Confessions of a reading habit: +408% books read in 2 years
Wondering how people you see in social media are able to read dozens of books every year while you struggle to read 2 or 3? Here’s a real-life story you might relate with.
For the sake of time, here’s what’s going to happen in this article: I will share the background and context that got me to the reading habit development and explain the simple steps adopted afterwards to set it up.
You manage your own time. If you are only interested in the practical part, look directly for the Get your sh..elf together section.
Background motivation
My mother is, for many reasons, my absolute role model. Despite her limited study opportunities, not having a chance to enrol in a college degree or similar academical option, she has always won in life thanks to amazing soft skills, inspiring and delighting others in each interaction.
Both my mother and father worked hard to ensure I’d grow intellectually and personally as much as possible, making an effort to stay up-to-date on current societal matters to challenge my views of the World. My parents don’t know how to explain the dangers or benefits of AI usage on every piece of technology or to lecture people about environmental sustainability, but they are curious and interested enough to ask and learn from me how can they explain to friends what I do for a living, in a detailed level.
For 2 people living in a tiny village of 3000, they think way wider than the majority.
Such attitude fed my crazy curious mindset and motivated me to improve communicational skills up to a level where I’m effortlessly able to explain complex topics to people that have never heard of them before.
“I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.” Albert Einstein
My mom never particularly enjoyed reading unless it was a good cookbook (she is a wonderful cook and former Portuguese cuisine chef). Nevertheless, every time she went to the post-office to grab our mail or ship something to our family in other locations, she’d bring a new book for us to read (in Portugal, post-offices used to — some still do — sell bestsellers and highlighted books. The smallest villages have restricted access to book stores). First, she’d read it to understand if it was suitable for my age (as this started when I was 7-8 years old) and then she’d challenge me to read it and discuss the book with her.
Sure… most of the books were mainstream novels, not technical/academical materials, but it was the start of an amazing habit and something that brought us closer.
Plot twist
In 2011, I applied for college 400km away from my parents’ village. The distance wouldn’t allow me to commute back and forth so I moved in with a high-school colleague, renting a house together.
Going out with newly made friends in a big city, studying for college, watching TV series, and working part-time took priority over reading books.
So, just like that, during late adolescence and beginning of adulthood, I simply stopped reading. After all, books wouldn’t go anywhere and that precious little youth period would.
“What are you reading these days?” a friend asked me. “Anything good you can recommend?”
Although it was a perfectly innocent question, it felt like a harsh slap in my face. “How long has it been since I’ve even opened a book? Quick, remember a cliché title!”, I thought. Oh dear… the shame! I felt so embarrassed that the only thing I was able to say was “hm… not having much time for books now but I’ve watched (random hot Netflix show’s title). Have you?”
As ironic and hypocrite this may sound, for many years I was under the impression that people who don’t read books would get dumber over time (don’t ask me why I thought that… I’m clueless).
Intrinsically, I now believe this highly affected my self confidence and perception of myself, seeing me at risk of falling behind the average intelligence in my surroundings, and feeling like if nothing changed fast I wouldn’t be able to engage in clever or even interesting conversations with others.
Moving from a small village to the 2nd largest city in the country had a purpose: learn like hell, get a job, keep learning like hell, and succeed while being happy. When my friend asked me about my reading situation, I somehow felt that purpose was slipping away from me, and it took its toll.
My parents had sacrificed so much and made such an effort so that I could pursuit that purpose… I felt like a change was needed.
Next birthday came and I decided to focus a great deal of my time in self-development. Reading more was definitely an urgent goal to achieve and something I already experienced, so it wouldn’t be hard to start.
Get your sh..elf together
We all have 24hours to fill in, per day. Not more. Not less.
The majority of us occupy 16 out of those 24h between work and sleeping. Maybe another 2h eating and commuting. You don’t need to be a math genius to quickly realise there’s around a handful of hours left. How the hell are we supposed to fit all personal endeavours and hobbies in 4–6h?
After troubled introspection, I understood that it is, indeed, all about how you setup your priorities — well, credit must be given to Mr. Stephen Covey and his 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’s book that absolutely helped me see this through.
Can you really tell me you can’t fit a book in your agenda, for 30min, before sleeping? How about a little less screen-scrolling and a bit more page turning? :)
The steps below are not rocket science, nor time-consuming, and they allowed me set a growing, challenging, and persistent reading habit:
- First, I installed the goodreads app and committed to a reading goal for the year, enrolling the #readingchallenge that was so popular a couple of years ago — of course I was aiming high, like everyone else with their new resolutions, and committed to 15 books in 2018. Me. The person that has not been reading for years. At all. Reading 15 books. I managed to read 12 (one per month) and although I didn’t achieve the proposed goal, that still made me feel awesome!;
- Added all friends in goodreads to discover what they were reading and to have that competitive feeling about who was reading more — studies show that competition might positively impact results as well as the classic social pressure “if they can do it, why can’t I?”;
- Left a book when the reading was making me feel bad or boring me so much I’d fall asleep after 1 paragraph — translated books are a considerable expense and we didn’t have piles of money back in the day, so my mother taught me that if we were to buy a book it had be read until the end to be worth the investment. This step was sincerely difficult for me. Having started a book, the only logic in my brain was to finish it, no matter what. Turns out that some books were absolute pleasure-killers and were affecting my willingness/fondness for reading. With this in mind, I started abandoning books as soon as they would give me a hint that they’d injure my love for reading — for context, this happened only 2 times in 2 years, simply because I bought them for the catchy title, so it’s not problematic, and please note that this action didn’t include deprecating topics just because they were difficult or out of my comfort zone, at all, only the ones that are basic clichés without a captivating message/learning or writing type;
- Alternated book topics: 1 technical/self development book, followed by 1 fiction book — when I started my self-development journey, I got deeply interested in heavy readings about how our brains work, why we react in certain ways, how we can have different attitudes, what’s our life purpose, etc. Such readings require not only time but willingness to absorb, acknowledge, and reflect on the topics. If you try reading 5 in a row, you’ll probably get exhausted. When this happened, I opted to read a fiction book after each technical/self development one, to alleviate my mind a bit — as a Project Manager I was constantly facing demanding topics and overburdening decisions, I didn’t need additional heaviness in my private time, after work, so fiction helped a lot with that balance.
- Created a wish-list at bookdepository (for foreign books) and FNAC (for Portuguese ones) where I’d save all titles that caught up my eye or when someone’s reference made me curious about the topic. This way I could see how many books were still waiting for me to explore and, since I’m tremendously curious, I wanted to get to them as soon as possible. This also allowed me to pay attention to sales and to purchase them at the best price possible.
Simple steps that led to a +408% reading increase. How spectacular is that?
No voodoo crap. No out of this World secret ingredients. Nothing. Just plain simple priorities setup, et voilà: 12 books read in 2018, 20 books in 2019, 49 books in 2020. This year alone, the reading list is already equivalent to ~13k pages!
The trick is really simple: not wanting to do everything all at the same time.
If you want to read more, just take advantage of those boring slow moments like airplane traveling, services waiting lines, and public transportation to read a few pages. Start small.
With this being said, you can still enjoy hobbies besides reading! There’s no need to practice all hobbies at the same time or in the same days, or even to be devoted just to books.
Embrace diversity and, even more important than that, guide your habits at your own rhythm!
There’s no shame in reading 5 books in one year. There’s also no medal for people reading 50 or 100. Find the right balance to fit your schedule, your own reading preferences, and your mental disposition for the activity, and you will be able to start reading way more.
Think about what topics you find interesting. A short story, maybe? A crime? An academical topic? A biography from someone you admire? Just pick up a topic of your interest and start. The rest will follow.
If you are an avid reader or a starting one, I hope to meet you at goodreads soon to check what titles are making you tick :)
Here’s a photo of our home bookshelves (well, some of them). I promise we don’t buy them just to look good there, we actually read them!!!
