Why You Should Read Less Books
"To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting." — Edmund Burke
If you don’t read any books, ignore this post. This message is for proud bookworms who boast about their yearly reading challenges on Goodreads.
Let’s start by restating the goal of this newsletter: I want to help you make better decisions, so that you can be wealthy and happy. Taking this into account, reading books is better than binge watching Netflix or scrolling through your Instagram feed. Reading takes more effort than watching a video — and it engages more brain regions as a consequence. According to Harvard Medical School:
A number of brain regions are involved in reading and comprehension. Among them are the temporal lobe, which is responsible for phonological awareness and for decoding and discriminating sounds; Broca’s area in the frontal lobe, which governs speech production and language comprehension; and the angular and supramarginal gyrus, which link different parts of the brain so that letter shapes can be put together to form words.
In contrast, watching Netflix stimulates brain regions that process visual information and deal with emotion. There’s nothing wrong with films or TV shows, but they are more passive activities that make your brain work less than books. No wonder Instagram reels or Tiktok shorts are so addictive.
Reading is better, but it’s not always the best activity to sharpen your brain.
The forgetting curve
We forget most of the information we consume, especially if we only read it once. After 24h, we forget 50% of what we consume, and after 7 days, 90%. In the long run, only a tiny percentage of information makes it to our long-term memory. Our life values, preferences, and beliefs are shaped by the select set of experiences and lessons stored in our long-term memory. On a more philosophical note, the vast majority of our life experiences, interactions and reads goes to waste with little to show for it.
We live 100% of our lives, but we hardly remember 10% of it.
German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus discovered that by reviewing material at increasingly longer intervals, the rate of forgetting can be significantly reduced. This technique, known as spaced repetition, helps solidify information in long-term memory.
I couldn’t find any information on re-reading habits, but my intuition tells me people hardly re-read books they’ve already read.
Reading the same book twice is better than reading two different books.
Authors rely on your attention
If information contained calories, we would be morbidly obese. Much like sugar, information is addictive. It makes sense, because our ancestors relied on it to survive. If they knew a lion was preying on them behind the bushes, they could get ready to avoid the threat. Nowadays, however, we could live without knowing Di Caprio dumped his girlfriend.
But this also applies to less trivial news. Journalists’ job is to bid for your attention. Boring headlines don’t make the news — dramatic stories do. Information we deem reputable is centralised in the media and government agencies, whose incentives clash against readers’ best interest. Internet blogs or newsletters don’t inspire the same amount of credibility in most people.
But most books do.
Most best-sellers’ main goal is to sell and elevate the author’s social status. Writers probably enjoy the process and offer valuable information or engaging stories. But the ultimate goal is selfish. This is the so-called agency problem. In Taleb’s words:
There is no difference between a journalist at The Guardian and the restaurant owner in Milan, who, when you ask for a taxi, calls his cousin who does a tour of the city to inflate the meter before showing up. Or the doctor who wilfully misdiagnoses you to sell you a drug in which he has a vested interest.
Infoxication
Selfish incentives aside, our brain can only take in so much information. You’re bombarded with new information everyday, especially if you’re a curious person or you’re dealing with a new situation. According to Harvard Business Review:
When our brains are overloaded with too much data from the outside world, we can struggle to absorb, process, and make sense of it — hampering our ability to make smart decisions and perform at our best. The Information Overload Research Group (yes, this exists) has a word for this feeling: infoxication.
I’ve had this feeling many times, and I didn’t know it had a name. If you’re anything like me, you’re constantly consuming new information about disparate topics. This makes you knowledgeable about many things, but also leads to a constant state of confusion and bewilderment. Your brain gets messy and your thinking lacks clarity. This ties into the concept of cognitive flexibility.
Cognitive flexibility is defined as the mental ability to switch between thinking about two different concepts according to the context of a situation. According to a study from Nature, “cognitive flexibility promotes academic achievement, employment success, successful transitioning to adulthood and other optimal life outcomes”.
While it’s generally perceived as a positive trait, cognitive flexibility has a dark side too, especially if it’s extreme. Cognitive flexibility can lead to difficulties in decision-making and foster anxiety. It can also make it hard for us to maintain a sense of identity and stay consistent with our goals.
Conclusion
Reading less, but more thoughtfully, can enhance your knowledge retention and cognitive health. Focus on quality over quantity, re-read good books, and use techniques like spaced repetition to solidify your understanding. By doing so, you'll make better decisions and lead a wealthier, happier life.
Join the chat
I’d like to have a closer relationship with my readers, so I’ve enabled the chat for this newsletter. Do you think you read too much or too little? You can share your views in a thread.
Really interesting especially about retention. I try and read 50-75 books per year (mostly novels) and I think that’s the right amount for me. I read them faster and less reflectively than when I was doing a Lit degree but I think it works especially alongside reading articles, Substacks, my day job as an editor, and editing my Grandfather’s manuscript, writing my own Substack, and I’m over halfway through the first rough draft of a novel. I love rereading favourites but I’m not usually a rereader or rewatcher of things. I think stories are our entertainment so perhaps it doesn’t matter how much retain if we enjoy the journey! Great article. 🤩
Thanks for the post, really insightful! It is also funny that the title of the post is quite catchy ☺️