I've always wanted to say something very direct when an acquaintance or a client asked why I read so much, but I used to be a bit too cautious to verbalize my real beliefs out loud. But if a prominent, knowledgeable person supports my beliefs publicly, I'll happily repeat them. I have, however, gotten to the place over the past ten years when someone asks why I read the NYTimes, The Economist, a cutting-edge book like the brilliant work of retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer(subtitled "Why I Chose Pragmatism Not Textualism" [originalism]) or any top magazine or journal, I can be fairly direct. It usually comes out like, "look, there's no way you can become intelligently aware of what's going on in this world unless you read the Times or the New Yorker and The Economist." That's true whether or not you agree with the writer.
But here's General Mattis verbalizing my actual beliefs in the context of the military: If you haven't read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate and you will be incompetent because your personal experiences alone aren't broad enough to sustain sustain you. Any commander who claims he is "too busy to read" is going to fill body bags with his troops as he learns the hard way.
I'll adjust that to "if you're too busy to read you'll soon be out of a good professional job." It was noticeable as an executive consultant when I went into an exec's office--some of the best and most relevant books were in their small bookshelf. I remember Pat MacGinnis' shelf at Ralston (one of the finest CEOs in the country) had some fine literature texts included in his small shelf. He was an astute, brilliant guy--and obviously a voracious reader.
I regularly beat out the competition largely because of my extensive reading and humanities background. I understood business marketing, technology, manufacturing and nearly all the business disciplines. But my expertise was in the humanities--the ability to think, but especially my highly relevant and largely unconscious ability in analogy. Analogy is the backbone of strategic thinking--and that's why so few are really experts in strategic thinking and decisionmaking.
Funny, but it's only recently that I realized my expertise in analogy was unusual. I do remember that as part of the my acceptance for PhD at UMN I took the Miller Analogies test (one form of intelligence testing), but it was an unusual and unconscious competitive advantage until recently. What I found out was that I scored right at the 90% in the Miller Analogies, supportive of my analogical expertise. So on those occasions when I was asked for input and respnded, the client response was typical: "fascinating and useful idea. Where did that come from?" My response was inevitably "I'm clueless." I was sharing that with one of my coffee cronies who has a lot of friends in the movie industry. He commented that a great number of producers and directors work out of the humanities. When one proposes an idea and someone asks where he got it, their response is often the same as mine: "I'm clueless." After so many years of fine poetic literature, history, music and philosophy, I'm often clueless where my ideas come from. But the idea is typically unique and highly valuable for the client. My entire business model was and is built on the humanities--not out of psych, business or tech orientation. I can do business and tech readily, but the humanities define me. And, I've learned, it also defines some of the brightest folk.
So why read? The answer is obvious: for a highly fulfilling and rich life--not a vocational bodybag.