If you're like me, you have more books on your shelf than you ever seem to have time to read. Or you want to read them, but you find yourself goofing off with something else (like social media and games on your phone). I went from reading pretty regularly to barely reading at all. And what sucks is that I have a backlog of books I don't even own yet that I want to get to. Well the other day I watched the following video, and it really got me to rethink my reading habits:
It's a nearly 38 minute video (well worth watching, in my opinion), but here's some of the highlights:
1.) You need to learn to form a habit that makes it so that reading is so simple, that it'd be ridiculous NOT to do it. So, for instance, if you want to get in the habit of flossing, but you just don't feel like it...don't want to waste the time on it...whatever, then start getting into the habit of flossing only one tooth. After all, you can floss one tooth, right? That doesn't take any time at all. But then, when you get into the habit of flossing once a day anyways, you start finding yourself wanting to keep going, because you're doing it anyways...see how that works? So, if you're finding you're not reading at all, or very little, just read one page out of a book. What's one page? It's ridiculous NOT to read just one page. And before you know it you'll be reading more often.
2.) Reading as little as 30 minutes a day can get you through a LOT of books in a year. In the last few years, I'm currently (shamefully) getting through maybe a book or two a year...if that. That means I only have something like 40 books left in my lifetime, assuming I live to a decent age. That's not a lot. Carving out 30 minutes in our waking day is totally doable. Get in the habit of carving out that 30 minutes just to read. I found that that works best for me right before bed. I set a timer on my phone for 30 minutes, and then read. You can get through probably a dozen or more books a year reading just 30 minutes a day (depending on the size of the book), and once you get in the habit, you'll want to read longer.
3.) Read more quickly by skimming through the text with your finger. Yes your grade school teachers told you not to do that. Schools teach you a lot of dumb wrong things. Ignore them. Reading with you finger will help you read faster, and with better comprehension. Also, since we were taught in school to read out loud, we tend to have a narrator in the back of our head reading to us, which means we read back to ourselves slower. Get in the habit of removing the narrator and replacing him with a movie screen that displays the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and feels that you're reading. This is hard to explain in words, but the video does a decent job of going over it with the world's fastest reader. I tried it last night with a biography I'm reading, and was pretty impressed with how fast I read, and how I better comprehended what I read.
There were other tips in the video, but these were the main ones that I came away with, and they're already helping me put reading in a different light. And hopefully they'll help someone here too!
It's a nearly 38 minute video (well worth watching, in my opinion), but here's some of the highlights:
1.) You need to learn to form a habit that makes it so that reading is so simple, that it'd be ridiculous NOT to do it. So, for instance, if you want to get in the habit of flossing, but you just don't feel like it...don't want to waste the time on it...whatever, then start getting into the habit of flossing only one tooth. After all, you can floss one tooth, right? That doesn't take any time at all. But then, when you get into the habit of flossing once a day anyways, you start finding yourself wanting to keep going, because you're doing it anyways...see how that works? So, if you're finding you're not reading at all, or very little, just read one page out of a book. What's one page? It's ridiculous NOT to read just one page. And before you know it you'll be reading more often.
2.) Reading as little as 30 minutes a day can get you through a LOT of books in a year. In the last few years, I'm currently (shamefully) getting through maybe a book or two a year...if that. That means I only have something like 40 books left in my lifetime, assuming I live to a decent age. That's not a lot. Carving out 30 minutes in our waking day is totally doable. Get in the habit of carving out that 30 minutes just to read. I found that that works best for me right before bed. I set a timer on my phone for 30 minutes, and then read. You can get through probably a dozen or more books a year reading just 30 minutes a day (depending on the size of the book), and once you get in the habit, you'll want to read longer.
3.) Read more quickly by skimming through the text with your finger. Yes your grade school teachers told you not to do that. Schools teach you a lot of dumb wrong things. Ignore them. Reading with you finger will help you read faster, and with better comprehension. Also, since we were taught in school to read out loud, we tend to have a narrator in the back of our head reading to us, which means we read back to ourselves slower. Get in the habit of removing the narrator and replacing him with a movie screen that displays the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and feels that you're reading. This is hard to explain in words, but the video does a decent job of going over it with the world's fastest reader. I tried it last night with a biography I'm reading, and was pretty impressed with how fast I read, and how I better comprehended what I read.
There were other tips in the video, but these were the main ones that I came away with, and they're already helping me put reading in a different light. And hopefully they'll help someone here too!
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