It’s important to think about the opportunity cost of this self-selling hour. On one hand, we can check Twitter, read some online news, and reply to a few emails while pretending to finish the memo that is supposed to be the focus of our attention. On the other hand, we can dedicate the time to improving ourselves. In the short term, we’re better off with the dopamine-laced rush of email and Twitter while multitasking. In the long term, the investment in learning something new and improving ourselves goes further.

Commenting on what it means to have knowledge, in How to Read a Book, Mortimer Adler writes: “The person who says he knows what he thinks but cannot express it usually does not know what he thinks.”

Can you explain what you know to someone else? Try it. Pick an idea you think you have a grasp of and write it out on a sheet of paper as if you were explaining it to someone else.

Another way to get smarter, outside of reading, is to surround yourself with people who are not afraid to challenge your ideas.