Developing a Reading Habit
Any time there is an article, twitter thread, etc. about the habit of reading, I almost always seem to read them. I consistently find different people’s reading routines and tendencies to be interesting, often relating to a lot of what they are doing as well as taking away a piece of advice they offer up. My own habit of reading in the past was typically hot or cold and revolved either around necessity or a sudden interest. I read a lot of books in college because I had to; I enjoyed some of them and did my best to skim the ones that were a bit more humdrum. Throughout my racing career, I would often read, but very sporadically and often in a binging fashion. In other words, I would read something very quickly when my interest peaked, but might then go a long time without picking up a new book.
Then in the summer of 2018, I was flying to England and had downloaded a series of podcasts including this one with Tim Ferriss and Brandon Stanton, the creator of Humans of New York. Brandon’s story is exceptional and I highly recommend listening to this podcast if you have the time. In their conversation, Brandon makes note of a reading habit he created in college where he would read 100 pages per day outside of his regular school work. While Brandon comes across as very intelligent, I don’t think he was speed reading Good Will Hunting-style so this was a pretty impressive undertaking in terms of both time and mental energy. Moreover, he said that this reading was primarily nonfiction and within that genre, primarily biographies (so not a lot of fictional dialogue to make the pages turn quickly).
After listening to this podcast, I decided to make a formal reading habit for myself. However, 100 pages per day was not going to happen. I suppose I might be able to read 100 pages on one of my better days, but in order to build a habit, I needed to focus on what I could get done on my worst days. As I was still racing and training at the time, I thought about what my state of mind would look like when I was totally exhausted from five or six hours of training. With that in mind, I came up with 25 pages/day. Additionally, while I do read a lot of nonfiction (and a lot of biographies) I felt that I needed to try and come close to alternating nonfiction with fiction. I didn’t need it to be a hard 50/50 split, but somewhat close to that.
It’s now almost four years later and I did, in fact, manage to cultivate the habit of reading consistently.
Earlier this year, Dr. Andrew Huberman did a podcast on Habit Formation. It was the first podcast of the new year and a salient point that I’m sure a lot of people took interest in as the motivation for self improvement is high, whether from a New Year’s resolution or otherwise. You can find that podcast HERE. My motivation for writing this piece comes from this podcast as I have referenced it multiple times this year and often think about some of the suggestions he makes as being highly effective.
With all the above being said, here is what I would suggest to help someone that would like to try and develop the habit of reading more:
Think about what you can do at your worst. As I mentioned above, how much can you consistently read per day 90-95% of the time? Not 100%, just 90-95%. You still need to realistically understand that life will completely get in the way some of the time.
In the podcast, Hubmerman mentions that a specific time to do a new task is not always the best strategy when trying to develop it into a habit. In other words, while it might be helpful to initially formally set aside a specific time to read, I wouldn’t be too rigid with it. Something might get in the way of that from time to time and you don’t want to feel like all is lost if you miss your window. I personally never set aside a specific time to read. I just do it when it seems to make sense.
Nothing needs to be 100%. I mentioned that in the first point. You will miss a day. Or days. That’s ok. Just get right back on the routine and head forward.
If and when I did miss a day, I did not read more the next day to make up for it. Huberman makes this same point in his podcast. You don’t want to make up for missed sessions, just keep it rolling. There are a couple things I would add to this. I also didn’t bank pages. If I happened to read 50 or 75 pages in a day I still had to read 25 the next day. I was not working on averages, but on minimums. I found this to be the better long term strategy because it did not create an incentive to binge and reinforced the development of a long term habit.
Almost all books I read are physical and not through any devices (personal preference, not a suggestion). However, I do keep a handful of books on a Kindle on my phone and computer. These books tend to be the type of books that do not read like one long narrative. They can be read a chapter or so at a time without needing to remember what happened recently. I kept this on hand for when times would get busy. I could always pull out a book, instead of just aimlessly scrolling, when I had dead time waiting somewhere. Again, these sorts of books need to be more like a collection of essays in case you go a long time between readings. I found this to be helpful in getting in the minimum on the busiest and most hectic of days.
I recently saw a suggestion of someone saying that they use the books they read to find the next books they are going to read. This is something I noticed myself doing, but not something I had considered at the outset. For example, I wanted to read a lot of successive presidential biographies, but would often get sidetracked from wanting to read about something I learned along the way. This always kept new books coming in that were waiting on the shelf. I didn’t necessarily go straight to them, but I started to have a reading pipeline that made it easier to not have lapses in having a wide variety of books on the ready. This can send you way off course sometimes and can really be a fun way to find yourself in unknown territory. I never considered myself to be overly interested in art, but found myself reading a Van Gogh biography as a result of one of these rabbit holes. You never know where your interests will take you from the reading you do.
Always start with what you want to read as opposed to what you might think you need to read. Reading should be enjoyable. Admittedly, I do read some books I find to be highly challenging, but I also read books that are very easy to read and just tell a good story. Everything has its place and when you are trying to develop the habit of reading, nothing will do that better than the reading you see as enjoyable. There is no hierarchy of reading.
Eventually it’s ok to give up the structure. I stuck to the 25 page minimum plan for a long time, but I don’t really know how many pages I read any more. The pandemic saw me reading more than I ever had in my lifetime so at some point, the need to keep tabs seemed somewhat superfluous. The habit of reading had become fully ingrained and now I just read without thinking as much about the process of reading. However, if I ever find myself slipping in consistency, I will be ready to use this same process all over again.
Hopefully, if you made it this far, you found something useful to help you in your quest to read a little more each day.
-j
