.

The only issue is that watching TV in the evenings can make it difficult to fall asleep because of those blue light emissions and because we can quickly get emotionally stirred up by images of violence, or we get so hooked that we don’t know when to stop.

In contrast, a book forces us to become very still and concentrate on those text lines. 

I’d also argue that reading trains our creative imagination. That’s because, unlike on a TV screen, we can’t see the characters with our own eyes. Instead, we have to imagine how the main characters look, behave, and speak, for example.

How you can take advantage of the power of chunking when reading books

Finally, as promised, here is an easy way to make reading a part of your daily routine: just set a simple goal of reading 20 pages daily. If you only do that, you’ll be reading at least 600 pages per month, which equals one or two books. 

On some days, you might only find yourself reading 10 pages, and on others, you might read 30 pages or more. 

Benefits of Reading conclusion

So, my conclusion is: just like eating Apples is better than having ice cream, books are better than TV. Both are fine, though. 

The important thing is to become very intentional about what we do when. And in the case of Netflix, to know when to stop. 

If you’ve watched this video until here, when did you last read a novel? And what was the title? Please let me know in the comments below.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this blog post about the benefits of reading. If you liked this article, please also consider subscribing to my YouTube channel or sign-up for my newsletter if you are interested in watching or reading more Apple related content from me in the future.

If you liked this article, you might also like some of my book reviews, e.g.: The Big Leap or Richer Wiser Happier.

Thanks again for reading or watching this presentations of iOS 16 focus mode.