How You Can Start To Read More Books
Physical books have been enjoying a resurgence and I’m glad. There is nothing better than flicking through the pages of a book and with a few books making notes in the margins and highlight important or useful sentences and paragraphs.
There is huge amount of content out there not only in books but also online. I still find a good book with a ton on information worth the time and effort. However, the realities of life, and particularly nowadays, it appears we either don’t have the time to sit down and read or we don’t make the effort to make the time.
If you really want start reading more or get back to reading as much as you did before below is a method to get you started.
Do you have a book you want to read?
If you haven’t read regularly for some time, I would suggest picking a book which you feel you will enjoy. In fact, you could pick a book you have already read some time again and remember it fondly. The reason is to pick something ‘easy’ to get you started. It’s no good picking a book which may become a little tough to get into or get through! We want to ease and encourage the mind back into the habit of reading.
Because what we are about to do is start the process of creating a new habit or resurrecting an old faint habit which has slipped into the background in our neuron connected brain. Picking the right book is going to be extremely useful in getting back into the reading.
Pick a time of the day to read
Ideally picking a time if day to read and sticking to it is preferable than reading at ad hoc times. Remember we are aiming to build the habit and having a specific to read with help with creating a trigger to pick up the book. Many people usually read towards the end of the day, just before going to bed or before falling asleep. The reading is the trigger to get the brain and body to start the process of getting to sleep. And that’s ok if it works for you.
Sometimes we need to be more awake and alert to read a book if it requires attention, most fall into the non-fiction category I find!
Once you have decided on the book and a time to read this is easy part, and you two options to get started.
Time Based
Aim to only read for five minutes. That’s it. Five minutes.
We don’t want to overdo it in the early stages. Although, you’re probably think five minutes is a bit stupid. Please bear with me. When we start something, we tend to overdo it with our enthusiasm and want to do more. What happens is it quickly becomes a chore and within a few days, a week or se we slow down and then stop completely.
This doesn’t help in building the new habit, in fact it dismantles the neural pathways and the next time you are starting all over again. Read the post on habits!
The aim is simple – read for just 5 minutes per day for a week or two weeks to build up a habit and a routine. If you manage to read for a little longer, say 10 minutes, on a few days then it’s a plus. Keep in mind you are only aiming to read for 5 minutes, this way it won’t feel like a chore!
Once you are in the swing of reading for 5 minutes you can up the time to 6 minutes if you want to take it easy to take the next step. Or you could jump to 10 minutes. Once more, do this for a week or two weeks before you decide to up the amount of time you give to reading.
When you get to 10 minutes you can stop and stick to this for each day. The key here is to not overcommit. Make 5 or 10 minutes the minimum you will read and when you reach it, you can happily stop. Don’t stress yourself out you didn’t read for 30 minutes, start off with a low bar!
Pages based
The second approach follows the same principle as the first. But this time it’s about the number of pages you read. Again, start off with say five pages. You can even start off with reading just one page, one paragraph, or even one sentence!
However, let’s go with 5 pages. Depending on the type of book you are reading this may take you 2-3 minutes or perhaps 10 minutes. Hopefully, you’ve chosen an easy enjoyable book to start with, which would mean you can read 5 pages in about 5 or 6 minutes.
Same as the first approach, simply read 5 pages each day for a week or even two weeks and then if you feel you want to increase the page count then do so. Only increase it a small amount to make the activity easy to do. Go to 6 pages rather than jumping to 10 pages after successfully reading 5 pages for a week or two weeks.
In both case, 5 minutes or 5 pages, you will be able to finish a typical 250-page book in 50 days or just under two months.
If you can read 10 pages or 10 minutes each day, then you will finish the same book in 25 days – just over three weeks! At this rate, and if you take a week’s break before ethe next book, you will get through 12 books in a year!
That’s not bad for reading only 10 pages a day!
I’m sure you can work out the times and pages, so you get to finish a book every two weeks and now you are well on your way to reading 20 or more books each year.
Final words – start small, get comfortable, make it a daily ritual and you will be reading more books then ever before!
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