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Read a Book! It’s Good for Your Career

International Research Book Awards

Reading regularly can help you develop skills that are useful in your career and business.

• While many people read for pleasure, there are also professional reasons to read books regularly. 
• Reading can benefit your career by giving you a better vocabulary, sparking creativity, reducing stress and fostering empathy.  
• Reading is also known to increase intelligence and build perseverance.
• This article is for people who want to learn how reading can benefit their career.

There’s nothing more comforting than curling up with a good book. When you read, you welcome new adventures, lessons and perspectives. In fact, time spent with your nose in a book can help your career. Find out the many benefits of reading and how it can help you succeed in business.

Research into the benefits of reading

The benefits and importance of reading have been championed for years. It’s been a topic of research for quite some time and continues to be studied by business professionals, communication experts, linguists and others. 

Research has shown how reading benefits cognitive function, especially in older adults. One study, published in 2020 in the journal International Psychogeriatrics, looked at nearly 2,000 Taiwanese people ages 64 and older, with various levels of education, to study how regular reading affected their mental performance over a 14-year period. They found that the people who read more had a reduced risk of cognitive decline over the 14-year study period.

Another study even found that reading may help people live longer. The research, published in 2017 in the journal Innovation in Aging, studied more than 3,600 people over a 12-year period. The people who read books lived longer, on average, and had a lower risk of dying over the study period, compared with the people who did not read at all and the people who read other types of materials, such as magazines and newspapers.

6 benefits of reading

Reading can help you build a better career. “Reading is a very necessary habit for every successful businessperson,” said Ellen Parry Lewis, a fiction author. “It broadens your mind, helps with your written and verbal communication skills, and gives you a certain level of understanding and empathy.”

Here are some other ways reading can benefit your business career and help you in the workplace.

Fosters empathy

Reading about different types of people and their adversities helps you understand others better and fosters empathy, which is important in your career regardless of your field.

“Whether you’re reading about real people or fictitious characters, books are made to not only broaden your mind in regards to facts but feelings,” Lewis said. This empathy, in turn, helps you connect and communicate with clients and colleagues. [Find out how to improve communication with customers.]

When you read about other people’s lives, you’re more likely to identify with them, research suggests. In a study published in the journal Psychological Science, researchers used passages from the Harry Potter and Twilight book series to investigate whether reading can increase empathy. After the participants read their assigned portions, testing showed that the readers identified with wizards or vampires, depending on which book they read. 

That might sound silly, but the concept does have real-world applications. Business owners can more easily reach their target customers if they read up on what makes them unique. 

“Regardless of what kind of stories you like to read, fiction or nonfiction, reading enables you to make sense of your life, the lives of others, your relationships and the world at large,” said Joe Tonzelli, former author and media editor for Cut Print Film.

How this helps your career

Empathy is considered one of the most important skills a human can develop. In the business world, understanding other people’s feelings and perspectives can lead to stronger relationships with employees, culminating in a better work environment, higher engagement and increased employee retention. As a business owner, empathy can help you negotiate deals and build customer loyalty. An empathetic personality will make people want to work with you throughout your career. You may even want to consider a specific type of career as an empath.

Expands vocabulary

It’s no secret that reading expands a person’s vocabulary. What’s more, with constant exposure to various sentence structures, voices, styles and delivery methods, you also advance your written and verbal communication skills, said Joe McGee, author of Peanut Butter and Brains: A Zombie Culinary Tale.

As an avid reader, you’ll likely speak more professionally, confidently and easily, which are hallmarks of a great communicator in business and elsewhere. Understanding the art of language will set you apart from others in the working world, and there are few better ways to learn about language than through reading.

“Whether you’re aware of it or not, you’re enhancing your vocabulary on every page,” Tonzelli said. “You learn what certain words mean and how to use them. You learn which words hold the power, or the humor, or the emotion.”

While it’s never too late to become a habitual reader, the sooner you start, the better. A UCL research team found that children who read in their spare time and were encouraged to do so by their parents understood 26% more words than kids who didn’t spend recreational time reading. That’s worth keeping in mind whether you’re mentoring young employees or raising a future entrepreneur.

How this helps your career

An expanded vocabulary helps your career by improving your written and verbal presentation in the workplace. Developing your vocabulary and deepening your language comprehension will help you project intelligence and command respect from peers and management. It can also improve your work if your business’s focus involves handling research or other written content. The more words you understand and use, the stronger your ability to communicate will be. Being able to say what you mean in the clearest and most direct way helps get your message delivered – a necessary skill for a business owner to be successful.

Did You Know?

The benefit of reading to improve vocabulary is so well established that test prep company Kaplan would sell versions of classic fiction with potential SAT vocabulary highlighted.

Inspires creativity

Experts say creativity can be learned, but did you know that reading books also inspires creativity? Writers conceive interesting topics for stories, and reading them helps you do the same in your work life. McGee told us that readers have broader-reaching minds, which helps them think on a deeper level than people who don’t read as much. Creativity can lead to innovation, and innovation is one of the keys to a successful business.

Consider this example of fiction reading sparking creativity: A study published in the Creativity Research Journal found that those who read fictional short stories were more comfortable with ambiguity and had more open minds than people who read nonfiction essays. The fiction readers were mentally stimulated and more likely to expand their ways of thinking. Those are key components of generating creative ideas, and having a creative business idea can be pivotal in whether your enterprise succeeds.

How this helps your career

Creativity is something everyone uses daily. Although it might be most closely associated with the arts, the applications of creativity in business are undeniable. When you solve problems in the workplace, for example, you may need a creative approach to finding the right solution. Creativity also has seeds in business tasks such as organization, where you may have to figure out innovative ways to maximize time and resources in constrained situations. Creativity is also invaluable to successful marketing and advertising campaigns.

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