How To Read More Books (Without Speed Reading)
10 reasons and 10 strategies to read more books
For the first time in my adult life, I’ve read more than 10 books this year.
I’ve read two books a month so far. At that rate, I’ll have read 24 books by the end of the year.
I feel confident that I’ll double that number next year, therefore I feel confident that YOU too can read more books.
Before I get into how you can double your reads, it’s important to understand WHY you should make the effort in the first place.
10 reasons to read more books
Expand your world
Reading introduces you to new ideas and challenges your existing view of the world.
You can also experience other cultures through books without leaving your home, isn’t that amazing?
Go deeper and learn faster
Before I committed to reading more books, I still read — a lot. I read blog posts and newsletters from sources that I trusted.
However, no matter how great someone is at expressing themselves, they cannot go as deep into an idea or concept in a blog post as they can in a book.
That’s why, even if I’d read blog posts and newsletters from authors like Mark Manson, James Clear and Ryan Holiday, I still got/get greater value from reading their books.
On top of going deeper, you also learn faster.
Some authors distill decades of knowledge, lessons, and/or mistakes into 300 pages or less.
Take Shoe Dog, for example, Phil Knight’s chronicle of his Nike journey from crazy idea to a multi-billion dollar company, in 386 pages. Frustrations, mistakes, losses, wins—all of it!
His lessons are available for you to absorb in a few days.
It doesn’t get any better than that!
Improve your conversational skills
I’ve noticed this year that I find myself having interesting conversations that I’ve only recently traced back to my new reading habit.
I find that I am comfortable voicing my views and even confident in saying that I don’t know much about a given topic.
I make a note to learn more about it and move forward unlike before when I’d feel embarrassed if I found myself left out.
Become a better writer
It is no secret that writing has become one of the most valuable skills of the internet age.
Even if you don’t write professionally, you’ll notice an improvement in your writing when you write emails, texts, captions, or even tweets.
You’ll be able to express yourself with greater ease and confidence.
I guess this is the part where I confess that this is the first article I’ve ever published. I know that one day I’ll look back at it and laugh (maybe), but right now, I feel so far removed from the non-writer I was just a few months ago.
Improve self-discipline and consistency
To read more requires us to build habits and make sacrifices—for example, to sacrifice some TV time or some aimless scrolling time.
We then need to make those sacrifices consistently to avoid falling into old habits.
I remember I’d have one book drag out over 3 or 4 months because I’d have the TV on while I “read”.
A commitment to reading means that we take small steps towards self-discipline.
Get inspired
Have you ever felt contagious passion by watching a TED talk? Or felt the desire to live a better life while scrolling through Instagram?
In most cases, those feelings are fleeting because we quickly move on to the next source of motivation.
Reading books allows us to observe inspiring actions and feel the desire to live a purposeful life without addicting us to short-term motivation.
Challenge your imagination and foster your creativity
Reading takes you on a journey with the characters in the book and delivers you smack in the middle of the action.
A great book will captivate you and have you constructing and deconstructing sets and scenes in your mind.
This vivid imagination pours into your everyday life and becomes part of your creative processes.
Become a better leader
Leadership is usually misconstrued to refer to people in high political offices or CEOs of large organisations.
However, I believe that we are all leaders in one way or another.
If you have younger siblings, for example, you, are a leader. If you have children, yup, you guessed it, you are a leader.
If you have anybody working for or under you, you are a leader.
Reading is a great tool to become a better leader in any capacity of leadership and to grow into bigger positions of leadership.
Reduce stress
The world today is so fast-paced that it leaves us feeling overwhelmed, overstimulated and anxious.
So, taking a few minutes at the end of the day to unplug and relax into a good book has become a refuge for me and I know it can do the same for you.
Increase your learning capacity
Reading is like a workout for your brain.
Just like working out for 20 minutes daily beats working out for 4 hours, once a month, reading for a few minutes daily beats reading
I hope that with those 9 reasons, you are eager to know HOW you can read more books.
10 strategies to read more
Set realistic reading goals
When I first set out to read more, I read that CEOs read on average a book a week versus the average person who reads 3 books a year.
I was the average person. I desire to be CEO-like, so straight away, I set a goal to read 52 books in 2020.
Yeah, you know where this is going, I failed — miserably!
Or so I felt.
I read 10 books that year and I felt demoralised and depressed because I hadn’t reached my goal when the year ended.
But now that I think about it, I should have celebrated. I read more books that year than I had in the 3 years before that — combined.
I set myself up to fail by setting a ridiculously big goal. I was constantly stressed out by this mountain I had to climb.
I tried speed reading and felt terrible when I sucked at that too. I put unnecessary pressure on myself.
Please don’t do that to yourself. Set a goal that is higher than your current book count but lower than your dream/ideal count per year.
Remember, the first goal is to build a reading habit, then you can build onto that.
Break your goal down into smaller goals
Now that you have set a realistic goal, say 12 books in your first year of consistent reading, that comes down to one book a month.
So let’s say the book you choose is 300 pages long, which means you only need to read 75 pages a week.
That comes down to 11 pages a day (give or take). 11 pages a day is a goal that we can all face with confidence.
Now that you have your goal…schedule your reading time
Add reading to your daily routine. You can read in the morning while you enjoy a cup of coffee.
I find reading early in the morning, before the rest of my household wakes up, to be such a great way to start my day.
Find what works for you and stick with that reading slot.
Remove all distractions during reading time
Anything that beeps has to go. By anything, I mean your phone.
Phones are amazing tools when we use them as such and impeccable distractions when we let them.
You probably have notifications coming from half a dozen apps at any given time.
Put your phone on airplane mode, turn off the TV, find a quiet space and get to reading.
If you feel stuck, let that book go
This is the one piece of reading advice I wish I came across earlier in my reading journey.
I’d start a book and feel compelled to finish it because it came highly recommended or it was gifted to me.
Letting go doesn’t mean you’ll never read that book.
The amazing thing is that you’ll circle back to it almost instinctively.
Sometimes you’re just not ready for a particular book.
Also, if you never pick it up again, that’s no crime either.
Start more than one book at a time
By doing this, you allow yourself to have different choices for different moods or times of the day.
Reading is about freedom, fun, and learning, read what you feel like reading, just read daily.
Read exclusively for fun, at first.
The goal, in the beginning, is to build a reading habit.
When I started reading and challenging myself to read more, I felt pressure to read non-fiction books.
It seemed that everybody worth anything was reading and learning at breakneck speed from non-fiction, so I spent a long time forcing myself to read “ meaningful” books.
I finally gave up and read murder mysteries with a vengeance, and what do you know, as I developed a desire to learn more about other topics, I found myself gravitating naturally to non-fiction.
Today, I read 80% non-fiction and I do it happily.
Listen to audiobooks (and add them to your count)
Audiobooks are incredibly brilliant for being flexible.
You can listen on your commute, on a walk, or while doing chores.
And yet… the arguments for physical books may leave you feeling guilty for choosing an audiobook.
Audiobooks are not cheating. They demand your attention too if you are to get value from them.
I mix it up and you should feel free to do so too.
If you can, buy 3–7 books at a time
This ties back to the points before so that;
- You have enough books to bounce around from book to book, and
- You have the freedom to ditch books that aren’t flowing for you.
Take Notes
Taking notes while you read, whether in a notebook, in your notes app, in the margins of the book or simply highlighting parts of the book that stand out allows you to have quick access to a simple way to refresh your memory on a lesson, quote or even a funny line to share with a friend.
Don’t force note-taking when you are starting. I didn’t start taking notes when I was reading murder mysteries, that would have sucked the fun out of my reading.
Note-taking came out of necessity.
I read a book called Never Split The Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It by Chris Voss and Tahl Raz. I tried the lessons I learnt in everyday negotiations with my then 7-year-old son and they worked like magic.
With time though, old habits won — as they do — and I found myself back to square one with him. That’s the first time I decided to reread a book to take notes and yes, I highly recommend this strategy.
All in all, my advice to you is to take it one strategy at a time and to trust that you’ll progress naturally.
Focus first on removing the pressure to read books on complex ideas and topics by starting with what you love. Hell, reread a book you loved in the past.
Then, shift your focus to building a reading habit by scheduling reading time. Start with a small goal and you’ll expand it naturally.
From there, all the other strategies will fall into place.
