Clarity is the most important thing for effectiveness, and the only way to improve clarity is to cut down on noise. That’s exactly why you should read more history and less news: history is much quieter than news.
When you read history, you open yourself up to a vast new world of information – and facts. News gives you the information that’s happening right now, but history gives you a better look at days long gone by.
I’ve put together a list of the
Here’s my five specific reasons why you should read history more than news.
There’s No Getting Lost In Details
Reading the news is like reading a book word for word without looking at a preview first. You just read it from the first word on the front cover to the last word on the back cover. If you read a book in this way, you are likely to miss its main points because you are too focused on the details.
In the same way, if you read the news, you might get lost in the details and never figure out what the main points are. On the other hand, reading history is like getting a sneak peek at a book before you read it. Then you can just read the important parts and get the main points. For example reading the George Washington biography.
You Can Look Back In Time
Reading news is not simply like reading a book word by word. It’s like trying to read a book with no index or chapter titles. You won’t know what anything means because you’ll only see the details.
Since history is about things that have already happened, you can see how everything fits together. A simple title that tells what it’s all about can be given to a set of events that spans 100 years.
You Can Find The Important Details
Most of what you read in the news today won’t even be remembered in 100 years, let alone in 1000 years. They just aren’t important enough to bother with. We waste most of our time on things that are 99% not important.
History has gotten rid of all the things that don’t matter and only shows you what does. In history, you will only find things that have been around for 100 or 1000 years.
No Need To Start From Scratch
One of the worst ways to waste time is to make the same mistakes as other people. Why should you drop into the same hole when someone else has already done so and given you a sign?
Sadly, we are often too busy to even read the warning signs. You can learn from the thousands of years of wisdom and experience that make up history.
You’ll Start To Spot Patterns
“There is nothing new under the sun,” as the saying goes. What is going on now should have happened somewhere else in the past. By learning the patterns of how things happened in the past, you can see the patterns in your own life and then act in the right way.
For example, the way we feel about global warming might be like how the people of Easter Island used to feel. They cut down all the trees on the island, which led to their extinction. By using up all of the island’s natural resources, they were unknowingly killing themselves.
Seeing patterns like this can help you avoid problems and spot opportunities. Thus, history, most of the time, is better than news.
