How to Make Reading a Regular Habit

Afaque Ali
Posted by December 16, 2020
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Every year you select a number of books to read but most of the time you never read all.

Sometimes either you don’t have enough time or you didn’t just start.

This type of issue I have personally experienced before making reading a  regular habit.

But how am I able to make reading a regular habit?

If you want to know the answer to this question, read this article till the end and I will explain to you all the steps I have taken to make reading a regular habit.

How to Make Reading a Regular Habit

The following steps will help you to make a regular reading habit

1. Add a Reading task to your to-do list

The first step I have taken is to add a reading task to my daily to-do list.

If you don’t have such things as a to-do list then don’t worry. You can make a to-do list with only one item which is essential for now, in our case it is reading.

Related, How to Set Goals and Achieve them

2. Block Your time

The second thing you can do is to block a specific time of your working hour in which you want to read books. Commit to yourself that you will not do anything apart from reading at that particular time.

For Example; Let’s say you block a time between 8:00 PM – 8:30 PM.

No matter what comes, stick with your commitment. Always be ready to start reading before it’s 8 o’clock.

Keep your mobile phone silent or ignore emails, calls, and messages at that time.

In the final words, you blocked your time for everything and are only available for reading.

3. Set a daily milestone

You don’t need to read a whole book in a day or two. You can make a daily milestone. In the beginning, you can just read 10 pages but daily and consistently.

In starting don’t try to pull yourself to read 50-100 pages, if you can read then it’s very good if not then don’t try to drag yourself. Just read 10-15 pages.

Many studies have proven that it takes up to 3 weeks or 21 days to turn a task into a habit. So be stubborn and read daily & consistently. It takes up to 63 days i.e. 9 weeks to turn your habit into a mature habit.

In that period, don’t worry about the no. of books you are going to read. Just catch up on your daily milestone. If you can read more, it will be better.

4. Increase your daily milestone

Now you have turned your daily task into a habit. The time has come to increase your daily limit.

But how will you increase your daily limit?

In my case, I increased my daily limit very slowly, till I reached my daily target.

It took me almost one month to reach my final daily target (in my case it is 30 pages per day).

5. Make reading a mature habit

At this stage, you have turned your daily task into a habit. By continuing so for more than 9 weeks you will become a pro reader.

You will start reading daily and consistently very smoothly without any hassle after 9 weeks. And you will have fun and enjoy reading.

Conclusion:

People often ask me what we should read?

I think the best thing we can read about the problem we are trying to solve in our professional and personal life.

I read literally everything which can enhance my life like religion, investing, marketing, self-help, productivity, time-management, business, etc.

It was books that helped me to find my passion.

When I was trying to understand Islam I read books on faith.

I was fascinated to know everything about money then I started reading about investing, economics & finance.

To improve my social & personal life I read some books on communication, relationship, human behavior, etc.

For improving my productivity I read about time-management, goals settings, productivity.

I had some psychological disease then I read about cognitive behavioral therapy to understand & cure my psychological problems.

In the beginning, I read some novels and stories but later I found that these types of books are good for entertainment but not so good to help me achieve my goals. So I don’t read stories and novels.

Nowadays, I mostly read books about start-ups, business, finance, marketing, and human resources, etc to make my journey successful in the business world.

Trust me there is a book on each & every topic. It just takes a few minutes to search on google to find a book about the topic you want.

One thing I can be proud of myself is that now I’m a reader. I really enjoy reading. It’s not only fun but a good reading habit will improve your knowledge and experience in your field.

By just reading 30 pages a day, Now I’m able to read 3 books a month (considering the average book size has 300 pages) and More than 30 books a year. It is not that bad. Isn’t it?

I’m sure now you are ready to make reading a regular habit.

What’s stopping you?

Tweet me here.