How to read more books
I have recently started using my Kindle more and it has been a quite pleasurable experiment.
Rather than listening to nonsense music for 1000th time, reading a book can be helpful to get inspiration or learn more stuff.
I use below tips to develop the habit of reading:
- Try to read whenever you can: In the train, when eating food, while waiting to see a doctor, … use any available time to read something.
- You don’t have to read a book if you don’t like it: If after reading part of a book, you find out that you no longer like the book (for example it is no longer exciting or the topic is not useful for you), just ignore the book and move to another book.
- Read multiple books: I’m planning to read 3 books at the same time. One for entertainment (story book), one for learning about stuff like economics, psychology, … and the last one about my technical field (software engineering). You can switch books every day or week or any other kind of planning which suits you.
- Note: Reading a book is not enough. Especially when it is a technical book. You will need to highlight important parts or take notes and later review them. This will make sure you learn the lesson of the book and will be able to use those lessons whenever you need to.
- Make is accessible: Put your Kindle somewhere which is easy to reach. You should prevent any kind of excuse not to pick it up when you have time to read.
- Use larger fonts: One advantage of using an electronic book reader is that you can customise it the way you like. I prefer to use fonts which are larger than normal. This has two small benefits: You finish a page more quickly so it give you an impression of making progress and does it more visibly, and second when reading in a train where there might be sudden small movements, you can read the book more easily.
- Use a good cover: I use a magnetic foldable cover so that, in addition to protecting the reader, whenever I open the cover, it automatically unlocks the kindle so it is ready for reading.