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Recently I was perusing an article about the benefits of reading. It’s no surprise that the practice can improve our vocabulary, help us become more empathetic, increase the length of our life, and so much more. The problem is that reading can be tough to mold into a habit. If you’ve experienced anything like me in the past, you’ve had high hopes of reading two, three, or four books per month, only to read one-third of a book in sixty days. It can be a real challenge, yet in the past few months I’ve made four changes which have helped significantly in helping me read more:
1. Purchase a Kindle
I wouldn’t have recommended this a year ago, but I’ve recently become a convert for three main reasons:
- It’s easier to read. Has your thumb ever started cramping from holding stiff pages open for hours? Have you ever read a book with obnoxiously small print? The smell and feel of a paper is tough to beat, but when it comes to ease of reading, Kindle takes the cake. You can read in any light, customize font style and size, and use the dictionary function to look up words. I was originally worried about missing the tangibility of paper, but after the first few books, that concern faded away.
- It takes 30 seconds to acquire a book. Amazon is continually getting faster at delivering physical goods, but if, for instance, you listened to an Art of Manliness podcast and wanted to read a guest’s book right away (a situation I find myself in often), it would take anywhere from thirty minutes to four days to get a physical copy. Buying and downloading a Kindle version takes less than a minute – allowing you to start reading right away!
- Digital books aren’t limited by space. Whether you’re moving to a smaller apartment or taking a library of books on vacation, owning a Kindle makes storing and moving books a breeze. Instead of weighing your backpack down with 20 lbs of books, you only need one small device. Ever since I began the process of decluttering, owning a Kindle has allowed me to minimize physical possessions while still being able to read regularly.
2. Choose Books You’ll Enjoy
One of the quickest ways to kill a reading habit is to choose books based on obligation rather than excitement. This point reminds me of the second law of behavior change from Atomic Habits – “Make It Attractive”. To get started, ask yourself what genre excites you to read!
For me, I enjoy self-development books – I find them encouraging, motivating, and educational. When working to build my habit of reading, I read exclusively that genre because I knew it would be easy. Instead of killing my momentum by reading Shakespeare, I stuck to books that made me want to read more.
Whether you’re into sci-fi or autobiographies, try focusing on reading books in a genre you enjoy. Even if they aren’t “good” by other people’s standards, who cares? Once you’ve established reading as a habit, that’s when you should foray into books that might be more challenging for you.
3. Download Goodreads
If you’ve never heard of the app before, it’s essentially a way to track what you’ve read, discover new books, store your favorite quotes, and interact with other bibliophiles. Even though I rarely use the social aspect, I’ve found it motivating to see the list of books I’ve read continue to grow. There’s something so satisfying about adding a new book to the app even if no one else will know!
Additionally, when you link Goodreads to your Kindle, it syncs the books you’re reading, the books you’ve read, and the highlights you’ve made.
4. Don’t Pressure Yourself to Finish Books
We’ve all been there – we make it sixty pages into a book and it’s boring as hell. It takes all of our being to read another paragraph, but we hear that nagging voice in the back of our head telling us we need to finish the book.
“Do you really want to waste the $15 dollars you spent at the bookstore?”
“This book is a classic. It deserves to be read.”
Sound familiar? At least for me it’s easy to let thoughts like this creep up while I read, so in order to combat them, we need to shift our mindset in two ways:
- Don’t fall prey to the sunk cost fallacy. “The Sunk Cost Fallacy describes our tendency to follow through on an endeavor if we have already invested time, effort or money into it, whether or not the current costs outweigh the benefits.” It can be easy to feel obligation to a book due to the price we paid or the time we’ve already put into reading. What this mindset fails to consider, however, is the cost of continuing even if we aren’t finding value in the book. If you’re reading for pleasure, let the bar by which you decide to continue be whether or not you’re enjoying the read – if you aren’t, put the book down. If you’re reading for self-development, let the bar by which you decide to continue be whether or not you’re still learning from the book – if you aren’t, don’t be afraid to let it go.
- Don’t view books as sacred. Sometimes it feels like we owe it to books to finish them entirely. We place books on a pedestal in our minds and feel like we’re doing them a disservice if we don’t read the last page. I like the way Ali Abdaal recommends changing this mindset to one that views books more like blog posts. It removes the pressure we might feel when we see books as resources for our learning and pleasure rather than requirements for our development. One recent example from my own life was with You Are Here: Discovering the Magic of the Present Moment by Thich Nhat Hanh. I made it through the first chapter and thoroughly enjoyed what I read; however, I began to feel mental weight the longer I put off reading the second chapter. Once I realized that, I thanked the book for the value it provided me and donated it the next day.