Published in El Pais, 4 August 2018.
The choice to read this article means that you are part of a group that is reducing every day. Several statistics show that the human being reads less every day and even though as parents we put a lot of value on our children learning to read and write well, very few people keep reading after they have finished their studies. In the Netherlands, the last five years, the percentage of people who read daily a newspaper has dropped from 65% to 49% and of magazines 21% to 11%.
There are good reasons to read. Reading activates your brain, helps you solve problems and have new ideas, improves your spelling, helps forming a good vision of the world, inspires you and improves your imagination.
Reading a complete book, an entire article or sit quietly to read the newspaper has become very special to many people. Television with programs available at any time of the day, Facebook with photos and videos, WhatsApp, Twitter, Vine, etc., caused that we do not want to put effort into things that do not provide instant entertainment. It has not been investigated but a video of a cat falling from the roof while trying to catch a bird attracts more attention than an article with about our environment.
There is another reason to read more. It has been shown that successful people read more than average people. Thanks to the books they read they have the ability to focus better without distractions and thus manage to better analyze a problem to find a solution. It was also shown that these people do not waste time. If they need to wait in a line or waiting room, they read a book, magazine or newspaper. So, they take advantage of learning something. These successful people rarely waste time on useless videos.
Do you want to enrich your life? Take a book or magazine, or load it on your phone if you know you have to wait. Reading helps you relax and move to a different world. Reading a biography of a celebrity or a novel improves your health and reduces stress in the bureaucratic situations.
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