For more than twenty years, I taught university writing and literature courses and witnessed firsthand how institutional priorities shape education. At the universities where I taught—a few state state schools, a small Catholic college, and a low-residency graduate creative writing program online—substantial time and money went toward helping students “professionalize” themselves and prepare for the working world.
In undergraduate programs, literature and writing courses were never deemed to be as important as more obviously career-focused efforts. I once suggested to the committee chair of a first-year common reader program that we should select a book of fiction. “You expect too much of them,” he said.
Are novels harder to read and understand? Or is expecting students (anyone?) to like reading literature just too much?
When I started working for marketing agencies—first as a freelancer before leaving academia, and later in my position at Rare Bird—I discovered that literature was actually highly valued and respected by my new peers. The “real world” I’d heard so much about actually prized the types of books that university administrators readily sidelined.
Sure, the marketers had also read some of the books chosen for those common reader programs—Nickel and Dimed and The Tipping Point, among them—but they talked about novels by Alan Lightman, Colson Whitehead, and Celeste Ng, and even comics by Frank Miller and Alison Bechdel.
Investing precious time in fictional worlds might seem counterintuitive to people interested in their own professional development, I suppose. But in an era of artificial intelligence and algorithmic decision-making, distinctly human abilities—nuanced empathy and narrative intelligence, to name but two—might offer a competitive edge.
While business books often provide valuable tactical insights, reading fiction provides the opportunity to inhabit diverse perspectives, traverse complex ethical terrain, and develop a more nuanced understanding of humankind in all its glory and foibles. When we read literary fiction, in particular, our brains simulate social experiences—and the same neural networks involved in real-world human interaction are activated.
Bonus: a 2013 study by David Comer Kidd and Emanuele Castano, published in Science, found that literary fiction temporarily enhances our ability to understand others’ mental states.
That means reading books by Margaret Atwood, Percival Everett, or Sally Rooney can help you better understand people—friends, family, coworkers, competitors—at least temporarily. But then, if you’re always reading one literary work or another, perhaps the benefits never stop?
Here are some of the reasons why you should encourage everyone in your office to read more—and to read more literature, specifically.
Broadened Perspective
Fiction allows us to experience life through characters vastly different from us—across cultures, time periods, socioeconomic backgrounds, and value systems. How might an expanded perspective help you as a professional? Perhaps you can better identify blind spots in product development or marketing strategies that might otherwise remain invisible, or create more inclusive workplace policies by more deeply understanding others’ experiences. If you read widely, you can anticipate diverse customer needs more effectively. And in a global business environment, literary exploration might help you approach cross-cultural business relationships with greater sensitivity.
Improved Comfort with Ambiguity
Unlike business case studies, with their clear-cut lessons, great literature often presents moral ambiguity and complex situations without an obvious solution. Regular readers become more comfortable with making decisions amid uncertainty, an increasingly vital skill in life and work. They develop the capacity for holding competing truths simultaneously and exploring ethical gray areas with greater sophistication and confidence. Perhaps most importantly, literary readers internalize the understanding that most challenges in life, business-related or otherwise, lack perfect solutions.
Narrative Intelligence
Reading fiction makes us better storytellers, and in business, companies that can craft compelling narratives articulate a more inspiring vision to motivate their customers (and employees). They create more effective marketing messages by drawing on their literary understanding of what makes stories resonate. Their ability to make complex data meaningful through narrative framing transforms information overload into actionable insight—and data without a meaningful story is just a string of numbers. Perhaps most significantly, business leaders with narrative intelligence build stronger organizational cultures through shared stories that communicate values and purpose more effectively than mission statements or policy manuals.
Emotional Regulation
Reading fiction provides safe exposure to a wide range of emotional experiences, which helps develop sophisticated emotional regulation. Immerse yourself in literature and you’ll learn to recognize emotional patterns in yourself and others with greater precision and subtlety. The emotional practice gained through reading can help you stay composed during high-pressure situations by deepening your emotional vocabulary and awareness. This improves your ability to respond appropriately to colleagues’ emotional needs in real-time interactions and build genuine connections with stakeholders at all levels by drawing on their literary-enhanced emotional intelligence.
Reading as a Deliberate Practice
To maximize the benefits of reading literature—to move beyond the mere consumption of casual entertainment into a more deliberate practice—create a reading list that includes authors from different cultures (and countries), time periods, and literary traditions to expand your worldview. Read fiction, nonfiction, poetry, plays, books of essays, comics and graphic novels, books of scientific history, philosophy, memoirs—read everything.
Don’t shy away from “difficult” books. Books that challenge your assumptions or present unfamiliar worldviews might offer the greatest developmental potential. You want to push your empathy muscles beyond their comfortable limits. Whenever possible, discuss your reading with others—book clubs or even online discussions can highlight different interpretations that might not occur to you independently.
You might even consider keeping a notebook to reflect on the experience of reading each book you read.
Like any practice, consistency matters more than intensity. Even 20 minutes of daily reading yields significant benefits over time. The insights can be surprisingly direct and immediate. The competitive advantage gained by regularly reading literature isn’t just that it makes you a more well-rounded person—though it does. The real advantage is that it makes you a more insightful, empathetic, and effective thinker, which should help you in every facet of your life.
While reading undoubtedly provides a competitive edge—if we call it “the knowledge economy,” then of course it must—it’s important to remember that reading itself isn’t a competitive sport. If you decide to set a goal such as reading one book per week, the only person you’re competing with is yourself and your previous habits.
Be gentle with yourself if you fall behind or get busy. The next book will wait patiently for you.
There’s also such a thing as reading too much or too quickly. Racing through books without properly absorbing them diminishes most of the benefits that reading offers. If a competitive edge can be gained from reading, it comes not from the quantity of pages turned, but from the quality of your engagement with ideas—and your ability to apply them meaningfully to your life and work.
Cultivate a reading practice that balances ambition with enjoyment and you’ll find that the real victory isn’t in outpacing others, but in becoming a more thoughtful, informed, and insightful version of yourself.
What’s books are on your nightstand? How are you staying informed and inspired through books? We’d love to hear your recommendations—share your current reads and thoughts in the comments below.
Sign up for Bird Feed, our monthly newsletter, to receive articles like this in your inbox.
