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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
The writer is the author of ‘Uncharted: How to Navigate the Future’
You don’t need to get out more. If, like most business people, you spend your life dashing from office to plane, train to home, boardroom to washroom, what you really need to do is stay in more, sit down — and read a book.
But for the most part, this isn’t what the business community does. They tell me they’re too busy, they’ve lost (or never acquired) the habit. In the 1980s, Bill Gates was seen as exceptional for taking what he called a Think Week twice a year, retreating from the Microsoft campus with a stack of books and new academic papers to read. At the time, this struck me as paltry, the process poorly integrated into life and the subject matter narrow and strategic. But at least Gates’s ritual acknowledged that an ancient medium, consolidated and refined over millennia, was still relevant in a world tantalised and distracted by jazzy new technologies and fly-by-night “content”.
I have yet to meet a chief executive who reads regularly. Many skip newspapers, and magazines are a stretch. They don’t have time, they say. It’s inefficient; they can get the information they need from those around them. At a pinch, they might pick up a business book before a long flight, in the hope that, like a cookbook, it will provide a foolproof recipe. Some are drawn to what I think of as “business car crash” books — reading the stories of Theranos, Purdue, WeWork or FTX will give almost any leader a warm glow of schadenfreude. But outside those narrow pools of interest, a vast ocean awaits, bountiful with simmering ideas, mental adventure and imaginative refreshment.
We are living through a golden age of science writing, so lucid and accessible that even lay readers can relish the unpredictability of discovery. Daunted by uncertainty? Stand in the shoes of scientists and witness the degree to which breakthroughs emerge from accidents, conflict and sheer mental stamina. “We are never sure of anything,” says the physicist (and writer) Carlo Rovelli.
Those who cling to the belief that history repeats itself will find few contemporary historians who agree with them. But one reason historians are so illuminating these days is because, instead of weaving grand self-confirming narratives, biographers and academics are attracted by contingencies, the concatenation of personalities and events which upends expectation. The idea that modern complexity is new is swiftly put to rest by the rich brew of voices, perspectives and disciplines that see human history through a spinning kaleidoscope.
Read fiction. Any fiction. Free yourself from algorithms and choose — anything. None of the carbon cost and all of the benefits of travel. You don’t need technology for an immersive experience — just surrender to narratives across time and place. Modern (Sebastian Barry or Olga Tokarczuk), classic (Virginia Woolf or James Baldwin) or genre (Stephen King, Margaret Atwood, Georges Simenon) — it doesn’t matter. Fiction invites you to loiter unseen in the lives of others. We are living through a golden age of translation too, so you can go anywhere in time or place.
And just read a single poem. In his Oxford lectures, Seamus Heaney argued that a poem draws a picture of reality, a “glimpsed alternative” that sets up a contradiction with your own, in ways little and large. The negotiation, between you and it, is the heart of the matter. What does the poet see that you don’t? What does the difference mean? It could be one of the best conversations you ever have. Forget self-help books; reading is self-help in action.
Neuroscientists have been at pains to demonstrate that the pleasure a book provides isn’t indulgence; it’s good for you. Reading will keep you better informed about the world but it can also improve our tech-shattered ability to concentrate. Standing in the shoes of others fine tunes our social understanding, useful as we struggle to understand friends, neighbours, customers and co-workers. Different parts of our brain engage as we simulate scenes, characters and mental states. Our imagination — remember that? — is rekindled.
Reading has also been found to make us more helpful, to reduce bias, and even to increase longevity — something we will enjoy all the more if we have a good book in our hands. (And yes, all these benefits are more closely associated with physical books than digital ones.)
It is undoubtedly true that all work and no play really does make Jack, or Jill, dull. The cure is right at hand. Reading is cheap, easy and, most important, it’s fun. Liberate your imagination this year.
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