Reading is a fundamental skill that every person needs to possess. 

Reading stimulates the brain. It leads people to a world of imagination, wonder and creativity.

It is an important key to success, personal development and to life itself. 

Here are the reasons as to why reading holds a key role to success: 

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Reading Leads to Learning

Reading is one of the many positive habits that the world’s richest business leaders and entrepreneurs all have. 

When asked what their success secrets are, most of them would often refer to reading as one. 

Just to name a few, here are 6 of the most famous and wealthiest people in the world who read a lot:

  • Warren Buffet, the owner of Berkshire Hathaway and Forbes’ 2016 third richest man in the world, shares to The Week that he consumes eighty percent of his day reading and thinking. 

Buffet said that he does not make impulsive business decisions because of reading and thinking a lot. 

  • Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, started his own bookclub, which he named ‘A Year of Books’. 

In one of his Facebook posts, he mentioned that books allow readers to explore and fully immerse themselves on a topic. 

  • Elon Musk, founder and CEO of Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, is an avid reader. His brother mentioned that Musk would often read two books in a day. 

Musk said that reading books was how he learned how to build rockets. 

  • Steve Siebold, a self-made millionaire, authored a book entitled, ‘How Rich People Think’. He interviewed at least 1,200 of the richest people in the world and found out that reading is their favorite hobby.

He added that the rich people read to be educated rather than to be entertained. 

  • Mark Cuban, a Billionaire investor and founder of MicroSolutions, mentioned in an interview that he usually stayed up until the wee hours in the morning reading about stamps. 

He further added that he did not have any clue about multi-user systems when he was new to PCs. It was reading books and magazines which helped him. 

In Tom Corley’s ‘Rich Habits: The Daily Success Habits of Wealthy People Individuals’, he mentioned that reading is one of the 16 habits of the rich. 

He said at least 80% of the rich allot 30 minutes of more of their day reading.

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Reading Improves Intelligence

Reading makes people smarter. This is the finding of a 1993 study entitled, “Does Reading Make You Smarter? Literacy and the Development of Verbal Intelligence”. 

In this study, the researchers defined being smarter as not only having abstract reasoning skills, but also possessing a wider vocabulary and more knowledge about the world. 

When asked on ways how to be smarter, Warren Buffett mentioned that reading at least 500 pages a day helps and that this builds up knowledge. 

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Reading Improves Cognitive Skills.

A 2013 study entitled, ‘Short- and Long-Term Effects of a Novel on Connectivity in the Brain’, found that apart from writing and doing brain-stimulating activities, reading at any age possibly helps preserve memory.

In business, having a sharp memory is an advantage. Apart from memorizing important dates and data, remembering names of people is essential to confidence and success too. 

As Dale Carnegie, author of ‘How to Win Friends and Influence Peoplesaid the sweetest sound to a person is his or her name.

Calling someone by his or her name echoes respect and interest. 

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Reading Improves Social Skills and Personality

‘Reading Literary Fiction Improves Theory of Mind’, a 2013 study, found its respondents’ performance on tests measuring emotional intelligence, social perception and empathy to have improved after reading excerpts from literary fiction. 

In 2014, two researchers from a Canadian University reviewed previous researches to find out if and how reading fiction affects one’s personality. They have concluded that reading promotes empathy. 

Some people may Being empathetic may be considered by some as a weakness. However, in business, it is important that employers relate to their people for better communication and relationships. 

Although knowing how to communicate is best learned when exposed to people, reading books authored by psychologists or motivational speakers might even help improve how you interact with people.  

Reading provides a wide range of experience that makes it possible for people to view their own lives from a new perspective and understanding. 

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Reading is Influential 

Reading influences the influencers and influences the young dreamers around the world to go out and turn their dreams into reality.

This blog has many reading lists, but today I want to make a list of the most influential entrepreneurial and success books that will change your life.

Malcolm Gladwell’sThe Tipping Point

Stephen R. Covey’s 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People

Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers: The Story of Success

Tim Ferriss’ The Four-Hour Work Week

Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson’s Rework

Daniel Pink’sA Whole New Mind

Michael Gerber’s The E-Myth

Scot Adam's How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life

Ed Catmull's Creativity, Inc.

Derek Sivers's Anything You Want: 40 Lessons for a New Kind of Entrepreneur