Cutting through the noise

Can a return to slow and careful reading spark the deep thinking required to innovate in the digital era?

Ideas Bloom in Quiet Reads, by Dall-E

Have you ever encountered an idea that captured your imagination for days as you tried to understand its “why”—the emotion, logic, and psychology that make it stand out? This week’s edition is about my awakening to the knowledge that to become a better writer, I must first become a better reader. It’s about a new foundation for innovation that engages our brains to their fullest potential, avoiding the subtle negatives of digital media. I’m excited to put what I’ve learned on the table, ask for your response, and work together, pushing harder for a supply chain worthy of our times.

In search of deep thinking

Reading is dying, and with it, a chance to live our lives anew. Our digital devices deluge us with information, releasing more than a flood—a torrent. We are overwhelmed, so we skim, scanning for tidbits that jolt our attention, confirm what we know, and direct what we do. We read for the now, never slowing to ponder, probe, or pursue things unorthodox, radical, or just different. Because our reading is shallow, our innovations are tweaks—continuous, small-step progress toward an ever more efficient future. We garner more profits without enriching our lives. Or our work. We hold back, staying safe. We fail to leap. We fail to lead.

But there is a solution grounded in science. Listening to Maryanne Wolf on The Ezra Klein Show, I learned the importance and impact of deep, immersive reading—a forgotten skill and neglected pastime. Wolf is a scholar and advocate for reading and literacy, a passionate communicator, and a relentless doer. In her books, Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain and Reader and Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World, Wolf explores the neuroscience of reading, the evolution of our brain—forced by digital media—and the personal and social implications for critical thinking, empathy, and reflection that come along with it.

As Wolf and Klein conversed, I learned that research in the field of cognitive neuroscience explains that when we are immersed in deep reading, the brain is activated everywhere, in both hemispheres—on the left, in regions responsible for logic and language, and on the right, where creativity and intuition emerge. When fully immersed—consuming books, articles, anything—we activate all that we know and go further, making new connections and generating novel thought, meaning new knowledge, not resembling what was known before. Deep reading can be achieved on digital media, but is better on physical paper, because there we more naturally skip around, reread provoking passages, take notes in the margins, dog ear pages, underline, star, highlight, and more, spontaneously.

Immersive reading allows us to become aware of a writer’s best thoughts, carefully crafted as meaningful text, and then go further to generate new ideas. Wolf summed this up by explaining that reading is “the place where we go beyond the wisdom of the author to discover our own,” an insight she learned from Proust.

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Wolf’s insights encourage us all to stop skimming and, instead, to slow down and follow a more intentionally contemplative process—noticing what jumps out, understanding why it does, creating new neural circuits, and inventing new understanding, insights, and ideas, as only the human brain can. Digital content is inescapable, and reading it will reshape our thought processes, sometimes lowering our attention span, but at its best, helping us quickly sift through vast amounts of information to become awake, aware, safe, and productive in our complex world.

Immersive reading will help strengthen my writing and, in turn, help readers see new opportunities and conceive unimagined innovations. Sometimes, readers will write, telling innovation stories for others to read. Reading is a solitary act, but as we both read deeply, writer and reader, we will each discover our best thoughts, working together in a distant yet connected collaboration of the thoughtful.

Reading can help us see the world differently as humans in the digital age, reforming the supply chain to help us better our lives and work. Together, we can bring reading back to life,

Spurring radical collaborations

Let’s get started. Listen to Wolf on Klein’s podcast and make your plans for deep, immersive reading, and perhaps, writing. I will do so and go further. I have ordered many of the books cited by Wolf and listed in the episode’s endnotes. I’m looking to be a better reader, to create better ideas, with a better purpose in mind —a new editorial mission for this newsletter.

In coming editions, I want to help innovators see customers and understand their unique self-worth, dignity, and experiences, writing to voice their accomplishments and aspirations. Doing so is the foundation for innovating a supply chain based on human connections, enabled by the exponential power of digital technologies. This is a refined direction, not a wholesale change, but a formidable challenge, nonetheless. As mentioned here, here, and here, my success requires that I write with art, science, and technology, often emphasizing one or another, and sometimes all together, achieving a new convergence in my writing and, through my words, your innovations.

Here's how you can help: Tell me about the articles, podcasts, and books you discover and devour in your quest for deep, immersive reading. I’ll read them and write about how they expand my mind, calling out implications for innovators, a vision for the supply chain, and the value created for us as humans living and working through epic times in the digital age.

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Help us think!  Your comments help me connect more dots, drawing our community forward. Please click below or reach me at mark.dancer@n4bi.com