[Link] This Is How Reading Rewires Your Brain

According to Neuroscience, reading doesn’t just cram information into your brain. It changes how your brain works. 

by Jessica Stillman

We all know reading can teach you facts, and knowing the right thing at the right time helps you be more successful. But is that the entire reason just about every smart, accomplished person you can think of, from Bill Gates to Barack Obama, credits much of their success to their obsessive reading? 

Not according to neuroscience. Reading, science shows, doesn’t just fill your brain with information; it actually changes the way your brain works for the better as well. 

The short- and long-term effects of reading on the brain.

This can be short term. Different experts disagree on some of the finer details, but a growing body of scientific literature shows that reading is basically an empathy workout. By nudging us to take the perspective of characters very different from ourselves, it boosts our EQ. This effect can literally be seen in your brain waves when you read. If a character in your book is playing tennis, areas of your brain that would light up if you were physically out there on the court yourself are activated. 

Another line of research shows that deep reading, the kind that happens when you curl up with a great book for an extended period of time, also builds up our ability to focus and grasp complex ideas. Studies show that the less you really read (skim reading from your phone doesn’t count), the more these essential abilities wither. 

Read the full article: https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/reading-books-brain-chemistry.html

[Link] Reading Science Fiction Will Make Your Child More Resilient

Geeky reading won't just distract your kid during lockdown. 

Sci-fi helps us cope with crises, experts insist. 

by Jessica Stillman

See a kid curled up with a novel about space aliens instead of swinging on the jungle gym at the park and one word will probably pop into your mind: geek. 

Maybe that young bookworm will grow up to be a billionaire (many of the biggest names in business were dedicated sci-fi fans in their youths), but many of us associate a love of sci-fi with social awkwardness and getting pushed into your locker a lot. 

Instead of a sure, straight road to social isolation and nerdiness, parents should think of science fiction as a great way for kids (and adults) to build mental strength, weather uncertainty, and imagine better futures, experts argue. 

Predicting the unpredictable ... 

"Science-fiction writers don't know anything more about the future than anyone else," admitted celebrated sci-fi writer Kim Stanley Robinsonin The New Yorker recently. "Still, if you read science fiction, you may be a little less surprised by whatever does happen." 

Why? "By presenting plausible alternative realities, science-fiction stories empower us to confront not just what we think but also how we think and why we think it. They reveal how fragile the status quo is, and how malleable the future can be," Eliot Peper pointed out on the Harvard Business Review site. 

Science fiction nudges us not just to imagine other worlds, but also to face up to the fact that the world as it exists today isn't fixed. Alternatives are possible. Maybe even inevitable. The status quo can feel like an all-enveloping fog around us. Sci-fi (and global shocks like the one we're living through) part that fog, reminding us empires fall, tech advances, certainties crumble, and nature regularly dishes out corrections to our hubris. Unpredictability is the only thing that's predictable. 

Read the full article: https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/reading-science-fiction-will-make-your-child-more-resilient.html

[Link] Famous Writers From John Steinbeck to Maya Angelou All Swore By This Weird Productivity Trick. You Should Steal It

These literary greats solved the riddle of work-from-home productivity decades before the rest of us.

by Jessica Stillman

John Steinbeck may have won a Nobel Prize but he still preferred to write at an unstable little desk on his fishing boat. Another giant of American letters, Maya Angelou, liked to rent out hotel rooms and write perched on the bed. Peter Benchley, who wrote Jaws, outdid both of them -- he penned the thriller from the clanging back room of a furnace factory. 

All of which might make you conclude that writers are a bunch of odd ducks. That might be true, but according to a thoughtful recent New Yorker piece from best-selling author and Georgetown professor Cal Newport, that's the wrong lesson for less literary types to take from these writers' unusual approach to productivity. 

Newport insists that decades before our recent switch to remote work these authors discovered something many of us are going to learn in the coming months and years: Working close to home beats actually working at home. 

Read the full article: https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/productivity-remote-work-john-steinbeck-maya-angelou.html