Written by SAORI CATERINA | March 27, 2023
MY STORY
As a child, I used to spend entire days reading fantasy books.
I remember very vividly sitting for hours and hours on an armchair in my living room, totally absorbed in imaginary worlds.
As I grew up, I became very busy with my studies and different extracurricular activities – gymnastics, tennis, judo, piano, choir, and music theory lessons – and I completely stopped reading.
During the first year of college I struggled a lot and I became very interested in self-help and personal development, which made me decide to resume my reading habit.
In the beginning, it was so hard. I couldn’t focus, I often had to read the same page multiple times, and – honestly – I just didn’t enjoy it.
Knowing the amazing benefits of reading, I became very frustrated.
I looked for tips on how to read more on Google and YouTube, but I could not find anything that worked for me.
I tried, failed, retried, and failed again.
Today, about five years after I decided to restart reading, I can sincerely say that I fell in love with it again and that I enjoy it as much as I used to as a child.
Reading became an integral part of my life, and it is a precious source of knowledge, ideas, and inspiration.
Books have expanded my view on the world, and they’ve made me a better person.
I want you to experience the same. I truly wish that you can start immersing yourself in the magic world of books, so that you can reap the amazing benefits of reading them.
Therefore, in today’s blogpost I will share with you my top 4 tips to read more books that have worked amazingly for me ✨
Let’s get into them.
READ SOMETHING YOU’RE GENUINELY INTERESTED IN.
The first tip is to read something you’re genuinely interested in.
I know that it sounds like a very basic tip, but I want to stress this point because, very often, we read certain types of books just because we feel like we should do so.
From personal experience, I can tell you that doing this will not help you cultivating the habit of reading. On the contrary, it will make it harder to build.
For example, I used to force myself to read Shakespeare and other classic authors because my high school best friend – who was the daughter of two journalists – used to know a lot about literature, which made me feel very ignorant.
After consuming a few theatre pieces (which I found extremely boring) I concluded that books were not for me. Instead of trying to read a different genre, I completely stopped.
Don’t make my same mistake.
Read a book that you’re actually interested in. Not one you think you should read.
DON’T BE AFRAID TO ABANDON A BOOK HALF WAY THROUGH.
The second tip to read more is to not force yourself to finish a book.
I know that this can be hard, especially if – just like me – you do not like leaving things half done.
Trust me though. When it comes to reading, it’s better to leave a book halfway through than getting stuck with it.
If you start a book that you don’t like and you do not allow yourself to begin another until you’ve finished it, you will probably think that you simply don’t like reading and will stop doing it completely.
READ MULTIPLE BOOKS AT THE SAME TIME.
Being a person who likes doing one thing at a time, I used to despise the idea of reading multiple books simultaneously.
But let me tell you, this stategy is a GAME CHANGER.
In fact, if I had to decide on one single tip to read more, it would be to read many books at the same time.
Just like with movies, you don’t always feel like reading the same book genre.
Sometimes, you want to read an educational book, other times a biography or maybe a romance.
If you limit your reading choices to a single book and you’re not in the mood for it, you will likely end up doing something else.
Increase your reading options, and your book consumption will drastically increase.
DON’T READ A SPECIFIC NUMBER OF PAGES A DAY.
If you love setting goals as much as I do, you probably think that deciding on a specific number of pages to read per day / week is a good idea.
It is not.
When you set yourself such a goal, your reading session becomes more about reaching your objective than the book itself.
I tell you this from personal experience.
When I tried this strategy, I was constantly counting how many pages were left before I reached my goal, so that I could close whatever book I was consuming.
Unsurprisingly, reading felt like a chore and I did not enjoy it.
So, don’t set page-related objectives.
If you absolutely want to have a reading goal, I’d suggest you decide on an amount of time to spend reading.
Setting page goals will just make your reading experience more painful, don’t do it!
I hope you enjoyed my 4 tips on how to read more and that they will help you to fall in love with books (again) and learn a ton from them.
Have you tried any other strategy to read more? What worked? What didn’t?
Let’s discuss in the comments!
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