2020 was a big year for me in terms of reading. I have always liked to read books, but as it often happens with good habits, I have not always been able to keep at it as much as I would like. This can mostly be attributed to a prioritisation issue for me, and despite me believing how much I like reading books, it just slipped down the list of my priorities. So before 2020, I was just reading books sporadically and not a lot.
The beginning of a new year is always a great time to begin new habits, and I began my 2020 with a goal to read 1 book per month. The idea was simple → read a 10-15 minutes everyday.
Earlier, one of my reading peeves was that I would force myself to finish a book, no matter how boring or how hard I may be finding it. This basically generated a lot of friction for me to start something new, before I had completed the one I was reading. Another thing I would do is that I would only read one book at a time, and wait for it to finish before I started another one.
I adopted a different strategy this time, something which appears hard to do to someone who hasn’t done this before. I had a spoken few friends who are voracious readers, as well as read a few blog posts and articles on how people read, and it seemed that reading multiple books at the same time is a perfectly plausible thing to do. I thought it would be a futile exercise to read multiple books as it would be so hard to keep things in mind and everything would just get muddled up. My experience was very different though. It was super nice to be reading 2-3 different books at the same time. I would pick out different genres, to make it easier for me to switch contexts. So I would pick say: 1 fiction, 1 memoir and 1 management book. Of course this combination was something I made up, and it can be anything anyone chooses to have. This helped me in three ways:
One, I was able to read something based on my mood. I would always have alternatives, and would not be forced to power through a book. I am reading for leisure after all. So no need to be hard on my self about continuing to read something which I find laborious.
Two, I would need to maintain a pipeline of the books I want to read. So I was always on the lookout for book recommendations which gave me something to look forward to, as I knew before hand what I am going to read.
Three, because I always had books on my to-read list, I could stop reading any of the current books if I did not find them engaging enough and start a new one.
This whole new process was an extremely liberating one for me. I would no longer feel guilty about abandoning a book or stop reading it mid-way if I was not having fun. I would also constantly feel this excitement about all the new books I have to read, so there was always something to look forward to.
There were some books which I wanted to read that were incredibly dense and hard to read, so I would read such books with an easy to read fiction or a memoir. The combinations were endless, and I was able to to read a lot more freely and without any self-imposed pressure.
Another thing which helped and motivated me to keep up my habit was keep a log or record of what I have read and what I want to read. Goodreads is a great way to do this, as it is amazing to discover books, and super easy to keep track. I however wanted to do this manually, so I would just make notes on my phone. Now, after almost 2 years of doing this, I use Goodreads, and I think it is a far easier way to do things.
I started out with the goal to read 12 books, but I think I ended up with more than 20. Encouraged by this amazing result as a consequence of a small change in my reading habits, I have continued to read like this and it has served me well so far.
I do not set lofty reading goals anyway, and for me my aim is to read around 12-15 books a year. The year 2022 has just begun, let’s see how well this goes this time!
