The Reading Habit - Part II
How to build and sustain a lifetime habit of reading
You can read the first part here where I have suggestions for discovering books you’d like to read.
Finding the time to read — for most of us, this is a really tough ask. And it is only getting tougher.According to a recent estimate, at least 57% of the people in the US spend five hours or more per day on their phones.And most of this use is social media including WhatsApp. I realised during the pandemic that , even while participating in work meetings, I tended to switch off mentally from the conversation and I would browse stuff on the phone without being conscious of it. Such an automatic habit felt dangerous and I wanted to make the simplest change possible to regain control over my time.
That choice for me was to disable Whatsapp notifications. And it worked wonderfully well.I noticed that just disabling WhatsApp (or Messages for iPhone users) notifications straight away eliminates about half of the phone related distractions. 99% of the messages are not urgent. And if it is really urgent, the person will prefer to call you anyway.
Reading requires an uninterrupted block of time, and keeping the phone distractions at bay is the first step in making some time to read. The next thing to do is to make a consistent habit out of reading.This is easier said than done.But there is help available.In recent years, a substantial body of research has come into the public domain about human behaviour and how we make or break habits.There are many books on this topic but the one that I recommend the most is James Clear’s Atomic Habits. This is a book ( which I recommended earlier here ) which explores the techniques of forming meaningful habits by following simple rules which any person in any circumstance can implement in their lives.In summary, there are four aspects ( James Clear calls these the ‘Four Laws of Habits’ in the book ) to forming a long lasting habit : Make it Obvious — Make it attractive — Make it easy — Make it satisfying.
Make it Obvious - Have a set time everyday for reading, immediately after another one of your daily habits. For e.g immediately after finishing dinner or while having your first cup of coffee/tea in the morning. This is called ‘habit stacking’ , where you ‘stack’ a new habit on top of an existing habit in order to wire your brain to do the new habit automatically after the older one.
Make it Attractive — to reinforce a new reading habit , have another habit which follows it which you would do only when you read — like a reward. For e.g after reading for the day, I will have a chocolate or after reading, I will browse social media for 10 minutes.This makes the new habit attractive and give your brain a ‘reward’ to undertake the new ( beneficial ) habit of reading.
Make it Easy - This step is about reducing the number of obstacles between you and your desired habit.We humans are designed to take the path of least resistance and the more easier it is for us to start reading, the more likely that this will become an effective habit. One very helpful idea here is to ensure that the daily habit is easy enough to do every day. For e.g. if you set yourself the goal to ready 100 pages everyday or to sit for an hour everyday and read, you will most definitely fail. Instead, have a small daily target - to sit and read for 15 mins or to read 10 pages everyday.You will soon realise that not only is this easier to stick to , it is also a small enough target for you to exceed everyday - which will further boost your mood and make it likely that you will continue with the habit. Personally, I have a daily target of reading 25 pages everyday and it is something which I have been able to adhere to consistently. The amount of time you spend doing the new habit is not important — what is important is the number of iterations of doing the new activity.Starting out small will help you establish the habit in your routine firmly. Once established you can then increase the target to whatever is the next reasonable level.
Make it Satisfying - The human brain is wired to repeat activities which it finds satisfying in the short term. Researchers found during the pandemic that something as banal as using a hand sanitiser depended upon whether or not the person found the fragrance of the sanitiser appealing or not. This can be applied to reading by creating a visible ‘reading tracker’.You cross off a day on a physical calendar or an online one on days you have read.And you try to keep the streak of marks/crosses going on for as long as possible.This might seem silly at first. But once you have a substantial number of marks/crosses on the calendar, you feel positive whenever you look at it and that in turn reinforces your identification with the habit.And it is this identification which is of importance in this step. For e.g if talking about developing an exercise habit - Instead of identifying as a ‘fit person,' it would be better to think of yourself as someone who never misses workouts.This small shift in the way you see yourself will definitely help you continue the new habit which in this case, is reading.
All in all, these are a few pointers which can be used to start a reading habit. Finally, I hope you realise that forming a reading habit , or any habit for that matter, is not about will power or motivation but more about deploying the right habit forming techniques.
What are some of your suggestions for a reading habit? Let me know in the comments below.
switching off mentally from meetings and browsing stuff..so true..made easier by virtual meetings