As a child, I was a prolific reader. My parents would keep my bookshelf topped up with new material every week. I couldn’t get enough. Naturally, as you grow older, your habits can shift and change. So I slowly lost my love for reading.
In 2017 I decided I wanted to rekindle this love of books. I discovered the Goodreads Reading Challenge and decided to give it a go. I set the ambitious goal of reading 12 books in the year. I managed to complete a total of 2 books. Even though I didn’t meet my target, I was satisfied nonetheless, given the fact I had not read a full book (outside of school) for 15 years.
During my first reading challenge, I did not formulate any strategy to enable me to increase my book consumption. I skipped the challenge in 2018. But every year since then, I participated in the reading challenge, successfully increasing my books read yearly, one year after the next.
I’d like to share some insights with you into what I did to successfully increase this number.
Goodreads
Goodreads is a great platform for book lovers, and when I discovered it in 2017 I enjoyed its utility. It has many great features; you can search and find pretty much any book you can think of, add books to your ‘want to read’ list, read book reviews, scan book barcodes to quickly find them, and the list goes on.
It is also a sort of social media platform, where you can follow friends and see what they are reading. This was the first factor in my success so far in increasing my book consumption. Being able to follow a few friends who are also interested in reading makes it easy to keep yourself motivated and inspired. You can see the different books they are reading, and the reviews they are leaving on said books. I also find it provides a great inflow of new book recommendations as you can quickly click the ‘Want to read’ button as you scroll through your feed.
Probably the most important feature though, at least for me, is the Goodreads Reading Challenge. Each year you simply enter the number of books you want to read, and as the year goes on you track the books you complete in the app.
Throughout the year, it’s quite motivating to follow your progress and keep track of how far you’ve come in your journey.
Rewards
Another factor that helped me to increase my reading was to leverage James Clears’ habit-building tips in his book Atomic Habits. Specifically, ‘make it satisfying’, means to make your desired habit satisfying. One way to do this is to provide yourself with a reward each time you complete the habit.
For me, this reward was in the form of purchasing a new book after I completed one I had been reading. This was a great boost to my motivation as I had a great stream of new books flowing in as I made more progress.
I recommend trying to find the book you are looking for on wob.com. They sell second-hand books in a range of conditions (clearly stated on the book’s webpage), and offer free shipping (at least in the UK and Ireland). Every book I’ve bought from there has been in really good condition, and sometimes it works out cheaper than Amazon.
Visibility
As I increased my collection of books over time, I didn’t have a good place to store them. I also realised this was a good opportunity to display them in a nice way that gave a visual indicator of my progress. So I invested in a good bookshelf and prominently displayed it in my apartment. I treated it a bit like a trophy cabinet, and as it grew I felt a sense of pride in my accomplishments.
Minimal daily commitment
The thing about starting a new habit is it takes consistent effort. The goal is to make the habit feel automatic, like brushing your teeth. You don’t get this for free though. One of the things that helps ingrain a new habit in your brain is consistency. So to help me build up my reading habit I committed to always reading one page per day. This needs to be extremely small at first. So small, that you couldn’t possibly justify skipping it. The fun thing is often you’ll find once you’ve decided to read one page, you inevitably read a few more.
Eventually, day after day will build into year after year and you will have a strong habit formed as part of your identity. You’ll be able to look back on how far you’ve come with a sense of pride.
Multiple books at once
After a few years of reading one book at a time I began to find that sometimes my mood would just not be up for reading my current book. This resistance indicated to me I simply needed some variety in my book diet. So I decided to experiment with keeping a set of 3 ‘active’ books that I would be reading at any one time. These would consist of one fiction, one non-fiction, and one non-fiction work-related book (in my case software engineering). This meant that depending on my mood I could pick up the book that best suited me allowing me to ensure I always found a path around any resistance to reading.
However, this strategy may not work for everyone, so feel free to just stick to one at a time if it helps you make more consistent progress.
Grab a Kindle
Having some form of an e-reader is pretty much a must if you have any sort of travel in your day-to-day and want to increase your reading. Commuting time (if you are not driving) is the ultimate opportunity to get some reading done. The majority of people on public transport are heads-down into their phones doom-scrolling. I viewed this as totally free time to help build my reading habits. Of course, you can bring a physical book with you. But the convenience and portability of a Kindle is unmatched. Not to mention the fact you can have many books downloaded and ready at your fingertips. Also, the benefits here are not limited to commuting. I always bring a Kindle on my trips abroad. I’m not willing to forfeit much of my allowed cabin baggage weight for a choice of books to read at the beach, so the Kindle is a winner in this regard.
Nightstand
James Clear also talks about ‘making it obvious’ when trying to form a habit. I employed this strategy in the form of placing my books in places that I would commonly like to read. The obvious place was on my nightstand beside my bed. This was a battleground for a while as the default option when hopping into bed was to scroll on my phone until I got tired. But managing to replace this habit with reading a fiction book before sleep has made a big difference to both my reading amounts as well as my sleep quality.
I also invested in a nice reading chair for my office. Living in a rented apartment, the furniture is not of the highest quality, so there weren’t many options for a comfortable reading nook. After a few years on my reading journey, I decided I wanted to invest in a reading chair where I could spend a few hours reading comfortably. I also put a side table next to it and planted a few books beside it for easy access.
Learning days
In my workplace, we are fortunate enough to have monthly learning days, where you can pick any work-related topic and spend the day learning about it. A lot of the time I would do online courses, but in recent years I switched to reading software engineering books. I always look forward to these days every month because I get to read more and also am growing my skillset for my career.
In 2016 I read 0 books. In 2017 I read 2. Last year I read 27 books, which is over 2 per month. If I knew that I would be reading that many books 6 years ago I would be shocked. As you can see in the screenshot I shared above it wasn’t a sudden leap. It takes time to build such a habit, but eventually, the interest compounds and your habit takes on a life of its own.
Reading always had a special place in my heart, so I am grateful to have brought it back to a key spot in my life. I’m looking forward to all the books I will read in the future, and hope that my story helps you to rekindle your reading habit.