Should You Stop Reading After Age Certain Age

Almost everyone advises us that reading is good for us and that we should read as much as we can.

But Albert Einstein was not one of them. Here is what he had to say about reading after a certain age:

Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.

-Albert Einstein

What comes into your mind after reading that. If you are anything like me you would be shocked because reading, for many of us is sacred, it cannot be questioned.

But after reading that quote, from a true genius – it made me think, is this really true.

After some time I have come to the conclusion that Einstein was right after all (no surprise there), reading after a certain age does divert the mind too much from its creative processes but as does most of the things today that were not in Einstein's age, like a video game, social media on the internet, internet itself.

Creative people are born in a particular way, their mind is always working, thinking about some problem, some new creative way of doing something. If they don’t get an outlet for removing that pent-up extra energy they wander out of their path.

Any artistic ability flourishes on this extra mental energy.

But so does reading, it gives the mind ideas, but unfortunately in a passive way. which makes us sort of lazy — because instead of creating something we are consuming.

consuming is not bad when done moderately. We can get in the habit of consuming information and an intellectual - a jack of all trades but yet we would not actually be used to something. This way, producing is always superior to consuming.

The world is always divided between consumers and producers. And those who read all the time, don’t get the time to create something.

After all, what is the whole purpose of reading? To improve our life? get it in order. But when it starts to become an obstacle instead of being a rung in the ladder, maybe you are doing too much of it.

So read, but do not forget to be creative too.

About Einstein

Albert Einstein is perhaps the most recognized scientist of all time. He was a physicist like Isaac Newton and just like Newton he changed the fundamental tenants of physics itself. Einstein was the creator of the general theory of relativity, a theory that made us understand gravity better and gave us many other complex ideas like relativity. In short, Einstein was the sort of person who would say that the only thing that interferes with my learning is my education. Hmm, he sounds like my kind of person.

If you found this quote useful, you must like another of his quotes:

The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulate the creative mind.