How 2020 helped me get back to my reading habit
When I visited a literature festival in the month of January in 2020, I was humbled after listening to writers and meeting other attendees who were voracious readers and immensely curious. I decided that I had to get better at my reading habit. I had finished around 12 books in 2019 and had promised myself to increase the number significantly in 2020. Looking back if there were few markers that I would place on 2020, apart from infinite screen time and kitchen lessons, it would definitely be the 25 books that I finished last year. Here I list down some habits and hacks that helped me.
- Target setting helps- I drew up a target list in the beginning of the year and wrote it in my diary. It was a list of 30 odd books that were recommended by friends and picked from this list by Choose to Thinq(CTQ). I kept adding books and striking off the ones that I was completing and checked my progress every week. The thrill of experiencing this progress made the achiever in me happy. I am not advocating that we look at this as another ticking off exercise but this checklist helped, in my case. There are many readers who don’t want to set targets based on number of books. I totally respect that decision as well. It is quality and depth of books that matter and not number of books that you finish. What if you were reading a tome like “India after Gandhi” instead of a short book “To kill a mocking bird”? Non-fiction takes time whereas fiction can be a quick page turner.
2. Timing matters and so does time- I realised that while non-fiction was the genre I enjoyed immensely, it required attention and focus. So I started reading these books during early mornings. In the evenings I would listen to an audible fiction while walking or while finishing household chores. I would try to dedicate 30 minutes on weekdays and pace during weekends. I started looking at most activities through the lens of time consumption. It takes 1.5 hours for a movie on Netflix but that time would also help finish a lot of pages. Even when I wanted to think and write, one part of my brain would urge me to use that time to read instead. The weekend leisure time that I had been spending before pandemic, walking inside malls and looking at the latest fashion trends and furniture designs, was traded off this year with reading. When this realisation dawned on me, I vowed to make better use of time, even when things would normalize.
3. Building focus — Over time you do realize that reading takes you to a state of rapt attention. It increases your focus. Like most millennials, I too have the smartphone itch. It is difficult to devour pages when you want to satisfy that dopamine rush of answering that email, checking that post on Facebook, or that update on Instagram. I decided to take a break from social media. As pointed out by James Clear, the writer of Atomic Habits, I started by uninstalling apps and resetting random passwords of distracting social media sites and forgot them very soon. This created a psychological hurdle. The website versions of social media sites would ask me for password(that I had forgotten), if at all I was tempted to check them. I did not want to take the pain to reset password just to check an update. This path of increased resistance helped reduce social media exposure time.
4. Retention of content — When I read a book with facts the biggest challenge that I usually face is the problem of retention. So I started scribbling notes with a pencil on chapter ends or on those last blank pages. In some cases I also kept a parallel diary to take notes. While reading on Kindle I would highlight notes. I consumed fiction stories on Audible listening on 1.5 times the normal speed. Sharing synopsis with friends and a reading group also increases the joy of reading and reinforces learning. Many a times I would construct some trivia out of what I had read and share it as a question on quiz groups.
5. Variety of subjects — I observed that just as I like to explore different genres in movies so it is with reading. While I had read 5 books on technology and business which were directly related to my professional pursuit, I also read travel and culture as the pandemic had put an end to our travel plans. I enjoyed books on history, politics, economics and civilization. Reading a couple of health and wellness books helped me reflect about human physiology which was under pressure in 2020. Personally I didn’t want to read motivation, self-help and psychology this year as I now find that genre repetitive. Being proficient in more than one language is known to aid cognitive abilities. I wish I had read more of Hindi, my first language, not only as a means to enhance cognitive abilities but also to do my bit to revive readership in Hindi. Growing up in a home where most of our conversation was in Hindi, the language brings back a lot of nostalgia and a sense of rootedness.
Here’s hoping that 2021 helps me sustain this practice. I hope we evolve in many ways when it comes to personal knowledge management.
I would love to hear some recommendations from you in the comments below.
