If there’s any habit that I would deem as essential, it would be reading. There are a lot of upsides when it comes to reading a book. Reading non-fiction makes you more knowledgeable and informed. Reading fiction can make you more empathetic and imaginative. But honestly, for me, I like to read because I want to get inside the character’s heads and their worlds, and I find their dilemmas thoughtful, interesting, entertaining, fascinating, moving, or in some cases, tragic. The best books are the ones that stick with you long after you put the book down.
I have always been a lifelong reader. I started off with picture books for kids. Then I moved unto chapter books. When I wasn’t reading school-assigned books, I was reading fantasy literature such as Lord of the Rings and similar ilk. That continued all the way through college. After I graduated. I noticed I didn’t read as much and I wanted to make reading more of a priority. That was when I actively kept track of what books I was reading and recorded how long I spent on them and how much I finished per month.
If you’ve been struggling to find time to read and complete a book, I can give you the habits I utilize to ensure that I maintain the habit of reading. All of the habits I use should be relatively easy to replicate for anyone to use. Here is the advice I give to myself on how I read:
Ask Yourself, Why Do I Want To Read?: With so many books out there, along with the mountains of other content out there such as movies, music, television, video games, streaming video services such as Youtube and Twitch, and all the other online content floating on the internet, it’s hard not to feel overwhelmed with the amount of option we have in the digital age. So it’s important to have a purpose when it comes. The most obvious is to have fun. There are plenty of fun books I read, mostly genre fantasy and sci-fi. But books are not just for fun. If you have a problem, there are 9 times out of 10 a book that can help you with that problem. Want to find a better way to learn? There are plenty of books for that. Want to understand the history of Sengoku era Japan and who was fighting who and the historical importance of that time? There’s a book for that. Want to understand the science of quantum physics and the engineering of spacecraft? There’s a book for that too. A lot of knowledge and understanding when it comes to all of the collected wisdom of the human experience can be found in the pages of a book. If you want to find meaning, understand yourself, and make your life better, you just need to make reading a priority.
Find Books You Want To Read, Quit The Books You Don’t Like: Now is the time to start finding books you’ll invest your time on to read. A lot of the best books ever written can be found for free online. A lot of them come in the form of PDFs or through Project Gutenberg. If you prefer the tactile experience of a physical book, you can find books for cheap at your local library or through online retailers such as Amazon.
When you start reading, if you find yourself not enjoying a particular book, chuck them out and quit early. Your time is too precious to read books that you don’t enjoy. When it comes to my reading, I plan out three books to read for the month: one hard book that’s more technical and contains a lot of information, one medium-level book that’s a little bit of a challenge but still easy to understand, and one fun book. That’s one of the ways I determine what I want to read for the month.
Prime Your Surroundings: Take a look around you. Where are you storing your books? How easy is it to pick up a book and start reading - physically or digitally? The fewer obstacles there are when it comes to picking up a book, the easier it will be to check them out. Make changes to your environment, such as putting books in places where you make the most frequent visits or putting digital reminders to start reading.
Create Action Associations: This brings me to my next point. Find gaps in your time where you can read and do it often enough in the same situation that there is a strong, learned association formed between that situation and reading. The more specific the better. For me, I tend to read after I take my nightly shower and I have the physical book or my reading app open for me after I wear my PJs. Lately, due to me spending more time late at night due to work and nightlife activities, however, I had to make adjustments and start reading after I work out and taking a shower in the morning.
Keep Track of Your Reading: The final tip I can give you is to keep track of not just the books you’ve completed but also keeping track how much you have read, whether by the number of pages you’ve completed or how much time you spent reading. One way you can do this is by using a journal as a way to keep track of your metrics. My way of keeping track of my reading is using Beanstack. It’s a site where you can engage with your local community and come up with reading challenges to help you with your reading goals. I’ve been using it ever since I found out that my local community was doing a Summer Reading Challenge. The community challenge is a great way to incentivize you and potentially your inner circle to read more.
If you want a small yet effective way to start your reading habit, just read 20 pages per day. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but consider that the average length of a book ranges from 200-400 pages long. If you do the math, it should take you between 10-20 days for you to finish a book, possibly two! I have also seen readers say that their reading habits involve reading for at least 30 minutes per day or reading two chapters of a book. Whatever you prefer, choose the method you find most convenient to you and stick with it for a while, the results are surprisingly staggering.
Reading has now become a major part of my routine. I have a load of books on my bookshelf and plenty more on my Kindle. Maybe someday I can talk more about the books I own and my overall thoughts on them, an entire newsletter dedicated to more in-depth reviews and analyses of books that I enjoyed reading. I have managed to read so much and spent so much time (and money) on them because I wanted to make reading a priority, especially last year. If you spent that much time energy and reading, how much would you accomplish?
Lifelong reader here--the tip on action associations is top shelf 😌 and such a good way to establish a reading routine.
You’ll get my book when you pry it out of my cold, dead hands...