Currently, every individual’s life is only circling social media and work. People are hardly able to find time for themselves and their dear ones. How can someone take out time to read a book of about 250-300 pages! Doesn’t that sound right?
Well, it could be right up to some extent. But, you can take charge of your life and decide how you wish to live. It is not only about reading a book, but you can take out time for several other things if you want to make it happen. All you need to do is make a work plan and schedule your daily routines. This will help you understand how much time you actually waste on unnecessary things and also how you can save that time. This was about scheduling, but we will now talk about reading books. Countless people are taking a new year’s resolution to read more books this year. You might have also done that at some point. But were you able to keep up with that promise? If not, then you are surely missing out on a lot of things. There are several benefits of reading every day that you wouldn’t have even thought about. Before we get to the solution of reading more books even with less time, let us first understand the importance and benefits of reading them.
What is the Importance of Reading?
Reading books or anything will keep your mind active and develop your thoughts. Books can give you all types of information, from stories and emotions to valuable lessons and biographies. Once you begin with any book, you will see your mind developing with time. Reading is a timeless form of learning as well as entertainment. It is not about reading only self-help books. You can start with fiction books and develop a mix of different genres for balancing entertainment and values. If you look at the benefits of reading daily or on a regular basis, you will be amazed by the results. It is not only about mental development, but you will also see various changes in your day-to-day life through it.
What are the Benefits of Reading?
There are countless benefits of reading. Here, we will talk about some of the most crucial ones that significantly impact people’s lives.
Stress Reduction
People get stressed due to various reasons like work, personal relationships, the pandemic, or any other situation in their lives. Even if you have a tough day, it has been seen that people tend to forget everything when they start reading a book and get lost in it.
An excellent storyline can take you to different worlds while sitting on your bed. Similarly, a good self-help book can relate to your present and allow you to relax.
Knowledge Increment
This is the most obvious yet the most important benefit of reading regularly. You are filling your mind with new pieces of information that might come in handy at some point in life. The more you read, the more knowledge you gain. And the more knowledge you gain, the better the scenarios are for tackling any challenge in life. Even when there are situations where you lose everything in life, your knowledge will stay with you. If you have attained knowledge of some concept, you can apply it at any instance of life.
Stronger Analytical Thinking Skills
When you are reading a mystery novel, it might have happened that you solved the mystery even before you completed the book. This is because you have read every single detail with keen interest and put your analytical skills to work. This ability to analyze things will be handy in real-life scenarios too. You will be able to determine any situation and analyze the outcomes faster with the details you have in hand compared to other people.
On top of that, if you get a chance to discuss the book with someone else, you will be able to state all your opinions more clearly. This will improve your discussion skills and your ability to appreciate different viewpoints.
Vocabulary Expansion
The more books you read, the more new words you gain exposure to. You will go through the meaning of those words to understand their relevance. Now, someday or the other, these words will even make it to your everyday vocabulary. It is essential to have better speaking skills in every field. When you learn more vocabulary, it will be easy for you to place those words in the right place in sentences. Other than that, reading more books is also an excellent way to learn new languages. You will be able to get familiar with the usage of words in other languages and their context as well.
Enhanced Writing Skills
This goes hand-in-hand with vocabulary expansion. As you read more books, you are exposed to different writing styles. This will influence your writing too. You will see a massive difference in your writing when you read more books because you will adopt any writer’s style that influenced you the most.
Life Skills Upliftment
This is the last and the most crucial benefit of reading as many books as you can. There are different perspectives mentioned in every book. You will learn several new life skills from a single book, and when you apply those concepts in your life, you will see a significant difference in your lifestyle. For instance, if you read more finance-related books, you will see your knowledge growing in that domain. Now, you will make better and more informed decisions when it comes to your personal finances and investments. Similar impact is visible in every field. This was all about the benefits of reading more books. But, we know it isn’t easy to take out time every single day to read books. On top of that, it also becomes challenging to choose the right book. There are plenty of options, and you won’t find the perfect one every time that suits you. This is where you can take the help of an app to decide the right book by going through a few insights from them. This will only take a maximum of 10-15 minutes of yours. Doesn’t that sound amazing? So, let us introduce you to this fantastic app, Blinkist.
What is Blinkist?
Blinkist is a perfect application for curious and busy people who are highly enthusiastic about reading and learning. These people might want to read more often but won’t get enough time to make it happen. Other than that, the people who aren’t into reading will also find this app really intriguing. Blinkist will help you understand any book or podcast in less than 15 minutes. You can read or even listen to the key ideas of any non-fiction book within a few minutes. With this, you will be able to quickly decide whether that book is worth your time or not.
How can Blinkist help you read more?
Blinkist will capture all the key insights from any book and present them in front of you. The app refers to these insights as ‘Blinks.’ If you want, you can even verify the quality of these Blinks by reading the summaries of books you have already read. This will give you a clear idea about the quality of these Blinks and know whether you can rely on them or not. The best thing about Blinkist is that you can listen to the audio Blinks even when you are on the move. This will save you precious time. The next time you can open Blinkist rather than mindlessly scrolling social media while waiting for a bus or train.
Now, let us make one thing clear – Blinkist is not replacing the books. Blinkist is actually a tool that complements books. A person will read any book if the Blinks are valuable. If you think there’s more to understand other than the Blinks, then you can move towards reading the entire book. So, you don’t have to waste your time going through hundreds of reviews to find out whether a book is worthy or not. Blinkist has just simplified everything for you.
Blinkist Features
With Blinkist, you can get access to 5000+ non-fiction books and podcasts. So, you can expand your ideas and take your knowledge to the next level with this entire collection. Blinkist has partnered with podcast creators to bring all the key insights from any podcast in less than 15 minutes. So, you can feed your brain with knowledge even while driving, doing some household work, or even while relaxing in bed.
Blinkist has a minimalistic and easy-to-use interface. It is focused more on its sleek design and efficient features. You can even download any book’s text and audio summaries to read and listen to offline. Currently, Blinkist is the cheapest book summary providing app in the market. You can rely on it if you wish to develop the habit of reading more.
Blinkist Interface
Blinkist is available on both Android and iOS platforms. You can download the app for free. If you want more features, you can get a subscription for the same at less than $3.5/month. Once you create an account, you will get a short tutorial to understand the app better. The app interface is divided into three tabs:
Explore Tab – You can explore the library of books over here. My Library – Get access to your saved, finished, and downloaded book titles. For You Tab – Recommendations of different book titles based on your interests.
Let us have a brief look at all the tabs.
Explore Tab
You can find new book titles with different methods through the Explore Tab. If you are specific about any book, you can directly search for that particular title. If you want some options, you can go through different categories and select the one you are interested in.
Other than that, you can also find new book titles through different options based on the Latest additions, Trending, and Collections.
My Library Tab
Here, you will find all the saved, finished, and downloaded books. If you want to read some books later, you can add them to your library, and they will remain in the Saved section.
After reading any book summary, it will enter the Finished section. If you have downloaded any book’s text or audio summary, you will find it in the Downloads Section.
For You Tab
You will find plenty of book recommendations in this tab. All the recommendations are based on your interests and readings. If there are any recommendations from experts, you will find them in the For You Tab.
Other than that, you will also find the ‘Free Blink of the Day’ in this section. In the end, you will also find different collections based on your past preferences and interest.
What’s great about Blinkist? 👍
No unnecessary information – This is a perfect app for books that only have a few good points to keep in mind. You can avoid all the other jargon from the book. Learn more about different topics faster – There is no need to stay stuck with a single book for months. You can directly take value from a book by reading its summary and move to the next book from any other topic. Ability to remember more even without notes – Book summaries are very precise and only circle around what’s important. So, you won’t have loads of information to remember from a single book summary at any time.
Some possible downsides 👎
Loss of story and humor – Reading is fun when you go through its story and subtle humor. When you read only book summaries, you won’t get any exposure to humor or even find it difficult to understand the story at some points. Chances of missing out on spontaneous insights – It is practically impossible to transfer all the knowledge from a book into its summary. So, there are high chances of missing out on critical information. Lack of context – As you don’t have an idea about the entire story, you might end up misinterpreting the facts stated in the book summary.
So, you can see that there are both good sides and bad sides to a book summary. Blinkist is an excellent app if you understand the right way to use it and get knowledge from it.
Conclusion 📚
If you are looking forward to developing a habit of reading more books, then Blinkist will be your best companion. You will not only be able to pick up the right books, but you will also find book reading to be more fun. Even if you are not more into reading, you should still try Blinkit and see if it can help you develop this helpful habit. You can also check out these apps to learn something new every day.
