Category Archives: Studying

Tips for Reading More

I like to read. This post is about how I have integrated more reading into my life.

These tips vary in their applicability depending on your lifestyle and preferences. This piece is written from my experience alone. It is intended to highlight ideas that may help you integrate more reading into your life.

In this post I detail how to read more by:

  1. Reading during other compatible activities.
  2. Replacing TV with reading.
  3. Make reading material more accessible in your home.
  4. Using audiobooks for reading while walking, running, folding laundry, etc.
  5. Skimming books and articles to see if they are worth reading.
  6. Read what you love. Read what you want to.
  7. Utilizing technology such as ebook readers and smart phones.

Take reading to where you have to wait

I can bring a book to many places that I go during my day. I find that I often have a few minutes of ‘doing nothing’ at several points during my day. Some of these times I can fill with reading.

I have found that reading can be done simultaneously with many other activities. What I focus on here is waiting, or ‘down time’ of different types.

You might think that you don’t spend that much time waiting during your day, but I guarantee you that it can add up to quite a bit even for a busy person. Even a few minutes here and there means a few pages here and there. A few pages per day can mean an extra book or three per year.

Do you find yourself spending time:

  1. in lineups
  2. on the bus
  3. on the train
  4. on a plane
  5. riding in a car
  6. waiting in lobbies
  7. waiting for friends (or your food) at restaurants or cafes
  8. on the toilet
  9. in the bath
  10. at the laundromat

What do you do during these times? Perhaps you are idly staring off into space, or scanning the headlines of tabloids. If you are very performance oriented, you might find yourself stuck thinking circular thoughts about the time you are ‘losing’. Finding something productive to do during these times, such as reading, can help with both passing the time and stimulating new ideas and thoughts.

I am not espousing that you begin to read instead of socializing. I am merely saying that you may have some alone time that you might want to spend reading.

Put a book in every room

Some people swear by this technique. Having an interesting book at hand can be very helpful for integrating more reading into your life.

Replace TV with Books

This concept has been floating around for decades. North Americans watch an average of four hours of TV per day. If you would like to read more, but you find that much of your time is consumed by TV, a change may be in order.

Find the book or books that you want to read the most, and use them as an incentive to drag you away from the TV some of the time. Put them somewhere visible such as on top of the TV or coffee table.

You may be surprised about how engrossing a good book can be, especially if it has been a long time since you read for pleasure.

TV is designed to grab and keep your attention so that you stay there, plastered to the screen between commercials (the primary revenue of TV stations). Books, on the other hand, rely on the quality of your attention and the fact that you care about what the author is saying. It is thus clear that books and TV shows become popular for very different reasons.

Audiobooks

My Sandisk Sansa Clip 4gb. Sturdy, reliable, and easy-to-use

I have recently become a fan of audiobooks. Audiobooks still come on tapes or CDs but these mediums are rapidly being replaced by the mp3 and other computer audio formats.

My key point is that audiobooks have some flexibility that normal books do not. I routinely listen to audiobooks:

  1. When walking / jogging.
  2. When biking, though in traffic this can be a bit of a problem. Be sure that you don’t have the audiobook playing overly loudly, or it may seriously hamper your hearing (a very useful sense for an urban cyclist).
  3. When standing in lines or when shopping.
  4. When doing mechanical tasks around the house such as washing dishes or sorting laundry.

In the last two years I estimate that I have used these techniques to read about 25 audiobooks. These have included such hefty titles as Atlas Shrugged and Guns, Germs, and Steel.

My Audiobook setup: Sansa Clip and Sony Headphones. The headphone design is great for walking, jogging, and biking.

I have found this medium to be very useful, and I believe that it may be more socially acceptable for some people because of the growing popularity of headphones in public spaces. If you have a long commute on transit, but do not want to carry around a book, give audiobooks a try, you may be surprised by the results.

If you want to make even better use of your time, you may find it helpful to increase the speed of your audiobooks. I routinely listen to my audiobooks at 1.5 times normal speed. Some of my friends listen at much higher speeds. You can often modify the speed of playback on mp3 players or in computer software.

If you wish to read non-book texts as audio, there are some text-to-speech converters available that may be able to help you transform the text into a mp3 or similar audio format.

Skimming (and Stopping)

Be discerning about what you give your attention to. Not all books will be enthralling for you. If you find yourself getting bored or not learning anything new, don’t be afraid to skim (or just stop). For fiction books this might be a really bad sign, but for non-fiction is may just mean that the ‘meat’ of the book is elsewhere.

I have been known to skim entire books in under 5 minutes while standing in a used book store. Sometimes a skim-through informs me that I want to buy the book and read it. Sometimes it tells me that I should read the final concluding chapter that knits together all the topics of the entire books. Sometimes it tells me that I should put the book down and look at other things.

Skimming is more difficult with topics that are new to you, or especially complex. I find that if I have read a lot on a topic, skimming can be a powerful tool for discerning the quality of a possible read.

If you are reading for fun, don’t waste your time on things you don’t enjoy. This may sound straightforward, but I find a lot of people start reading things ‘for fun’ that they don’t even enjoy. If you really want to read for fun, go spend an hour in a bookstore skimming through some books to find an author who has a voice and a topic that you appreciate.

Don’t place heavy restrictions on yourself. What would I classify as a restriction? Here are some habits and beliefs that I would consider restrictive with regards to reading.

Restrictive reading beliefs

  1. I must read only one book at a time. (I must finish my current book before starting a new one, regardless of how uninspiring my current book is.)
  2. I must finish all books I start.
  3. I can only read just before bed. (Or I can only read in bed.)
  4. I can’t read for fun because I have too many textbooks to read (or work books, paperwork, memos, stock reports, post-its, etc).
  5. Reading damages your eyes. (From some reading around on the Internet, this seems to be untrue. If you want to, you can read about more eye health myths.)

Ebook Readers, Smart Phones, etc

These new electronic devices allow increased mobility of information. It is possible to carry many ebooks on a single device, which itself may be smaller than a book. These devices are developing rapidly, and already offer what I would call an impressive reading experience. They are trendy and slick, and may be just the thing for getting more reading into your life.

These devices are often multi-use, meaning that they may be useful for much more than just reading.

The downsides of these devices that I am concerned about are the fact that they often have relatively short battery life (a few hours), and they may have difficulty with wet or very cold weather. Choose a device that fits the usage patterns (and weather) that you expect.

I hope that some of these ideas prove useful for you. If you have further ideas you would like to share, I invite you to comment!