Too busy to read? Try these techniques
Everyone is busy... and distracted
We all know that we should be mindful with our time, scroll less on our phones, and watch less TV so that we can sleep better, eat more mindfully and connect better to people around us.
This is easier said than done, though, because modern technology highjacks our brains, which haven’t changed much since at least 35,000 years. Knowing that, we can use our grey matter to overcome this issue.
How do some people find the time to read? Especially successful people are often known for being avid readers despite working long hours and having lots of commitments. How do they do it?
Create focus
I am writing this post while sitting on the couch with my husband, the TV is on. To be able to focus I could go into a different room, which is quiet. Today I have decided to use noise cancelling headphones with just the sound of waves, which is better for my brain than complete silence.
Creating focus will be different for everyone, parents with kids probably want to hear what is going on around them to keep everyone safe. Maybe there is a time when everyone else is out of the house or asleep and the house is quiet that allows you to read for a while.
Set clear goals
Looking at a book that you are wanting or planning to read can be daunting. So many pages, so little time. Most people read about 200 to 300 words per minute. Let’s say your book has 500 words per page and you read that in 2 min. If that book has 300 pages, it will take you 10 hours to read it cover to cover. What? Ten hours? Who has that much of time?
Here is where goal setting comes in. Let’s say you want to read that book in a month, that’s on average about half an hour every day for 30 days. Set yourself a timer and don’t stop until it chimes. Make it a game, keep track of how many days in a row you kept your reading streak going. Our brains love streaks!
Read faster!
You have calculated how many minutes a day you need to read to finish your book in a certain timeframe – but you don’t have that many minutes every day. What now? If you only could read faster…
There are a few tips that can help you to actually read more words per minute. One is to use a ruler or a pointer to keep your eyes focused and prevent them from backtracking and re-reading the same lines. Some people like to skim texts, meaning their eyes race over the pages, catching only a part of the words, letting their brain do the rest to get the gist of the text. I do that when I come to a less interesting passage.
Speed reading tips often suggest to “silence the inner monologue”, the little voice inside your head that reads the text out loud in your head. It appears, not everyone has that voice (what?) and others who have it often find it impossible to silence it. I am one of those.
Make it a habit
Our brains love habits, because they are energy savers. Whenever we do something “automatically”, the brain uses less power. With our brain using about 20% of our energy every day, we are hard wired to use it as little as possible.
Habits work through cues, like the if-then programming of a computer. You come home, flop onto the couch, reaching for the remote and the snacks. Every day, without thinking.
Habits consist of three parts: cue, routine, reward. The cue is the trigger (coming home), the routine is what you do next (sitting in front of the telly munching snacks), the reward (feeling safe and distracted by your favourite series, food in your mouth releasing dopamine in your brain).
It takes a bit of time, but we can change these habits, one bit at a time. You can replace the processed snacks with healthier options or delay sitting on the couch for 15 or 30 min by reading at the kitchen table instead. Over time, this new behaviour will overwrite the old habit and you won’t have to think about it anymore. A new habit is born.
Work smarter, not harder
There might be times when you are really struggling for time. So much that there is no way to read the whole book, no chance.
But maybe, you’d have enough time if you could do something else at the same time, like cooking, cleaning, commuting, working out? I love audiobooks for exactly that reason: they allow me to “read” without taking time out of my day.
The following technique works great for books in the how-to or self-help genre. Good news is, you don’t have to read the whole book! Look at the table of contents, decide which chapter(s) you want to read in full. Then you read the introduction, the selected chapters, and the summary.
To get a gist of the remaining content in textbooks you can simply read the first and last paragraph in a chapter plus the first and last one or two sentences of each paragraph. You’d be surprised how effective that is.
Make it work for you
Everyone is different and life changes. What works for your friend might be unthinkable for you and vice versa. What used to be easy for you might seem impossible now. That’s normal. Trial and error are your friends, adaptation is evolution.
Which techniques do you use to get more reading done?
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