Is one book a week worth it?

We all keep hearing these millionaires and personal development experts emphasizing on reading books and most of them have got a clue about what they are saying. But this blog is specifically about reading one book every week which accounts for 52 books a year. This certainly sounds really promising in regard to self development but this idea itself has pros and cons.

Pros:

1.Perspective:

In a “not so thoughtful” routine, reading books religiously can drastically change and improve your perspective about everything in your. From career to habits, personal choices to relationships and influence, books can be your ultimate mentors and when you divide a book in to seven days, you basically schedule some time of your each day with the best advisors out there.

2.Knowledge:

Even if you’re reading a non self development book or something that’s not specifically helpful to you, 1 book a week formula can still provide a lot of knowledge about abstract things in the world and can elaborate things from different thought dimensions.

3.Discipline:

When you intend to make 1 book per week a habit, it will be an interesting test to your discipline. You would have to show up every single day no matter how you feel or what you are doing. Once you successfully find your flow with reading books this way, you would feel the potential within yourself to form other great habits that you have been putting on hold for a while.

Cons:

1.Information Overload:

After working the whole day, communicating with others and exchanging the different kinds of information, you come home mentally and physically exhausted and want to relax a bit. Now reading a book would feel like another chore you would have to put up with. Especially for those with professions where absorbing and processing information is your main job, reading a book would not be a relaxation ritual but another source for straining your memory.

2.All Info, No Action:

The success is not just about absorbing the quality information, it’s more about putting this information into use. As our perspective shifts depending on our needs, our routine needs to shift accordingly. So, a rigid behavior would not reap any beneficial outcomes and would only give you new problems. What would you do with all this information if there’s no time left for action?

3.Book Length:

And saving the best for the last, the most important fact is that not every book takes a week to get finished. While it’s possible to increase your reading speed and improve reading tactics to some extent, not every book fits into one book a week formula. Some books are exceptionally long but at the same time filled with all the information you need to excel in a particular journey. You would need more time to ingest it and make it useful for yourself by taking notes and all. And most of us cannot give more than one hour to reading everyday.

What to do instead?

Focus on reading instead of book:

No matter how much time it took you to finish a book, the main objective should be you reading everyday. This is the long term benefit. Trying to fit every book within a week on the other hand, is not really effective or sustainable in the long run. After forcing yourself for few weeks, you would eventually want to give up something that’s not really serving you.

Flexible time duration:

As reading one whole book a week is not necessary, reading for 1 hour or 45 minutes is also not something you are obliged to do. Read as it adjusts to your schedule and don’t waste your time to absorb information when you have the option to make more time for action.

Keep it targeted:

If a book and an online course are offering same kind of information, go for an online course as a smart way for attaining more knowledge. A book might take 3–4 weeks in giving you information about the same topic which you can get in one week using a course. So, always go for smarter ways for getting things done. Reading book is a good habit, choose a more light and non urgent knowledge for this and delegate your urgent needs to smarter tools. But remember, just because online courses are offering quick knowledge does not they can replace the books altogether. Books, pens and watches are timeless tools no matter what happens in the world.