If you want to hide a secret from a Nigerian, hide it in a book. – Anonymous
To read effectively and enjoy the process requires time; time some people cannot seem to create. So I am writing this for that reader and lover of books who has little to no time for reading anymore because of the demands of a career, family and life. Here is how you can squeeze in time to read and meet those monthly or yearly goals you’ve set for reading.
• Read books you find interesting: The clue to enjoying the reading process and reading more books is to read whatever you find interesting. When I start a book and I get stuck (not able to read more pages, or taking up another book), I usually don’t want to admit that I find the book uninteresting but it is usually the case. When you find a book uninteresting, don’t waste time trying to finish it. Life is too short and there are a lot of interesting books you still need to read before you are no more.
• Take a book along… everywhere you go: There is always that 5 minutes or 15 minutes during the day when you do nothing. No matter how busy the day may be, if you take a book along with you, you will find the time to finish five pages. It does not matter whether a plan was botched or a meeting was cancelled or the person you waited for delayed you for over an hour, your day ends up interesting because you brought with you a book to read.
• Save time to read: If you have favourite television series that take up an hour of your day, you can record them to watch them in small batches later. Use that hour to read and catch up with your reading goals. You can skim through news to get the gist of it and reduce meetings that do not do you much good to make more time. You find that it is worth it as you would have saved some “alone time” to read your book.
• Keep a stack of the interesting books you want to read and strategically place them in a place you’ll always see them: My stack of books is directly in front of my bed so I wake up staring at it. Any day I don’t get to go over there and pick a book to read, I’m thinking about it all day. It is psychology… anything that would help you read more books is fine by you, I know!
• “Read at whim”, Randall Jarrell says: Change your mind easily when you have a choice between reading a book and something else. Find books interesting and drop that “something else” that wouldn’t make the world stop turning, metaphorically speaking!
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