Transcription
Maybe you finished 2023 unsatisfied with how much reading you did. So, if you want to finish 2024 having smashed your reading goals and actually feeling proud of yourself, then these are 10 of my favorite tips for getting there. And I promise you, you haven't heard all of these, cuz there's some tips in here that are kind of obscure and interesting and really helped me get my volume up.
The first tip is so important, and it's goal setting. Cuz the reason you may not be able to keep up a consistent reading schedule is because you have no clear, defined goal. It's hard to go somewhere when you don't know where you're going. And some people have the goal of reading more in 2024, but that's not enough. It's like saying, "I'm going to go to the gym to get stronger." Like, yes, that is the ultimate goal in the end, but if we don't break it down into things we can achieve every day, then we're not going to be able to maintain that motivation and keep that momentum going. It's well-known advice that you should get a big goal and break it down into small steps—small steps that you can actually achieve and feel satisfied after completing.
Here's exactly how you apply and smash your reading goals. The first step is to pick a realistic amount of books that you plan to read in 2024. And this—this should be something optimistic but achievable. And these should be the best books—the ones you've been really dying to get to. And what you do is you gather them as a list, and you actually order them in preference, so the book you—you want to read the most goes at the top, for obvious reasons. The next thing you do after writing that list down is you actually write down the page number of every single book next to it. The third step is to tally that up, so you get the grand total number of pages in the whole list. The fourth step involves dividing that by 365. So, if you do that maths, you'll get your page count that you have to hit every day. You'll see such a massive number when you divide it by 365; that daily habit becomes really small and achievable. I know I'm a bit late; I know it's kind of into January now, but you can account for that by including the books you've read already in your goal, so you don't start from zero; you start a little bit ahead. But it's still early; it's still February, and there's still time to define those goals so we can have a daily milestone to get to every day. So now, all you need to do is read that amount of pages per day. It should be somewhere around 30, 40, 50. And if it's too much, you can obviously adjust your—your list and redo the maths, but the point is to have a—a goal that is small and defined, so every day you can show up, get that reading done. And if you can keep that up, by the end you'll have read all of the books in your list, and you can be really proud of yourself, truly.
The second is time blocking, and I cannot stress how important this is for actually developing a consistent reading habit and getting your volume up. This refers to basically scheduling time in your day to read and specifically saying, "For this time period, I'm not going to do anything else but to read." This is so easy to do; you just use a—a calendar online or on your phone, or even just a to-do list that says, "From 2:00 to 3:00, I'm going to sit down and read." And the reason this works so well is because you create an obligation for it, cuz if you don't do that, then you let other things distract you and pull you away. You'll say, "Okay, I'll just read later today," but later today something else comes along, and you have to do that, or because there's no fixed period, you can just keep pushing it back until you get to the end of the day, and there's no time anymore. Time blocking is just planning to read. If you want to read more, then you have to have a plan for it. And by creating time, you plan to read, and you plan a way to reach your goals. You know, I used to think that putting your time in the calendar was kind of weird and compulsive and a bit obsessive, but I tried it—I think last year—I could just do way more in general, but also with reading. I defined, I think, an hour in the morning and maybe sometimes in the evening just to read, and it worked because I knew that, "Okay, it's 10:00 now, time to put everything else away, and we're going to focus on that." And that freed my mind from thinking, "Oh, what do I have to do next? What do I have to do?" Just read, because it's already there, and it's defined for you. And that helped me probably double my reading volume since last year; it was amazing.
I bet you've never heard number three before, and it's to read fiction in as few sittings as possible. Obviously, that's going to help you read more, but why fiction? Why do we pick fiction for this tip? Now, the reason it's only fiction is because, at least in my experience, I find that if you read fiction in just a few sittings, it gives you the time you need to—to be immersed into it, because non-fiction is quite easy to jump in and out of. You know, you read an idea, you read the point, and then you—you leave; you can come back and then just find out the next point. But obviously, fiction is a—a narrative; it's a world; there's characters; there's events; there's emotions; and all of that is tied together in this running thread. And I don't know if you agree, but I think you get the most out of fiction when you can really dive into the world and become immersed in the characters and really feel them as real people and feel the world around you. But then there comes the problem: if your reading sessions are too short, like you—you read 10 pages, stop; you read 10 pages, stop; you risk kind of interrupting that narrative. Say, if you're watching a movie—Lord of the Rings—and you watched it in like 20-minute intervals, and you—you took a few days in between, you risk breaking the narrative and really not being able to connect and to get involved in the story. And it's exactly the same with fiction. I noticed that happening to me; I would read stories and just kind of get bored quickly. But then one day, I think I just decided to keep going. I thought, "Well, I'm bored, but I'm just going to keep reading anyway, because I have nothing better to do." And then I eventually found myself getting absorbed. And this wasn't cuz the story was bad; it was just because I was stopping too quickly to get engaged into the book. And ever since then, I like to schedule out just a few days where I'll be more free to read, and I just get so much reading done—hours and hours—because it's like a positive feedback loop; you get engaged into the story, and you want to read more, and then you keep going, and it's just this ramp until you finish the book. So the point of this tip is not to read more out of brute force, but read more because it actually helps you get more out of your fiction, and the—the increased volume is just a side effect—a happy side effect. You can apply this by trying what I did, by saying, "Okay, today I'll have more free time than usual, so I'm going to really try and focus on this fiction book and really get absorbed into it," and then you end up reading what—half a book in a day, and that's so good for getting closer toward your goals.
Number four is one of my absolute favorite, and it's the idea of book stacking. This tip is genius for increasing the time you read and getting through that mental fatigue that comes with reading. But the best part is you don't have to force yourself to read even though you're tired. This tip helps you get around that and let you read more just because you want to, not because you have to. So let's set the scene: without this technique, you would pick up a book—say, *Confessions* by St. Augustine—you'd pick up a book, and maybe it's a chunky book, maybe it's quite dense, and you'd read through it, and eventually you just get tired because this is—this heavy stuff in here; eventually you don't really have the room to process more of what you're reading, and then you just stop. And that's great, but we can improve that without having to rely on extra endurance. So the idea behind book stacking is that you read several books at once, and you start with the more difficult one. And as soon as you get tired of that—maybe it's too much for you to handle—you simply move down a level into a more easy stage. And the medium-difficulty book is obviously easier, and it takes you less energy to process, but then eventually get tired of that too, and then you can even go down a level to something easy, like a—a light thriller, for—for example. So by doing that, you get more reading in without having to just push through your fatigue because you can always go to an easier and easier book every time. For example, you can do this with, again, uh, *Confessions* by St. Augustine—this is a heavy book; this would be your hard one that you begin with—and you can just take this day-by-day, reading a few pages and really absorbing the ideas. But then, say you get tired of that, then you can switch to something lighter but still insightful, like *A Night to Remember*—this is about the Titanic. Now, this book is still insightful, and it still challenges you, but it's much easier to read and to process than this, for example. And when both of those books have you tired, have you fatigued, you can just switch to something easy, something that doesn't require much effort at all, and this will usually be fiction. So I like the—I like the Metro series, and it doesn't take me much mental energy to read this. So when I'm tired of those, I can just switch to this and get way more reading done. And the best part about this tip is that you can do this with two books, or you can do it with 10—I mean, if you're crazy, you do it with 10, but that's besides the point—you can do it with as many books as you want, and that allows you to bypass your fatigue and just get way more volume in.
I call number five the last stretch technique, and I learned this one from Cal Newport, and I loved it ever since. I applied that; I can read a book in 2 or 3 days less time. You'll understand it better with the story. So imagine you're about to start a marathon; you're at the start; you're hyped, and you're confident in yourself; spirits are high; everyone around you is cheerful, and the weather's good; everything is going perfectly. And then you start running, and you know things are good, but then slowly, slowly this kind of feeling of dread creeps in. You think, "I did not train enough for this," and you start to feel tired, and your smile starts to fade away because you know that the next portion of this run is not going to be the fun you anticipated; this is going to be you switching from fun mode to survival mode—like, "I need to focus, and I need to get to the end." You turn off your thoughts, and you just keep running, and you ignore the pain; you ignore all the people around you, and you really focus. But then, from nowhere, a glimmer of hope appears, and as you turn the corner, you see the finish line, and just the sight of the finish line—just hundreds of meters away from you—that gives you the fire to keep going, even though you're shattered by this point. And once you're 100 meters from it, you somehow—you get this energy inside you that let you just really hammer the last few meters and get there really quick; you almost sprint it. And essentially, that's the last stretch technique as applied to our books. The idea is when you approach the end of a book with like one or two reading sessions left to finish it, instead of putting the book down and just closing it and reading it tomorrow, you finish it on the spot. So you get 3 days' worth of reading done in one final push of energy. And the fact that you can kind of see the end—it's just that far away—that gives you the motivation you need to continue and to get to the end. It's a small tip, but I love it, and I've used it ever since I learned it from Cal Newport; it's great.
Number six is to reread books that you know you love. And this is more advice for myself; I'm almost talking to myself here because maybe you don't reread books enough, but I know I don't, and I know there's so much value to be found in doing that. There's three reasons that is amazing for not only getting your quantity of reading up but also your quality. First, it's risk-free; you know you love the book; you've read it before, and you know you had a good time with it, so there's no risk of being disappointed by it. Second, you can probably reread the book faster because you've read it before; you've already gone through it, so you have that kind of mental map of where the book is going to go and where it's going to take you, and that familiarity lets you go through it much quicker. And number three, which is perhaps the most important, is because you've already read the book before, and you—you left it and came back maybe years later, your mind is more mature, and that means you can read the same book but extract different wisdom from it—and new wisdom—things you didn't see before, things you missed, or new connections you can make. So, for example, I just recently reread a book called *Tribe* by Sebastian Junger, and I remember reading this years ago, and I know it was good, but rereading it this time through, I extracted so much more wisdom from the book. It is a great read, by the way, so do check it out.
Number seven is to delete all distractions. I have a small confession to make to you, and it's in the past—past—when I scheduled 30 minutes of reading, 20 minutes of that was on my phone. Can you see how that's not productive? Your phone, especially, is a huge time sink because if it's always there next to you, you're tempted to pick it up, and you don't really read; you kind of spend half the time on your phone, half the time on the book, at best. So the easiest way to get around that is to simply remove it—get rid of it. The best thing you can do is to put it on silent and just leave it in another room. Alternatively, you could just move it out of sight, because I kid you not, this works. And if you just get your phone and literally hide it away from yourself, then you're more focused. When I work on my laptop, I get my phone and I put it just behind the screen, so it's out of sight, and somehow—I don't know why—but somehow that helps me stay focused because it's not in my field of vision, and I'm not tempted to grab it; I'm not tempted to pick it up and check anything; it's just out of sight, out of mind. And I know this isn't crazy because not only does it work for me, but I think there's some scientific evidence to—to show that even if your phone is just within your eye shot, it kind of reduces your focus. So that's how you improve your reading: you remove your phone, or you just put it out of sight, and you're guaranteed to increase the focus of your reading.
Number eight is to have virtue books for the morning and vice books for the evening. But what does that mean anyway? What's virtue and vice? Well, virtue books are educational ones; they're books like non-fiction, things that teach you things, that increase your understanding and wisdom. And on the other hand, vice books are things like fiction, things that don't really demand much mental energy and things that you find easy to read. And before you worry, the terms here—are not literal at all; just because it's called vice doesn't mean it's bad, and virtue is not good; they're both great; it's just a way to separate them into two categories of books—ones that demand effort and ones that demand less effort. So how does that work for getting more reading in? Or in the morning, you might be more motivated to learn, and now that I'm saying this out loud, I get that it's not for everyone, but if you are that kind of person who has the energy and the drive to learn in the morning, then you save educational books for that period. If you're ready to take on information, then you're going to benefit from reading books that teach you. Whereas in the evening, you might feel low energy; you might feel ready to sleep or almost, and you're not really prepared to learn, so you save it for fiction—things that don't require you to be awake and to pay much attention. So by using this tip, you work around your energy levels; it lets you get that extra reading in without the stress; you can just chill and enjoy the book in the evening and save educational things for tomorrow morning.
Number nine is to read books that you're truly curious about and not be dragged along by trends on the internet. A lot of people get tired of reading because they don't care about what they're reading, and this happens a lot in school; you're given something to read, and you don't care about it in the slightest; you don't give a damn. So how can you expect someone to stay motivated when they don't care about the content? You can't. And bizarrely, this trend kind of keeps up in people I know that when I began reading properly for the first time, I read things that were popular or trending, and I didn't really care about the topic; I just did it because I felt like I had to, and because I gave into that mindset, I was not enjoying myself deep down. And I think this is especially important today because if you go on Twitter, if you go on YouTube or Instagram, and you follow these book accounts—especially non-fiction book accounts—accounts, you see the same probably 50 to 100 books being recommended over and over and over again, and it's usually the self-help type of books—about learning about money, about personal development—and it's the same stuff over and over again. And people would see that and think, "This is what reading is; I just have to read these books because everyone is telling me to." Screw that noise. Mindlessly choosing those books will have you in that exact position I was in, where you are reading not for your own sake but for the sake of fulfilling this unspoken reading list. And just to clarify, I have nothing against those self-development books—those, you know, *Atomic Habits*, *4-Hour Workweek*; I like them; I like those books. The point is to not be enslaved by what everyone else is posting about online and to have that self-determination—your own reading habits. Instead, you have to ask yourself, "What do I truly care about? What do I truly want to read? And what truly interests me?" If you're honest and true to yourself and you follow your actual curiosities, then reading becomes effortless; it means you can find meaning in what you read, and it means you have that intrinsic motivation to keep going. It's such a simple tip, but it can change how you approach reading forever.
Number 10 is to have a reading ritual. With just a few minutes of thinking, where you are now, you can come up with a way to make reading—the act of reading itself—just more pleasurable and more motivating to do. And the side effect, of course, is to read more—ain't that great? And you'll do that by creating a reading ritual. And I bet you already have some form of it already. A reading ritual describes anything you pair reading with, whether that's a physical object or an experience or somewhere you go. A reading ritual has nothing to do with the book itself or how you read; it's just the external environment in which you read in. For example, you might love sitting in a cafe as part of your reading ritual; you love to go to a cafe every Friday, get a coffee, and just have that like shared atmosphere of focus help you read. I love to read in the morning with a coffee somewhere in the sunlight. And by connecting reading to these simple pleasures—these simple things you love—it makes the act of reading more attractive; the whole experience becomes more enjoyable, and you have more of that motivation to sit down and read now.
Now, because I'm feeling generous and because I forgot to put this in originally, it's a bonus tip. This is number 11. Number 11 is to carry a book anywhere you go. And this is such a good tip for getting more reading in, especially if your work involves commuting or if you're a student in school. All it involves is, in the name, you just carry a book wherever you go—in your bag. And what this allows you to do is that whenever you have little pockets of time throughout your day, you can just spend it reading. Because I bet that if you think about how your daily life goes, you have all these pockets of time—10, 20, 30 minutes—where you're—you're traveling, maybe on public transport; you're waiting for someone; you're waiting in between meetings, or you have a lunch break, maybe something like that. So instead of wasting it by going on your phone and doing nothing, you now have a book on you, and that gives you the chance to just take it out and start reading. And even 10 minutes three times a day—that gets a lot of pages in, and that—like, adds up to something great. To make this tip serve you even better, try and keep it limited to like non-fiction—something that you can dive in and out of easily—because obviously you're going to have to put it down quickly and then move on to whatever you're doing. If it was something dense or some fiction book, you would lose the plot because you're having to jump in and out so often. And of course, this is made easier by having an ebook—an e-reader; it's light, it's portable, and you can basically bring a whole library along with you wherever you go. You'll read far more if you can get one of these.
That's it—that's 11 tips on how you can get more reading volume in and really make 2024 a good year for reading. And I promise you that if you can apply maybe at least a few of these, or even just one, you will read so much more this year, and you'll get to the end proud of yourself, and you'll be happy with the year that you completed. Thank you so much for watching, and I hope this offered you value.