Why You Should Read Personal Development Books – And How To Find Time

Written by Ali Luke - 34 Comments
Categories: blogging, motivation, productivity tips, reading, self education, self improvement

Image courtesy of Moriza

Since you’re reading Pick the Brain, it’s a safe bet that you’ve got some level of interest in self-improvement, personal development, or simply getting a bit more from life. Whatever your goals, you’re hoping that you’ll find some advice that will help you reach them. You might well read a number of other popular blogs on similar topics, such as Dumb Little Man or Zen Habits.

Yet, although you’re getting some good advice and putting some tips into practice, you might feel like you need a bit more. You’re skimming blogs on coffee breaks at work, or in between childcare duties at home. And with bite-sized posts of 600 words or so, bloggers are only covering individual topics in discreet sections.

If you want to take yourself to a new level, you need to read books as well as blogs.

Why Should I Read Books?

Don’t get me wrong, blogs are great, and you can get true and deep insights from individual blog posts. They’re also easy to fit into your day, and there tends to be a focus on practical, easy-to-implement advice. But books can complement blogs powerfully:

Books Give You Greater Depth

It’s an obvious point, but a three hundred page book allows an  author to fully explore a particular theme or theory: a three hundred word blog post doesn’t allow for much depth. Books can help you to make a paradigm shift or step up a level in your thinking.

When You Read Books, You Focus More

Are you skimming this? Look how I’ve put in subheaders to help you follow the argument. If this was a book, the paragraphs would be longer and you might have pages and pages without a subheading. When we read on paper, we tend to be much more focused than when reading online: no stopping to answer emails or see what’s being said on Twitter.

You’ve Paid For The Book

We often value things we’ve paid for over things that are free. Whilst I’m fully in favour of the amount of free content available online, I do find that I’m more likely to commit myself to in-depth reading when I’ve paid for a book.

Hopefully I’ve convinced you of the “why” – now you just need to find time to do some reading…

Finding Time To Read Books

With most of us spending a lot of the day in front of a computer screen, blogs slip easily into little gaps of time, with content designed to be read in just a few minutes. Books are trickier – do you buy books and leave them unread on a shelf for months, even years? Do you make resolutions to read every day, but end up falling into bed each evening without having cracked the spine of your book?

I find that the best way to “make time” is simply to get into a book: once I’m hooked, the extra time seems to materialize from nowhere! Having said that, you might find it easier if you can establish a routine of reading at a particular time of day:

First Thing In The Morning

Reading something motivational can be a great start to your day. The beginning of the day is a great time to work on any big goal: it means that your reading won’t be squeezed out by other demands on your time.

In Your Lunch Hour

If you tend to work through lunch – or if you end up watching YouTube clips and looking at LOLcats – try reading a book instead. It gives your eyes a break from the glowing screen. Find a park bench (which means you’re actually outside!) and steal half an hour away from fluorescent lights and glowing computer screens to really immerse yourself in a different world. Just this switch in environment will allow more absorption and enjoyment of the material.

End Of The Working Day

If you’re a freelancer, or if you have a lot of control over your own hours, you might find that reading a few pages of your book is a good way to close the working day. This can also help you to “switch off” from work mode.

What Should I Read?

So you’ve got the time and the desire to read some useful, insightful books … now you just need to find the reading matter.

I’ve got a few favorites, but I won’t recommend them here: your needs might well differ from mine. This is how I found the books that I now love…

Read Book Reviews

Most popular books are heavily reviewed on Amazon.com. Don’t focus too much on the star rating – instead, read some of the reviews. You can often get a feel for which reviewers have similar objectives to yours. Sometimes, one or two star reviews don’t mean a book is bad – they just mean that a reader thought it would be a different sort of book!

Don’t just rely on Amazon though: I’ve found it very useful to read book reviews by bloggers who I admire. You might want to check out these lists of reviews:

If you find that everyone seems to be recommending one book, it’s probably worth checking it out!

•    Steve Pavlina’s list of Personal Development Books (very short description of each book)
•    Tim Brownson’s Inspirational Books By Inspirational Authors (short reviews of each book)
•    Trent Hamm’s Twenty Big Ideas: Detailed Summaries and Reviews of Great Personal Finance and Development Books (does what it says in the title!)

Do you have any favorite self-improvement, personal development or similar books? Do you struggle to make time for reading books? Let us know about your tips, experiences and challenges in the comments…

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  • http://www.positivelypresent.com Positively Present

    Great argument for reading personal development books. I’m all about reading and I think personal development books are wonderful. I have a list of “Brilliant Books” on my site that you might enjoy!

  • http://www.punintended.com/blog Bamboo Forest – PunIntended

    I generally don’t skim blog articles. I figure if it’s worth reading, then it’s worth reading in its entirety otherwise I just won’t even take a stab at it.

    I really like your mention of how a book is more likely to create a paradigm shift, this really is true. I think this is largely because whereas you read a blog post and you’re done… a book is something that takes many continuous hours and as a result the message is more likely to penetrate, which is a great thing.

    One of my favorite personal development books is “Your Erroneous Zones” by Dr. Wayne Dyer. I think it really covers a lot of great information (though I don’t agree with everything in it, which is probably true for any book we read).

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  • http://twitter.com/ruthiereads Ruth

    I make time for reading every day, morning and night. I usually read self help and motivational books in the morning to start the day, and some light fiction at night so that I’m not thinking about work and worries when I go to bed.

  • Jeff

    Do books give you more depth? I’ve found that many personal development books actually stretched out and belabored ideas — didn’t learn anything from them that I couldn’t get out of a number of shorter articles or blog posts.

  • http://www.punintended.com/blog Bamboo Forest – PunIntended

    @ Jeff: That’s an interesting point. But at the same time… it’s through the very method of repetition, sometimes, that really allows the message to sink in.

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  • http://www.aliventures.com Ali Hale

    I know not everyone skims (I tend to either read or not read posts too!) but I tend to find my attention is much more focused when I’m reading books vs blogs.

  • http://www.aliventures.com Ali Hale

    Yes, I’ve found this with some books, though as Bamboo says, it can help the message sink in (and some bloggers get quite repetitive about key points too!) For concise-ness, I like Mark Forster’s “Get Everything Done (And Still Have Time To Play)”.

  • http://blog.cyclope-series.com Anelly

    For 2 weeks, i decided not to open the TV. Surprisenly, in the time that usually I would watch on TV, I took a book and read. And this happend during all the 2 week. So, my point here is that if you want to read you can have the time.

  • http://www.theskooloflife.com Srinivas Rao

    This is really awesome. I couldn’t agree more that reading personal development books is important. I think blogs are great because they expand on the concepts in these books. Here is my list of most influential books:

    Wayne Dyer-Change your Thoughts, change your life
    Brian Tracy-The Luck Factor
    Wayne Dyer-Manifest Your Destiny
    Lynn Grabhorn-Excuse me your life is waiting

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  • http://vladdolezal.com/blog/ Vlad Dolezal

    A few weeks back, I had several personal development books that I wanted to read, but I never had the time.

    So I decided to start reading for 1 hour every morning.

    Well worth the investment! I learned SO many interesting ideas. And as you say… if you really want the time to read, you can find it.

  • http://SourcesOfInsight.com J.D. – Sources of Insight

    I think you nailed the keys – depth, focus, and commitment.

    More tips
    - to find the best books, I ask the smartest people I know which books changed their lives.
    - to rip through books fast, I use sticky notes and jot ideas as I go. This lets me shelve things and pick back up where I left off.
    - to learn at a deeper level, I share what I call “book nuggets” … my favorite insights/”ah has” from the book and how to apply them.
    - to take the learning further still, I ask my favorite best selling authors to write about their best lessons.

    I’m a fan of standing on the shoulders of giants and I think our best lessons come from books, people, and quotes.

  • http://ithinketh.com Self Improvement @ ithinketh.com

    I wanted to recommend a great book.

    It’s called How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler.

  • http://www.purposepowercoaching.com Chris Edgar | Purpose Power Coaching

    Thanks for this post — another encouraging point to make, I think, would be that the more of these books you read, the more you’re able to tear through what you read quickly and distill the material down to its essence.

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  • http://www.inspirational-daily.com Stephanie Treasure

    Great points for why you should read personal development books and how to find the time. I used to get alot of reading done when I had a 1 1/2 hour commute to work in New York via the trains and buses. However, now that I drive, I have been spending a great deal of time listening to personal development audio.

    It all ties back to the same goal, which to me is keeping your mindset conditioned for success. Too often our ‘inner chatter’ prevents us from doing things because its easier to think negative thoughts.

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  • Jeff

    But how much repetition is too much? With me, that becomes boring and a bit preachy quite quickly. And sometimes I get the feeling that the writer doesn’t have anything else to say, but needs to pad in order to make his/her word count for the book.

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  • http://www.socialnatural.com/blog Gabriel

    Reading non-fiction self-help books are the only books I read these days. I have not read a fiction in book in the last 5 years. When I read a real physical I find myself much more involved than say reading anything on the computer, I agree that there are a lot of distractions with the we and different files.

  • http://bbelongi.blogspot.com cebu Seo

    i am so speechless.. but i appreciate it a lot.. keep it up:)

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  • http://bystander.homestead.com Hsiaoshuang

    Another important reason to read a book instead of a blog is that much more effort is put into a book, not just by the author, but by sub-editors and fact-checkers to ensure the contents are accurate, timely and authoritative. Blogs are just diary entries, usually written in a hurry, and usually littered with bits of grammatical and spelling errors which can be annoying.

    Most bloggers have no experience or training as sub-editors so, no matter how much care they have taken, their writing is bound be rough, awkward and improvised.

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