There should be a reading day!!

The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read. -Mark Twain 

Organizations often arrange events like Fun-Friday, annual day, Business Unit meet etc. sometimes on working days and often on weekends. The idea is to let the people enjoy, give them creative breaks, relaxing experience, free their minds etc.

(I know I am using a lot of etceteras, but obviously there are more terms for such events than I know, so please bare with me and the few upcoming etceteras)

There are also events like coding competitions, coding challenges, Hackathons, bug-hunts etc. which intend to take the employees out of their day-today work, or sometimes make them work with competition in mind, to let them shape their own ideas etc.

I have a thought and a strong opinion about it!

why there shouldn't be a reading day? 

I am sure nowadays people do read a lot of blogs, e-books, kindle books etc. and share a lot as well, but I always have at least 10 articles or blogs that I have bookmarked and I postpone to read them in my leisure time which doesn't come easily!

So, to encourage reading (and not just to help finish the backlogs), I think there should be at least a day in the year, where all the employees would come to their work-place, but would only do the reading during the work-hours. They should be reading whatever they want, however they want! Of course people will discuss with colleagues, read in groups, exchange books, blogs, articles etc. but there should not be any coding, code reviews, testing, automation, stand-ups, management, business analysis, data analytics, presentations etc. and definitely no meetings.

It Should Be A Complete Reading DAY!!

This can also be put in different scales like, "one hour in a month", or "last 2 hours on last Friday of the month", "One day after you achieve a milestone" etc. but it SHOULD be experimented.

After the thought came to me, I pondered the cons of such a reading-day-event, but then again, I felt all the cons would equally apply to the above mentioned other events as well.

Not surprisingly, this thought was followed by a second thought to write a blog post, to gather the opinions of the reading world out here. So please let me know your comments, opinions!

Finally, let me put one of the many interesting quotes from the internet about reading!

Reading gives us Someplace to go when we have to stay where we are! 

Just between you and me, by quoting this quote I am not suggesting that reading day is a perfect alternative for team outings ;)

People who can change levels are the ones who can raise levels!

I agree the title is confusing! But that's helpful to grab your attention, isn't it?

Let me tell you step by step what and whom am I talking about! 

First of all, this observation comes from a team leader guy who is about to become a manager! This is for those who are transitioning, slowly, but steadily.

I am an average workman in an IT company and I noticed few things!  I have an experience of around 10 years and I interact with a mix of junior and senior colleagues. As part of my job, I have to answer queries from a freshers, interns as well as I am part of product definition discussions with my senior managers having 15-30 years of experience in the IT field.

The fact is while talking to the junior colleagues and answering their doubts, I have to match my level of thinking with theirs, I have to see things from their perspective and then try to answer his/her query. If I answer the person from my perspective, then he/she may not understand it well in the first go. That would result in hesitance from juniors to talk to me next time when they have a doubt.

On the other hand, when I talk with my managers, product definition team, product managers I should try to answer them from their perspective. Obviously the senior colleagues don't bother about small bugs in the system, but they care more about overall functionality achieved, quality targets being met, which modules are working, which modules are affected due to bugs, what is the effect on our release cycle etc. I generally shouldn't bother them about the minute details of the software/s, unless they show the interest (that saves time for both of us). Unnecessary dragged discussions filled with too much detailing would make the discussion boring

Fruitful discussions with your juniors increase depth of your knowledge in particular area.
Fruitful discussions with your seniors increase width of your knowledge (And it is your duty to make sure your juniors also get same experience when they interact with you :) ).

To summarize, If you interact with people by bringing yourself at appropriate levels, you'd be involved in more and more fruitful discussions which would lead to increase in your knowledge. You'll get a lot of exposure which would raise your level ultimately!

Hope this makes sense!