There are 8+ billion people on this planet. Just by the basic law of natural distribution, that means there are millions of people out there who are orders of magnitude smarter, wiser, and more creative than I am.
A tiny fraction of those brilliant people took the time to sit down (sometimes for years) to condense their life’s work, their mistakes, and their wisdom into a few hundred pages. For me, a reading habit is simply a mechanism that allows for direct access to their brains.
Sadly, I’ve come across Directors of Engineering who told me they don’t read because they already know everything they need to be effective, only for me to discover they are just glorified coders that someone accidentally gave reporting responsibilities to.
Then again, I could have been one of them. Earning my first degree at 22 created such a severe aversion to forced reading that I didn’t pick up a single book for my own enjoyment until I was 27-28. Looking back at that 5-year gap now absolutely terrifies me.
What broke that gap for me was stepping into leadership. When I found myself as a tech lead and manager, pushing hard against the boundaries of my current skills, I realized that my words and actions now directly impacted the people around me, and by extension, their families when they went home.
At one point I’ve even experienced “who the hell am I to have this influence?” moment, which was a bit jarring.
I turned to books to find the wisdom, guidance, and ideas I lacked. For a “regular human”, if you want to treat reading as an optional hobby, I will not try to convince you reading is healthy, you do you. The second you step into a role where you lead others, however, my stance is that reading habit is an absolute requirement.