Photo: Hayes Pollard
Pick up a book! Substitute at least a small portion of that time you spend on your phone for reading. Now you must be thinking, but Hayes, reading is boring. If you think reading is boring, you couldn’t be more wrong. Thinking that way is a result of reading boring books for school. If you find a book you’re interested in, it’s far more entertaining than any sort of screen. Why read? Reading is what makes an emotionally intelligent being. Reading enhances and refines your personality. You go on a journey alongside the characters in each book you read. From that journey, you pick up a vast vocabulary, and often some of the best characteristics of the characters.
Everybody gets stressed and everyone has different coping mechanisms. However, some of these coping mechanisms, specifically using your phone, don’t help at all, instead they have the opposite effect of stimulating your mind. On the other hand, reading is an effective way to allow your mind to rest without the consequences of social media.
Reading preserves and promotes brain health and longitude. Reading before you go to sleep is the perfect way to wind down and set yourself up for a good night’s sleep. Sleep efficiency is the percentage of sleep in which your body is actually resting and recovering. According to Sleepwa.com most of our sleep efficiency rates are normally around 80% and using your phone before you go to sleep brings down your sleep efficiency considerably. This means that if you use your phone before bed, once you’re asleep you will be benefiting less from your sleep than you would have if you had instead read before bed. If you use your phone before you go to sleep, you are not only keeping your heart rate up, but stimulating your mind. When you sleep it takes your body some time to bring your heartbeat down to its resting rate and it takes even longer to bring your heart rate down if you were on your phone before sleeping. Why? Devices stimulate your mind and keep your heart beat up. Read and foster your creative mind, knowledge leads to success so read and you will be destined for greatness