The key to more reading

Now, I know very well that I wrote articles focused on this topic in the past, but it's always a good idea to rewrite some things for the people who only read the new articles and never really go back to the old ones.

And while this advice is quite common, it should, in my opinion, be shared more, in order to help more people read more books.

I'm not gonna start talking too much about why you should read and how important reading is, because if you're here, you probably know very well just how much information you can get from a book. The more you read, the smarter you get, and the smarter you get, the more things you'll be able to do, and life gets easier and easier.

But reading is quite hard for some people, because it can be tedious, or boring. I mean, sitting down and starting at a book for hours and hours, doing nothing else, can seem daunting to those who don't like sitting in one place for too long.

That's why, well, you shouldn't do it.

As with anything, breaking the task into multiple smaller goals, and then doing them little by little is the way to go.

Reading even 10 pages a day is more than a lot of other people do these days. And if you read non-fiction, then you're learning a bunch of things. So if you're new to reading, starting small, and being consistent, meaning reading every single day, it's a great way to begin your reading journey.

Pick a book, any book you think you might like, even fiction if you think you'll enjoy it, and make a habit out of reading 10 pages every single day. Do your best to not read less than that. You can do more, but not less.

If you read 10 pages every single day, that's 70 pages a week, meaning 280 pages a month. If you pick books with an average of 250-300 pages, you'll be able to read around a book a month, which will turn into 12 books a year which is just really great!

The more you'll read the more you'll probably want to keep doing it, and you might even get to 20 pages a day. Now that's 140 pages a week. meaning you can read almost a book every two weeks. So two books a month. So, 24 books a year.

I'm currently at around 30 pages a day, even if sometimes I read more, because I hate leaving chapters unfinished, so once I start reading a chapter, I'll finish it no matter how long it is. This way I sometimes get to 50-60 pages, depending on the book, simply because I want to finish chapters so bad.

But that's essentially the main strategy you have to use. Just 10 pages a day, which will take you an average of 15 to 20 minutes, and you'll slowly begin reading more books than the average person.

Another great tip that I recently started using is to always know what book I'm gonna start reading once I finish the one I'm currently on.

For example, last week I was busy with "7 habits of highly effective people", and before finishing that book, I did a bit of research and found what I wanted to read next before finishing the book I was already reading.

This helps a lot because once you're done with one book you can just jump onto the next one without any effort. If you finish a book and you don't know what you want to read next, you can waste some time struggling to pick one, so it's better to just have something prepared just in case.

Last tip is this: read using your finger.

To understand exactly why, take a look at this video:

I made the link so you get sent directly to the relevant part, the explanation of why using your finger, or any type of pointer is gonna help you read faster. In short - your eyes don't have a smooth movement from left to right, which is why you sometimes get lost between words when you're reading. Using a pointer allows your eyes to smoothly move from one point to another without you getting lost.

I think that using this trick helped me improve my reading speed by around 20% - 30% , but I'm just throwing numbers at you, I can't know for sure. The main idea is that I read faster and the comprehension level is the same.

So, there you have it - three ways to read more. Applying all of those things is gonna help you go through more books a lot faster.

Keep in mind the fact that you should start small. There's no reason for you to start trying to read 50 pages a day, just to get annoyed and burned out, and to quit after a few days. Take it slow and give yourself time to get used to this habit. In a year or two, when you'll have a much better understanding of the topics you chose to read about (if you chose to read non-fiction, or a combination of fiction and non-fiction) you'll be happy you started.