I’ve recently started reading more. This means more reguarly, more often, and more pages each sit-down. Here are a few tips that have helped me come to this point.
Take these as practices you might decide to adopt yourself if you think they’ll help—not rules from on-high about how you should discipline yourself to read more. You’re a free-willing agent! These tips are meant to help remove barriers to reading, so that you may choose to read as an expression of yourself, without feeling compelled by other outside forces not to.
Choose books and topics you’re interested in. If you’re not interested, you won’t feel achievement when reading them, or happiness after each time you complete a chapter or section. These small rewards from reading are what help remind me that, “Oh yes, I actually do like reading, because I liked it last time and all the times before.” But that only comes with choosing a book or topic you like. Abandon a book if there’s a more pressing topic or interest—you can always come back. Last year, I focused on books around the Marxist Theory of History, which helped develop my understanding of Marxist theory and methodology. This year, I’m probably going to focus more on economics / political economy, to think of ways we might materially support the socialization of production—the development of less-fettered social relations in the womb of capitalism.
Read multiple books at once, so you can switch books if one ever gets too monotonous. Even when choosing an interesting book or topic, it can be tiring to always be stuck in the same headspace. To avoid this, I have a rotation of “Currently Reading” books.
Set motivating reading goals that you want to achieve for reasons beyond simply ‘reading more’. Last year, I set a goal for myself to finish reading G.A. Cohen’s ‘Karl Marx’s Theory of History’ and David Graeber’s and David Wengrow’s ‘The Dawn of Everything’. These were big books, but well worth it, and I wanted to read them because I was interested in what I could learn from them and apply to organizing.
It seemed like a reasonable goal to finish them by the end of 2022. But come December, I was about 80-100 pages away from the end in each book. This was the fire under my ass that got me to sit down and read more regularly. In an average reading session, I would be able to get through about 20 pages of TDOE. Regular reading gave me practice with avoiding distractions, and reinforced to me the rewardingness of reading something I was interested in.
Even though I didn’t finish both books by the New Year, I did finish TDOE. The practice of regular reading (developed to finish TDOE) carried forward into 2023, and I quickly completed KMTH in mid- January.
Set achievable goals that progressively push you to regularly do more than you would have otherwise, but also give yourself free passes if you don’t achieve your goals. Sometimes life gets in the way, or it can be demotivating to think that you failed in a reading goal, which can encourage you avoid reading because of that displeasure.
Try to find more stability in the rest of your life, or else use reading as a break to find some grounding. It can be difficult to read when the rest of your life is stressful, so it might help your long-term reading to prioritize addressing or coming to peace with those things causing you stress. On the other hand, reading is a way to learn and ground yourself in a structured presentation of the world. In that sense, it might be one of the healthiest stress-relievers or coping mechanisms, if you can get into that practice. Make it easy to pick up reading whenever you feel the need for a coping mechanism,, and if you think using a coping mechanism is necessary.
Casually communicate with your friends the goals you’ve set for yourself. This, at least, works for me, to attach my goals to some sort of community that can keep me accountable. If I relied on myself alone, I might continually come up with wishy-washy excuses as not to read. But the thought of others seeing my goals helps me to see the bad excuses for what they are. It’s like a second voice in my head that asks me if I reaaaally want to take the more passive route of doing something like watching YouTube instead of reading.
Change your reading environment. Building a habit isn’t simply about willpower, discipline, or personal responsibility. If there are things you can change about your reading environment that would help you stay focused on reading, then do it! Here are some things that helped me. Unfortunately, many of them cost some money, but are either small recurring costs or one-time purchases.
I would sometimes just drive to a coffee shop or library. I don’t do this much anymore because driving can take a while and I don’t always want to spend money for a hot chocolate or whatever. But sometimes being around other people makes it easier to hold myself focused.
I take notes quickly in my iPhone’s ‘Notes’ App, simply adding to the top of a Note titled ‘Write About’. Whenever I get a synthesizing or connecting thought while reading—something while reading would link up with a problem I’ve had in the back of my head for a while, or there will be useful parallels between what I’m reading and something I’ve read before. If I try to hold that idea but continue reading, I might have another idea, or get distracted, and lose my original idea. Taking quick notes helps me avoid that worry of losing a thought.
In a similar tune, I also put tabs into my books, or highlight sentences in my ebook. You might choose to underline or write in margins. But this helps me recognize what I find important, so I can more easily review or find something later. Making this as easy as possible helps me keep in the mindset of reading, rather than studying for perfect retention. Ultimately, this helps my retention of more things, because I read more, worry less, and can more easily come back to review ideas in books.
I bought a reading chair. Yes, unfortunately, this was helpful. I got a relatively cheap reading chair, so I can plant my feet on the ground while reading, have armrests for my arms and to put down my book and reading tabs, and to have a dedicated reading spot. I used to use a $30 beanbag from Walmart, but it wasn’t that comfortable, and didn’t let my put my feet flat on the floor. My bed didn’t have armrests which I could lay my reading tabs on, and didn’t let me change my position as a chair would (leaning forward in a chair is not the same in a bed). My desk chair swivels, is too elevated to put my feet down comfortably, and doesn’t have armrests.
I bought a carrying box for the books on my nightstand, so I can take them around to other places easily. This means I can move around my rotation of book I’m reading so I can pick them up whenever is easiest for me. I can bring them with me into the car, and after I’m done my errands, find a park or someplace and read there.
I put my phone aside, out of my pocket. While I will still reach for it to take notes, it’s nice to have it away from me. I’ve also started using an app called onesec which pauses me from opening distracting apps by instinct.
I sometimes listen to a soundtrack of ambient background noises while reading. Instead of random distracting sounds, a relatively constant background sound and active noise-cancelling headphones work wonders.
Hey, well hopefully that helped. I also wanted to write something to keep up that practice too.