Why I Read Books at Work, and You Should Too
“Clickapedia,” as I dubbed it, was a routine start to every day at the office. I would arrive, open my computer, and before poring through the digital stacks of unread mail, I would first visit Wikipedia and read the featured article of the day. Soon, after clicking through various links, I would read about topics as diverse as the principle of maximum entropy, Botticelli's four panels, and Margot Shiner, the founder of pediatric gastroenterology, all in one sitting. (And, yes, I almost always wound up at the entry for Philosophy.)
The scrupulous manager reading this article - possibly at work - must no doubt wonder how I managed to remain employed. Emails need answering, reports need filing, yet meanwhile I was busy reading about 15th century fashion trends. But the assembly line clock-in, clock-out mentality of the contemporary workplace is a false reality. Work is changing - certainly in the post-Covid era - and the skills considered necessary to be successful at work are changing as well.
In our globalized, highly technical economy, in which whole industries are disrupted overnight and automized widgets replace employees on a weekly basis, technical training will become less of a prerequisite and more of an on-the-job developmental exercise. It is precisely because of this automation and globalization that at least 75% of work is now estimated to be team-based, which makes sense: the work not done by robots is done by people.
In his book, The Wealth of Humans - which I partially read at work - Ryan Avent, a journalist at The Economist, contends “those now entering the labor force for the first time can have little confidence that their [technical] training will be of any use across the whole of their career - assuming that a career is a meaningful concept a half-century from now.” Quantitative skills change at the rate of technology, which means that proficiency in one software program may be of little consequence in five years.
I remember working on a web-based project fresh out of university for my first employer. The IT manager, with about ten years experience, had to learn the new interface right beside me. His collegiate training, though sufficient at the time, was insufficient for the entirety of his career. So while quantitative skills are critical at any given moment, they are hardly timeless and can be learned as new technology is developed, which is something we discuss in our upcoming book Think Talk Create: Building Workplaces Fit for Humans. Employees and employers alike should therefore simultaneously cultivate the perennial qualitative skills that are transferrable across all careers, promotions, and occupations.
According to The Wall Street Journal, “firms want well-rounded candidates because they’re filling positions with broader responsibilities and more complex challenges than in the past. As a result, problem-solving and communication skills, and not business majors, top hiring managers’ wish lists.” This is because, as stated in The Harvard Business Review, “knowledge [used by executives] can be acquired in two weeks” and what actually matters is having the ability to “play with big concepts, and to apply new ways of thinking to difficult problems that can’t be analyzed in conventional ways.” Yes, of course, “we need technical experts… but we also need people who grasp the whys and hows of human behavior.”
It turns out that reading is a highly effective method for developing some of these non-technical skills that so strongly engender professional success. In fact, reading books is such an effective method for developing qualitative skills that scientists have begun reading to robots in an effort to develop emotional intelligence in the artificial agents.
And never mind robots, even economists can stand to benefit according to HBR: “[they] could gain wisdom from reading great novelists, who have a deeper insight into people than social scientists do. Whereas economists tend to treat people as abstractions, novelists dig into the specifics. To illustrate the point…when has a scientist’s model or case study drawn a person as vividly as Tolstoy drew Anna Karenina?” It makes sense that reading is a highly effective method for developing human skills because “stories have been around since time began; they tell us what it is to be human, give us a context for the past and an insight towards the future.” Novels and stories are essentially highly detailed case studies, not in the traditional business school sense, but rather detailed analyses of human beings.
Professional success, therefore, may just come from an occasional visit to the library or, more simply, reading a Wikipedia article before that first email in the morning. By doing so you will be developing a broad spectrum of skills that can be applied regardless of what is written on your business card and will ensure further professional growth, even if you’re a robot... or an economist.
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Co-authored by David Brendel and Ryan Stelzer, Think Talk Create: Building Workplaces Fit for Humans will be published by the Hachette Book Group under the PublicAffairs imprint on September 21, 2021. Now available for pre-order.
