How I Read 80+ Books a Year: Tips to Reading More
I am fascinated with learning new things and understanding concepts that help me be a more complete, productive human. One of the best ways I have found to expand our minds is through reading, which is perhaps the best way to learn the greatest ideas of all time.
I think we can all agree that reading is important to personal development, keeping our minds sharp, and in general learning concepts that make our lives better. But with all the other distractions around us, it feels like there is never enough time to read. Life is busy. How can we find time to read?
In 2021, I read 100 books. This was while I was working full time, finishing my college degree, working on the house my wife and I are building, and hosting various podcasts. To say the year was full is an understatement. Yet I didn’t feel stressed or that my ability to learn new things was hindered. I learned that how busy we are is not the reason we don’t read more; the real issue is whether we create the proper habits and frameworks to make reading a natural part of life. Here are four, practical habits I use to read more books.
1. Daily Habit
Have a dedicated time each day you read. For me, carving out time each morning for reading has been huge. The key is making this into a habit, something that naturally fits into the flow of your day. If I’m going to read that morning, I make sure I leave my phone on silent and clear other distractions away. I find a quiet place where I won’t be interrupted and have a set amount of time committed to reading. When you’re first building the habit, you can start small, such as only reading one or two pages till you get in the flow of the habit. I also pair the reading by making myself a latte, to associate the habit of reading with something else I enjoy. This connects the habit of reading with a reward to ensure I do it (a concept from Charles Duhigg’s book The Power of Habit, which I highly recommend).
2. Make it easy
Make it as easy as possible to read. There are so many ways to consume books that having it always accessible is straightforward. Remove social media apps off the home screen of your phone and replace them with an ebooks app. Use a tablet or Kindle to read. I personally prefer physical books when possible, so I always have good books I’m reading laying at various strategic parts of my house; whenever I have a few minutes available, instead of mindlessly scrolling Twitter I pick up a book instead.
By far the biggest help has been audiobooks. I travel a lot and being able to redeem that road time through listening to books has been massive. Plus, you can listen to books at 1.5 or 2 times speed, which means you can "read" the entire book in only a few hours. (My favorite audiobooks service is Scribd, which gives you unlimited audiobooks and ebooks for only $9/month, by far the cheapest I've been able to find. Click the link for 2 months free. Audible is another great option with a larger selection, though costs more. Click here to get 2 free audiobooks to see if you like it.)
3. Enjoy it!
Make sure you enjoy what you are reading. As noble as it sounds to plow your way through the classics, if you aren’t enjoying what you are reading it will be extremely difficult to keep up the habit of reading books. When trying to build a habit of reading, start with what is interesting to you. As your mind gets used to ingesting more new material than normal, trying branching out into other genres. But remember, there’s a lot of books in the world and there’s no reason to force yourself to finish a book you just aren’t enjoying or learning anything from it. eep reading fun so the habit you are forming is connected to enjoyment and therefore making it easier to do.
4. Track what you read
Use an app like Goodreads to track and review what you read, as well as to set reading goals for yourself, and track what your friends are reading. Find recommendations from others who’s input you value. Goodreads also allows you to set a reading goal for the year and others can see how you’re doing.
I hope these tips are helpful. If you found this interesting, my brother and I did a podcast episode on this; listen to it here. We also did an episode on our favorite books of 2021, which you can listen to here.
Onward to more good books!
