How do you read so regularly? I used to read often but after being in university for four years I no longer read as much as I used to, and am finding it difficult to reestablish the habit. Do you have advice?
Are you able to pinpoint why you donât read as much as you used to? The main reasons I can think of would be lack of time, lack of concentration and lack of motivation. The first two issues probably interact since all of us, including avid readers of books, now experience reading mostly in the form of online snippetsâemails, social media posts, news articles full of distracting linksâand browsing all this online text is at once time-consuming and attention-scattering.
1. If you think lack of time is the issue, then try to see what nonessential activities are taking up a lot of your time on a regular basis, and whether you really choose to prioritise them over reading, or if itâs just a bad habit that you fell into and could break. Sometimes there are very specific ways in which we let another habit get in the way of our reading habit, like browsing our phone rather than reading a book on public transport, and itâs relatively easy to reverse it (in this case, by carrying around a particular kind of book that you find easy to read in sporadic increments, like poetry or short stories, or by downloading some books on your phone if thatâs more practical for public transport).Â
It can also help to identify moments throughout the day that would be âwastedâ time unless you make sure to have reading material at hand in various places and formats. Not in the sense of optimising your schedule and filling your every waking minute with âusefulâ activity because thatâs horrid and daydreaming is vital tooâjust, if there are âlost momentsâ in your day that you think would be enhanced by a book, make it super convenient to read in these moments. My bathroom is very cold and when I get out of the shower I always stay glued to the heater for 10mn before I force myself to hang my towel and get dressed, so I have a stash of books in the bathroom cabinet, as heater reads. I find peeling vegetables a boring chore so I have a stereo in the kitchen with a USB key full of audiobooks already plugged in and ready to go. I know that when Iâm working on a translation on my computer, there are moments when my focus falters, so I have a PDF of an in-progress book open in my work session (and no other source of distraction), to read a couple of paragraphs as a break. If I didnât have it at the ready my mini-breaks would probably involve going online for 3mn of mindless browsing, and Iâd much rather read.
2. If itâs a lack of ability to concentrate then it often has to do with the fact that, as I said, we now do most of our reading online, and our brain always does its best to adapt to whatever weird challenges we throw at it, so it has helpfully redefined âreadingâ as an activity that involves scanning, fast scrolling, eyes jumping around to extract relevant keywords from a page as quickly as possible while dodging distracting nonsense like ads. It is now very good at this! But opening a book to do some âreadingâ that involves none of it requires a quick, painful reshuffling of skills and priorities that can feel like a reluctance to read an actual book and an inability to focus, when it is actually just a temporary disturbance as you go through this annoying moment of readjustment (which probably takes more time if your ratio of internet reading to âdeep readingâ is currently high.)
I donât suppose thereâs a miracle solution to fix it (and of course there are many other things that can make it difficult to focus; any kind of distracting problem really), but maybe having a pleasant little âstarting ritualâ for reading could help? If you struggle with insomnia they say never to use your bed for anything but sleeping, so that when you go to bed your brain automatically realises itâs time to sleep. You could find something that you associate only with reading a book, like making tea of a specific flavour, using the same chair & blanket, or playlist, or a specific scented candle, so your brain starts preparing for book-levels of focus when you start this ritual, rather than when you actually start to read.Â
3. I think the third one, lack of motivation, is the easiest to fix, as it mostly involves focusing on the books you want to read, and giving yourself a break regarding the books you want to have read. You can go back to these later after you gather some reading momentum! Make a to-read list (or reorganise the one you have) with books that you would consider guilty pleasures at the top. I find personally that reading several books at once is the best way to eliminate the notion of guilty pleasure books, because there is no guilt at all in reading a fluff book or two when I am also reading more substantial books at the same time. There are topics I genuinely want to explore more in-depth, but I am also very allergic to academic speak and find some nonfiction books hard to get through, so I just read them in small doses, over a couple of months if thatâs what it takes, while reading books I find more enthusiasming (as we say in French) at the same time, in higher doses. This way I get rid of the paralysing tension between âdelightful books I want to read for the sheer joy of itâ and âinteresting books I want to read to transfer the information they contain into my brainâ (itâs so rare to find both at once!). Iâm reading both kinds at the same time, just, not at the same pace.
Also if you make a guilty pleasure-heavy reading list to hoist yourself out of a motivation slump, donât hesitate to include books youâve already read (and loved) if you enjoy rereading! In Iâd Rather Be Reading, Anne Bogel says that when we are in a reading slump, it is often because we are ânot in the mood to take a chance, weâre looking for a sure thing, a book weâre guaranteed to love.â Find your âsure thingâ books and let them do their magic â„
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