In a world where everyone’s scanning, you can stand out by reading.
The reason involves supply and demand- Books are dying.
Numbers don’t lie.
James Marriott highlights the counterrevolution of non-readers in his thought-provoking piece, “The Dawn of the Postliterate Society.”
In America, daily reading has plummeted by more than forty percent in the last twenty years. The trend isn’t isolated. More than a third of British citizens have given up reading in their leisure time. The National Literacy Trust reports that children’s reading levels are now at their lowest on record.
We can thank the smartphone for our burgeoning illiteracy.
Marriott states:
Never before has there been a technology like the smartphone. Where previous entertainment technologies, such as cinema or television, were intended to capture their audience’s attention for a period, the smartphone demands your entire life. Phones are designed to be hyper-addictive, hooking users on a diet of pointless notifications, inane short-form videos, and social media rage bait.
The average person spends seven hours a day transfixed to screens. Modern students will spend almost a quarter of their lives scrolling.
The side effects of a low-reading diet are toxic to our cognitive skills. Memory, attention span, analytical thinking, and verbal fluency are falling at alarming rates.
The decline in test scores of 15-year-olds is directly related to the emergence of smartphones.
Many college professors and teachers are sounding the alarm over the collapse in literacy. Students aren’t able to cope with their assigned reading loads. Young people who manage to complete their book lists are often unable to understand or discuss intelligently most of the material.
Some investors are succumbing to the same fate. It’s not just a cultural problem; it’s an investing issue.
The days of people like Warren Buffett reading five to six hours daily are a relic from the past. Reading reflection and patience are being replaced by scrolling, reacting, and forgetting.
Meme stocks like GameStop and AMC surged not because investors adored their pristine balance sheets and wide economic moats. Reddit threads replaced dissecting company 10-K reports—online storytelling substitutes for analyzing balance sheets and income statements.
Deep reading compounds, scrolling distracts and sensationalizes. Literate investors read history- not just headlines. Literate investors not only own assets, but they also understand them.
Life is complex and complicated, similiar to building wealth over long periods of time.
Grifters, liars, and con artists populate the terrain, seeking to separate investors from their capital.
Investing and life are games for thinking people.
Wisdom is the solution.
Ryan Holiday elaborates: You cannot have a good life without wisdom. Not only will problems overwhelm you, even eat you alive, but you’ll also leave so much unexplored. You will only do a fraction of what you’re capable of doing.
In a postliterate society, your reading habit is your edge. Read like your future depends on it — because it does.
