The Sacred, Life-Changing Habit Of Reading

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August: 2023

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Already know, but maybe haven't really paid too much attention to recently. Today's episode is the sacred life changing habit of reading. It’s no secret that reading has been touted as the key to unlocking a world of knowledge and expanding your intellectual capacity. By building a habit of daily reading, you can stay informed on current events, learn more about a particular subject, or maybe even get intrinsically motivated to reach those big goals. Doing so also helps open your mind to new ideas, prepares you for unfamiliar scenarios, and gives you the skills to succeed in almost any situation. It's no wonder many successful people cite reading as one of the best ways to achieve success and become smarter. So, if you’re looking for a way to accelerate your learning experience and reach your goals faster, then making a habit of daily reading is definitely worth considering! Ask any permanent student of life or successful autodidact what their most consistent habit is and you may find they give the same answer: reading.

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Reading is something that we all know is good for us, but it’s also something that we often have mountains of excuses for not doing. You’ve probably had at least one of these excuses when it comes to not reading more: I just don’t have the time! I don’t have the patience! And perhaps the most common—I just don’t know where to start! Those are all valid excuses, but the key to becoming an effective daily reader is in your hands. Once you learn to employ some of the methods experts advocate to become a daily reader, you’ll find that reading opens up a whole new world for you, making you a better person in the process. You’ll find that your mind is stimulated and your curiosity about the world is piqued. Perhaps most important, becoming a daily reader will help you appreciate both sides of every argument and be more critical of “facts” you already know ... or think you know.

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And in today’s world, where everyone seems to have the “my way or the highway” philosophy, looking at things from all sides is a skill in short supply. How do we squeeze more reading into our lives? Take Advantage of Free Time There’s no doubt we live in a fast-paced hustle-and-bustle world. Family commitments and careers take up most of our time, so much so that it often seems like we have little time for ourselves. So, the obvious obstacle to you becoming a daily reader is simply finding the time. Blogger Thu Vu has some great remedies for the time crunch, one of which is finding small gaps in the day to read a few pages. Maybe you’re a morning person who wakes up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

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If so, then consider getting up a few minutes earlier to fit ten to twenty minutes of reading in before you go to work or school. Many people are more alert and active in the morning, making those spare minutes a perfect time to sneak in some reading. But what about those of us who just aren’t morning people? Don’t worry, if you can’t function until you have at least two cups of coffee in the morning, you can simply reverse the pattern. Dedicate ten to twenty minutes after work, before dinner, or even at night when you have all your important things done. It’s also important to remember that as busy as our lives are, they can also be unpredictable. Changing work schedules, family emergencies, car troubles, and a host of other unforeseeable circumstances can throw a monkey wrench into your planned reading time, but those small gaps in the day still exist.

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Make sure to always have a book, e-reader, or other reading device in your backpack, purse, or pocket so you can read for a few minutes virtually anywhere. Once you start carrying your reading material with you, you’ll begin to get into a daily reading habit. As your reading habit increases and you learn how to use those small gaps in the day to get in some reading, you’ll also find that reading at particular times is helpful. We already discussed how early morning or late evening reading may be good for you, and the more you read, the more you’ll start to look forward to your reading times. Reading on your lunch break at work is a good way to put the stress of your job out of your mind for a few minutes, or your fifteen minutes of reading before bed can be a reward for a good day’s work. Setting a specific time to read helps with forming a habit, so trying to find the most consistent time gap during the day is a good way to start this habit. I’d like to point out here that as you find some time gaps for reading and turn them into a regular reading schedule, feel free to use any media to read.

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Technology has come a long way since writing was done on papyrus and tomb walls, so take advantage of all the technologies that offer reading content. You might be more old-school and prefer the feel and smell of paper books, but tablets, laptops, and e-readers, or any combination, are cool too! Whatever helps you develop a regular reading schedule is great. E-readers, tablets, and laptops are all great modern tools that can enhance your daily reading habit, but be aware that too much tech, especially social media, can impinge on your reading. No one’s judging you for having a Facebook or Twitter account or watching videos of cute cats on YouTube, but too much social media will make you “time poor." The fact is that the average person consumes about 2.4 hours’ worth of social media a day, which may not seem like much at first, but it’s nearly 17 hours a week, 72 hours a month, and 876 hours a year! Just think, in all those hours of trying to get likes, you could’ve been doing some quality reading.

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The same goes for TV. Today, TV may be a little low tech compared to smartphones and tablets, but it can be equally distracting. So, be conscious of how much TV you watch and consider reading instead. For example, let’s say you’re spending three hours of a Sunday afternoon to watch your favorite football team. You don’t need to make it black and white, though—you can do both. Read a few pages of your favorite book during halftime to further nurture your daily reading habit. For many of us, ditching social media and distracting technology is difficult, yet once you do it, you’ll soon find how the world of reading opens to you.

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But as reading opens your mind, it’s important to know that there’s more than one way to read. You may be surprised to learn that listening to audiobooks is a great supplement to your daily reading habit. Sure, you may not actually be “reading,” but when you're crunched for time, listening to audiobooks or podcasts is a great way to complete that book you’ve always wanted to read. And as we’ve already discussed, time is so often the enemy of our daily reading habit, so anything you can do to maximize your time is great. Chances are you have a daily commute to work or have to drive to pick up your kids from school or activities, so what better time and place to listen to your favorite audiobook on CD or MP3 than during the drive? And if you’re really pressed for time, you can speed up a ten-hour audiobook to 1.8x speed to get it done in five and a half hours. If you have children, you can involve them in your audiobook experience.

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Studies have shown that kids who listen to audiobooks have better vocabulary and improved listening skills and are more interested to read, especially if the audiobook is accompanied by a traditional book (Valplowman). I shouldn’t have to point out how listening to audiobooks is a fun activity to do with your children and will help create a stronger familial bond. As you and your family develop your daily reading habits, you’ll also become closer. Organization Is Everything! Now that we’ve discussed how important daily reading is and some tools that’ll help you develop the habit, let’s look at how to organize your reading material. This may not seem very important, but the truth is that organization is a vital part of everything we do, and when it comes to improving your daily reading habit, proper organization will help you with that goal. The first thing you should do is sit down and start making up physical lists of what you hope to achieve with your new reading habit. Creating a physical list, whether written by hand on a piece of paper or on a word processing document, is a great mental exercise itself.

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It gets you thinking, and as your list expands, it becomes another thing for you to read. But you’re probably thinking, where do I start with a list of reading goals? To begin with, keep things simple. Think of some things that interest you and start from there. If you’re primarily interested in reading as a way to further your personal development, you might find yourself adding classical literary fiction, well-known self-help books, inspirational spiritual material, or else how-to guides that challenge and educate you. Try to include wide-ranging topics and even one or two things you’ve never been attracted to in the past. For example, maybe you would like to learn more about a particular historical period, some fascinating philosophical theory or scientific topic, the biography of a famous and unusual person, beautiful poetry, a political treatise, or an anthropological account of a world and way of life completely different from your own.

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Once you’ve made a list of books, you can begin coming up with a list of reading goals that you can then break down into smaller goals—be warned that reading lists tend to grow and grow! But that’s a good thing. Once you have a list of your reading goals, you can segue into creating a list of reading categories. Just focus on your reading goals, let your mind wander, and in no time, you’ll start coming up with some awesome reading categories. If you need a little nudge, consider the following example. A few years ago, I took a long journey by train across the United States. If you’ve never done such a trip, it’s fairly comfortable but it’s also quite long—much longer than it would take to drive.

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e New World by Aldous Huxley,: 1984

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Follow your curiosity, keep asking questions, and make connections. In no time you’ll start creating vast and fascinating networks of knowledge. Look in the bibliographies of famous books or get interested in who a current author considers as their inspiration. What about authors who are of the same nationality or writing in the same historical period? What about those who completely disagree in some way with the author you’ve just read? Consider stepping outside of your comfort zone when choosing material to read. I’ve never been a fan of Western novels, but after my grandfather died, he left behind a large collection of Zane Grey and Louis L’Amour books.

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After staring at the box of those books for several months, I begrudgingly decided to add one book of each author to my next list. I eventually ended up reading all twenty-two books in the box and gained a new appreciation of the Western genre in the process—not to mention that it opened up new doors that I wouldn’t have gone through otherwise. Once you have your reading lists and material ready to read, it’s important to strategize how to get the most out of your reading. After you’ve developed a regular reading habit of some thoughtfully curated reading lists, you’ll want to read more and more. Reading is not only fun and mentally challenging, it’s also a bit addictive, but in a good way, of course. You’ll quickly find that you’ll want to get the most reading in, in the limited time you have, but you’ll also probably find out that you just can’t read as many books and articles as you’d hoped. So, here are a few suggestions to maximize the limited reading time you have.

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A really effective method to try is the multiple-booking (pun intended!) method. With this method, you’ll read two or more books on one of your lists, or books from different lists, simultaneously. For example, let’s say you’re working through a list of novels that were later made into miniseries. So in the fifteen minutes before work, you read a few pages of James Clavell’s Shogun, and at night before bed, you knock out a chapter of Centennial by James Michener. It also may help to experiment with different technologies when doing the multiple-booking method. Using the same example, you may read on an e-reader or tablet before work or at lunch, but at night, you prefer the feel and smell of a good old-fashioned book! Another method that may help is researching a book before you read it. There’s nothing worse than getting a book and reading about twenty pages of it before you realize it’s boring or just not your style.

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If you’re like many people, you’ll try to press on and read it since you’re already invested. But this usually just means you waste even more time before giving up at some later point in the book, anyway! In order to avoid this pitfall, first do a little research on the book on Amazon or places like Goodreads. Read the reviews and synopsis and make sure to read the summary on the back of the book. Consider looking at other works by the author, or even read their Wikipedia page to get an idea of where they’re coming from. If it’s a book you’re thinking about purchasing, Amazon and other online booksellers often let you read the table of contents or a few pages for free before purchasing, so make sure to do so. Naturally, being in a physical bookstore makes this trick that much easier! Garbage in, Garbage out You’ve probably heard the term “garbage in, garbage out” at some point in your life.

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Originally, the term was used in computer science to describe programmers putting bad input into computers and getting bad results in return. The term has also been used to describe bad diets, and in our case, it can be described as your reading diet. Just as you are what you eat—you are what you read. With that in mind, it’s important to watch how much literary “junk info” you consume. Clay Johnson, author of The Information Diet, offers many tips on how to curate your reading diet better by cutting out the junk info. A useful tip Johnson suggests is keeping notes of all the content you read. You should already be in the practice of doing this after creating your list of goals and reading category lists, so you already have a good start.

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But you’re probably thinking: what’s considered junk info? To be honest, that’s not such an easy answer, as one person’s junk info may be another person’s War and Peace. It’s true that the value of much of what we read is subjective, but most of us can agree there’s some written material we can use less of. Let’s go back to what we discussed earlier about having too much tech in our lives. The very idea of modern technology can distract us from quality reading, but also much of the written material we get via technology is straight-up junk. You may get several annoying newsletters and meaningless emails in your inbox daily. Maybe some of these newsletters had a purpose at one point in your life, but chances are, you’re wasting your time reading through them today.

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The first step is to set up filters in your emails so you won’t even be tempted to read any of these, and once you’ve done that, take the next step by using technology to help your daily reading. Johnson mentions several apps and programs that are available to clear the junk info out of your inbox. The app Leave Me Alone automatically unsubscribes you from unsolicited emails, while RescueTime functions as an electronic notebook that tracks what and how much you consume on social media. Other useful electronic tools include AdBlock Plus, Block Plus, and SaneBox. So how do you deal with news content overload that cuts into your reading time? Using news aggregators work well because they put all the big stories onto one site so you don’t have to spend time searching. Prismatic is a site that serves this purpose quite well.

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You can also use RSS to efficiently organize and streamline your news content. Another tactic to consider is just checking out the news headlines on various social media sites that you’re visiting anyway. LinkedIn Today is a news aggregator available on the popular business/social networking site, while some new search engines offer users new time-saving options. Topsy and Bottlenose are two new search engines that specialize in finding current trends. So instead of wasting hours searching social media for the latest trends, challenges, and news, try one of these search engines, which will give you more time to focus on your reading lists. But ultimately, you’re the final authority on how much junk info you consume, so consider cutting the “e-cord” by consciously limiting your time online. You can still read books on your e-reader and tablet, as well as listen to audiobooks, so you don’t have to go back to the Stone Age just to avoid junk info and maintain your daily reading habit. A good way to limit your junk info consumption is to take a trip to your local bookstore or library.

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Yes, both of those places still exist! Visiting used bookstores is an excellent way to find some new reading material and help local businesses. Bookstores in general are also good places to come up with ideas for your future reading lists, as they are often organized by subject matter. Thanks again for joining us on today's episode. Be sure to join us next week for another episode from Peter Hollins and a recent audiobook. If you'd like more information about Peter Hollins, you can get that and sign up for his free email resources at bit ly slash peterhollins or check us out@newtonmg.com. See you next week.