Reading alone is having a conversation with someone smart without having to perform.

Talking to people is partly performance, even with friends. You are tracking your face, timing your replies, deciding what not to say. A book removes all of that: you can disagree, reread a sentence four times, stop for a week, and nobody registers any of it. That is why ideas land differently on a page than in a room.

Find one book by somebody who knows something you do not, and read it slowly with no plan to mention it. Argue with it in the margins. Notice how much more you take in when you are not also managing how you look.