How To Beat The Guilt Of Not Finishing Books You've Begun, Expert Explains

Our brains were not originally built to read — yet we’ve trained ourselves to decode language in over 500 typefaces. That evolutionary leap rewired the brain and propelled societal and scientific progress. But with the shift from page to screen, and the rise of doom scrolling, we risk losing the very skills that helped us thrive.

This book explores:

• How reading transformed the human brain
• The cognitive impact of excessive screen use
• The rise of digital fatigue and shortened attention spans
• The urgent need to balance print and digital reading for long-term success

Packed with actionable strategies and supported by endorsements from leaders like Dr. Rati Godrej, Niranjan Hiranandani, Ajay Chowdhury, and Dr. Rajendra Jagdale, Win the Battle of Your Mind is both a timely warning and a hopeful roadmap.

Here's an excerpt from Reeta Ramamurthy Gupta's Win the Battle of Your Mind 

It is not possible to form a lifelong relationship with everyone you meet! Apply the same logic to books. “The number of books completed is a vanity metric. As you know more, you leave more books unfinished. Focus on new concepts with predictive power,” says investor and thought leader Naval Ravikant.

What Naval is telling us is that putting in the time to get the knowledge advantage is an important function of reading. While I am not advocating ‘book hopping’, this is especially for those not starting to read out of the fear that a book once started should be read all the way through.

One of the best pieces of advice comes from the great Samuel Johnson himself.

"This is surely a strange advice; you may as well resolve that whatever men you happen to get acquainted with, you are to keep them for life. A book may be good for nothing; or there may be only one thing in it worth knowing; are we to read it all through?”

Pick the chapters you can benefit from and milk the most out of those.

Chances are that every author has something unique and important to share with you. Find that and revel in it. Because the more you benefit, the more you will stick to it. If you’ve crossed the threshold of what you can learn from the book, chances are that if compelled to finish it, you will drop off to a less cognitively rewarding activity.

I want to answer another question posed during one of my programmes. Similar to the CEO’s question in the previous chapter, I was asked, “Seems like there’s too much to do in a day. Exercise, eat healthy, spend time with ‘real people’, read. Isn’t it too much to ask for?”

Here’s the answer:

As part of a study on children, it was determined that reading 12 hours a week is the optimal amount of reading, and can be linked to improved brain structure46, according to researchers at the University of Cambridge47 and their collaborators at Warwick and Fudan University in China.

Explaining this, Prof. Barbara Sahakian from the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge said, “Reading isn’t just a pleasurable experience – it’s widely accepted that it inspires thinking and creativity, increases empathy and reduces stress. But on top of this, we found significant evidence that it’s linked to important developmental factors in children, improving their cognition, mental health, and brain structure, which are cornerstones for future learning and well-being.”

However, beyond about 12 hours per week, there appeared to be no additional benefits. In fact, there was a gradual decrease in cognition according to the study. This may suggest those children were more sedentary and spent less time at other activities that could be cognitively enriching, including sports. and social activities.

Extracted with permission from Win the Battle of Your Mind In The Age Of Social Media: Scroll Less, Read More by Reeta Ramamurthy Gupta; published by Embassy Books