1. Reading improves intelligence and leads to innovation and insight: it increases vocabulary, world knowledge, abstract reasoning skills, and creativity (especially for those reading in many fields)

2. Reading makes you more effective in leading others: it enhances verbal intelligence, deepens empathy, and ramps up productivity, often leading to pay rises and promotions.

3. Reading relaxes and improves health: reading for six minutes can reduce stress by 68%, and may even fend off Alzheimer’s!

As, despite these attractions, people are reading less widely and less deeply, Coleman closes with five ways to help us improve personal literacy and, therefore, leadership skills. Read the whole article here.

2005 © Galina Barskaya. Image from BigStockPhoto.com.
Rumors of Written-Word Death Greatly exaggerated claims Eliot Van Buskirk on the Wired website.

A large-scale study by the University of San Diego and other research universities revealed what some of us have long suspected: We’re reading far more words than we used to as we adopt new technologies.

“Reading, which was in decline due to the growth of television, tripled from 1980 to 2008, because it is the overwhelmingly preferred way to receive words on the Internet,” found a University of San Diego study

Church leaders have rightly complained for years about the detrimental effects of television on the mind and about the decreasing ability of people to read and process verbal and written information. But the internet seems to be changing all that for the better.

Surveys are also showing that people are writing far more than they used to – albeit in short emails, status updates, texts and tweets.

It is indeed a day of great Gospel opportunity. May the Word of the Lord have free course and be glorified (2 Thess. 3:1).