MM168 - Grab Some Dead Tree | MM Book Study Pt. 26

In this digital age, it is good to remember our roots. Taking the time to sit down and read a genuine paper book is still a productive use of time, despite the convenience of the Internet.

[INTRO]

♫ Trenches by Pop Evil ♫

*Alex*

Welcome to Morning Mindset. A daily dose of practical wit and wisdom with a professional educator & trainer, Amazon best selling author, United States Marine, Television, and Radio host, Paul G. Markel. Each episode will focus on positive and productive ways to strengthen your mindset and help you improve your relationships, career goals, and overall well-being. Please welcome your host; Paul G. Markel.

*Professor Paul*

Hello, ladies and gentlemen and welcome back to the Morning Mindset podcast. I'm your host Paul Markel, and thank you once again for taking the time out of your day to join me. Now, if you've been with us for a while, you know that we are involved in the Morning Mindset Book Study. Yes indeed, the Morning Mindset book is a genuine physical book.

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I'm actually holding, you hear that? Hear those pages flipping. I'm holding a physical copy of the book in my hand right now. You can get one from Amazon or you can get them from MorningMindsetPodcast.com, if you want to if you want a signed version or if you're a digital person, you can go to Kindle and order a Kindle.

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Now, why are we doing this? Why is it important? I wanted to take the time to walk you through this book, to walk you through step-by-step. Now, obviously, I cannot deliver all of the material that is in the book, you know through a daily ten minute podcast. But I can help you along and maybe I can help you understand it a little better or maybe encourage you will bit.

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Now today's topic is, grab some dead tree and exercise your brain. Yes, in case you went to public school in the last 20 years. They make paper books out of dead trees, and I know you're like “What? When did they start doing that?” Only about a thousand years ago. So why is it important, to discuss paperback books or physical books, isn't print dead?

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You know Egon said that print is dead. But the fact is that Amazon sells something like 3.4 million different book titles, I know that we believe there may be that if we listen to Egon from Ghostbusters, and case you didn't know what that reference was. There are still a lot of books out there, and you can get paperback books genuine, no kidding, physical paperback books that you can hold in your hand.

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Now, I know many of you especially if you were of the young generation or the younger generation, think “Oh, this old guy. This old guy, he thinks that you should have paper books because you know, that's what they did when he was young.” No, it's still a valid. Paperback books are still valid today. Number one you don't require, well, you don't need batteries or battery life or a monitor or screen or an internet connection to read a paperback book. Number two, its physical you hold it in your hand and something that I know that you can if you have a Kindle book.

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I know that you can highlight it, I know that you can go in there and you can highlight things and you can copy and you can do all that cool stuff technologically. But for me, when it comes to studying non-fiction books, I find that it's more beneficial for me to actually take notes. Write them in the margins, and use a genuine physical highlighter and to highlight.

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Now maybe that's not, you know, the reason it's important to understand, this is because not everyone learns in the same way. Some people learn better by listening to instructions, some people are visual learners, and if they see it, if they read it, then it works better for them. Some people are what they call Concrete or Physical Learners that they learn best, or they understand best when they actually are involved in the process, and all of those people exist out there.

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Now, a physical book, the great thing about a physical book is you can buy it, you can own it, you can store it and I know that takes up space but the fact the matter is, if there's a power outage, you always have that, and say all of its power outage. I have a lot of life on my phone, how many of you have books or videos or music or whatever that is only available to you, when you have an internet connection?

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You have a phone you're like, “Oh I got all this music on my phone, and I've got all this and I've got all that, and it's all ready to go”, and I ask you is it actually there, or is it only there as long as you have Wi-Fi, and what happens when you don't have Wi-Fi? Paper books kind of leads us into paper maps. A lot of people rely very, very heavily on GPS or you know, Google Maps or what have you. But what happens when you don't have a good connection? What happens when the connection is poor and you don't actually have a real physical paper map.

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You’re like “But that doesn't happen in America.” Yeah, that doesn't happen in America, and Google never sends you in the wrong direction. Google never sends you to a business that's no longer there. Yeah, and your GPS never tells you to turn down a dirt road that's a dead end, does it now? It never does. Ladies and gentlemen, sometimes we need to get back to the real, to the actual, physical that we can hold in our hands, and since we are living in a digital age where so much of our information comes from a screen. Whether it's a phone screen or tablet screen or you know, the your laptop or your computer at work, or what have you. So much of it actually comes, it's all notional, it's all digital.

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It's good, it's productive, it’s useful. Is it a productive use of your time to actually sit down with a real paper book? Now, I know many of you, I'm preaching to the choir and you’re like “I got you Paul. It's no big deal”, but I bet you, if you're already with me, that there are a lot of people that, you know that don't ever do that, or they think that they're much more enlightened, intelligent than you. Because you're a troglodyte, a caveman and you have all these paper books reading is exercise for your brain.

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I hope that you understand that. But it is you just like we need to exercise our bodies physically. We need to move our bodies around. We need to lift heavy things, we need to actually stress our bodies in order to make our muscles grow. We understand that right we talked about this involuntary.

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Sometimes you need to allow your brain to engage in some voluntary hardship. Sometimes you need to grab a book, and you need to read about and study a subject, of which you've never studied or that is more difficult than you've ever encountered. You need to exercise and strengthen your mind by encountering words that you may never have encountered before. Wow, what? Yes, that's how we expand our vocabulary is by reading words that we've never read before.

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In our modern culture we've devolved I had a conversation with a couple of friends recently, about how children today have devolved into this Emoji speak. But they don't even type words. They just send pictures and faces. and I know it's convenient. I get that believe me. I get it, it's it's very convenient rather than to type the word, okay to send someone a thumbs up or you know, or a smiley face just indicates that you're happy or that you found that that comment was funny or whatever but in a very real sense. Our children are losing the ability to communicate in a cognitive and thoughtful sense or a thoughtful way.

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Have you read? Some of the postings on the internet do you ever see that? I know a lot of you probably don't want to see it, you know look at it and you stay off of social media, but the fact is there's a lot of people out there that seem to have lost the ability and I'm not talking about children not talking about people in elementary school.

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I'm talking about people that are over the age of 18-21 and older that cannot spell commonly used words, and how do we get to that point?  We got to that point because everything is digital. Everything's Emoji. Everything's emotion-based and no one takes the time to actually sit down and deliberately exercise their brains, and that is exactly what you do when you grab some dead tree put it in your hand.

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So sometime this week, if you haven't done it today, that's part of the reason that I did the Morning Mindset book as a paperback. Maybe I had a plan grab some dead tree sit down brew a cup of coffee, whatever and exercise your brain. I'm your host Paul Markel, I'll talk to you again, real soon.

[OUTRO]

♫ Trenches by Pop Evil ♫

*Alex*

Thank you for spending time with us today. To get show notes, submit a topic request, for more from your host Paul G. Markel, visit MorningMindsetPodcast.com. That’s MorningMindsetPodcast.com. Please leave a review of this podcast on your favorite podcast player, we appreciate your time & effort, and we look forward to reading your honest feedback.