How to Increase Your Readership

The Decision to Read and Write

We all know folks who are top salespeople, professionals, business owners, parents and notable others. Although successful, many of them will not even read an email from top to bottom, let alone a full article, a book, a manual or a prospectus. There are several legitimate (and other) reasons to avoid real reading…such as:

I’m too busy
It’s boring
It takes me away from selling (or sleeping) time
The facts are confusing
I lost my concentration
My dog ate the email
The print was too small
I had other priorities
My computer crashed

Point is that today many of us are manufacturing reasons not to read. Just think, back in the day: No TV, radio, phone, computers…nothing but reading to get the point or message. Today, we have all the digital apps that allow us the best excuse yet; “just let technology solve it for us.” Not the ideal solution.

Congress gave us the best reading example this year with: “let’s pass the bill first, and then we can read it.” That is really scary when we consider that it probably will never be read, and now its law. What kind of a top down statement is that sending to us and our kids? There must be a better approach.

Maybe there is a mysterious connection to reading, and it could be writing? Consider that when you read, it’s tempting to stop short, skim, skip and/or read ahead. But, when you write, you have to cover it all from top to bottom and not skip any steps.

When you write, you create, connect, edit, stylize, organize and on and on. You are interactive with your subject. You are connecting. You are communicating. You are growing. You are thinking (more about what you are reading).

Try this: “Read to the point of writing.”

Consider reading with a more critical attitude, maybe with the idea that you will need to respond to or summarize what you are processing. The product could be that you become a better reader simply by approaching this subject from the writer’s perspective (left brain/right brain).

One up-shot of today’s networking communication is that we have to think through our comments and statements, and condense them into a relatively few words (e.g. Twitter). But, the longer version of authoring a blog, website or commenting on other blogs or articles is a great place to start developing your craft. It could lead to newsletters, columns, hard books, e-books and any number of other opportunities. Write-Read…Read-Write…

Summary: Writing could potentially make us better readers.

Worked for me…you decide.