10 COMMANDMENTS | On READING

I always love to read.

Anything.

I realized that when you read, there is this passive transfer of learning and I need that in my everyday tasks as a writer and a teacher.

It is passive in a way that you won’t notice that you have learned a word, a concept, or have gained an imaginary experience and deep wisdom from the articles you’ve read. You’ll only realize it the chances that you will retrieve those learned things (from reading) the moment when you need it most (through writing, random conversations and formal discussions)

In this post, I will share with you the 10 Commandments on Reading, which I have read also somewhere. Please see the credits below.

1. Read with a purpose. Have clearly defined objectives, otherwise, you’ll spend your precious time on anything and everything which will happen to come your way. Reading without a specific aim is like traveling without a definite destination.

2. Every now and then, vary the subject area of your reading in order to wider your mental horizon and to help you avoid boredom. In this way, you’ll be a jack of all trades and a master of some.

3. Read professional journals and other scholarly publications in your area of specialization in order for you to catch up to some extent with the exponential explosion of knowledge. Put your finger on the growing edge of your discipline.

4. Although some newspapers tend to report more on the evil rather than on the good, read the dailies to inform yourself of what is happening around the world. Keep abreast with the times so you can converse intelligently.

5. Take a book along with you wherever you go so you can use your precious time while waiting for your turn at the bank teller’s window, or while you’re standing in line at the supermarket checkout counter, or while you’re seated at the restaurant waiting for your order.

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6. While saving time is admittedly a laudable virtue, don’t read while you’re driving, unless the bumper-to-bumper traffic is inching its way toward your destination at a snail’s pace.

7. Buy only books that you specifically need to refer to over and over again. You can borrow books which you’ll read but once from friends and from public/private or institutional libraries.

8. Read with a pen, read to underscore or annotate your book – or take notes, if you don’t own the book. This will save you the anguish of later looking for something you’ve read which even indexes or tables of contents can’t locate for you.

9. Don’t believe in everything that’s printed just because it’s printed. Read analytically and critically before swallowing anything hook, like, and sinker. Even logic sometimes is merely a systematic way of going wrong. And the wrong concept doesn’t automatically become right just because they’ve gone through the process of printing.

10. Instead of starting your day with the morning paper and ending the same with the late, late show, read your Bible when you get up in the morning and before you retire at night.

Excerpt from the writings of Gil G. Fernandez, PhD, MA, MPH

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