Do you want to be more productive throughout the day? One of the best ways to do so is reading in the morning.
If you feel sluggish and unproductive throughout the day, it’s because you checked your social media first thing in the morning.
So, if you want to remedy this, you have to change your habits.
Instead of watching online videos or mindlessly scrolling through social media immediately after you wake up, you should grab a book or magazine and read.
This will get your brain to think and will set the tone for the day.
“How can reading do this?” you may be wondering.
Well, here are 5 reasons how reading will give you a productivity boost.
1) Reading Stimulates the Brain in a Positive Way
There have been many studies on the negative effects of social media. One of the main ones is that it can make you feel inadequate.
And when you feel low or down early in the day, it’s hard to be energetic and productive.
In addition to that (pending on who you follow), there’s also lots of negativity and hate going around on there too, which adds more weight to your bad mood.
Reading, on the other hand, stimulates your brain for the better. It challenges your brain to comprehend and imagine.
It will also encourage you to think critically.
For whatever reason, doing these types of difficult, stimulating tasks early on in the day helps you think clearer and be more focused.
2) Reading Will Improve Your Memorization (And This Will Increase Your Productivity)
Okay, so this is a pretty obvious one. As you read, you will be practicing memorization because you have to remember what’s going on in the story (and remember the characters as well).
That’s cool and dandy, but the important thing about this is what the practice of memorization is doing for your brain.
It’s stimulating it (or making it work). It’s warming your brain up so that it can be strenuously used throughout the day.
And if you can increase your focus and use more brainpower for a longer period of time, your productivity will improve.
Additionally, if you highlight and take notes from the texts that you’re consuming, your brain will stimulate more.
3) Reading Will Force You to Be Mindful (Which Will Increase Productivity)
Reading is one of those activities that require a lot of concentration.
You have to focus on the words that you are reading or else you will forget an important detail in the story, for instance (or, more annoyingly, you will forget who a character is).
And to put in that much focus, you have to be mindful of what you are doing.
So, as you read, you have to read. You have to pay attention to your thoughts and not let them stray from the text.
By mastering this skill early in the day, you will be able to keep your mind clear and on the tasks that you are doing.
You won’t start thinking about random things (or if you do, you can reel them back) and be focused on the crucial things that you have to do.
4) Reading Will Reduce Stress (And This Will Increase Your Productivity)
Stress often interferes with productivity.
When you are stressed, it’s hard to focus on your work. It clogs your mind with a bunch of distractions.
And when your mind is all over the place, it’s very difficult to think or concentrate on one thing.
So, the solution to this is reading. It will clear up your mind by reducing stress. Here’s how (according to a 2009 study):
“It really doesn’t matter what book you read, by losing yourself in a thoroughly engrossing book you can escape from the worries and stresses of the everyday world and spend a while exploring the domain of the author’s imagination. This is more than merely a distraction but an active engaging of the imagination as the words on the printed page stimulate your creativity and cause you to enter what is essentially an altered state of consciousness.”
5) Reading Will Improve Your Vocabulary (And Thus, Your Productivity Too)
Okay, so you understand why reading will improve your vocabulary, right? Okay, good.
Having a vast vocabulary will help with your productivity because by knowing more words, you’ll know exactly which ones to use to express or describe something.
And by being able to confidently and swiftly do this, it will be one less thing that you have to worry about.
It may sound like a stretch, but hear me out.
Let’s say you are writing an essay. And you are trying to describe something, but can’t seem to think of the right word.
So, you write down the one that has the closest meaning to it and mark it.
But as you continue to write your piece, that one word with the underline keeps bothering you.
So, you have to pull up a thesaurus and look for the word you want.
Now, you are wasting time and taking your mind off of the main task, which is writing the essay.
This impairs your flow and interrupts your concentration.
Thus, if you had read more, you would have learned and remembered more words and saved time. You could have just focused on the task at hand.
Final Thoughts
The most important thing about reading in the morning is that it will stimulate your brain so that you can think more clearly throughout the day.
If you are mindful, you will get more work done because your focus is channelled.
Hence, don’t reach for your device first thing in the morning (unless your phone is your alarm clock, then turn it off first.
But put it away immediately after).
Grab a book instead and you will be more productive.