20 Jun 2021 3 min read

How to Read More Books

We live in a time where reading becomes less and less popular especially in younger age groups. We live in a world where we got so many activities to choose from to spend our alone time. We can scroll through social media, watch youtube videos, binge watch a series on netflix or play video games. Those activities often seem more fun to do, because you get the instant gratification in the form of dopamine. We often connect reading with school or university, where we have to read a specific chapter for class. We connect boredom and negative feelings to reading, so we don't choose reading as our freetime activity. Big leaders in politics and CEOs of big companies often say that reading is the most valuable thing that they did in their lifes to become succesfull, because they could learn from other peoples mistakes and get some key knowledge to strive forward in life. Apart from being the most valuble thing you can do with your time reading is probably the best way to unwind from the stresses of your everyday life. It gives you the opportunity to dive into a whole new world and experience it through the lense of a fictional character. Those are only some of the reasons, why I think everybody should read more and in this article I want to share some quick tips how to get started.

1. Read the books that you are most interested in

Many people think that they should read the books that get recommended the most and often force themselfes to read those types of books. Instead you should follow your own intuition and read the books that seem interesting and fun to read and if you want to reread Harry Potter for the 6th time than do that. Because if you don't read the books you actually enjoy, you wont become a frequent reader.

2. Not stopping a book

At the start of my reading career I too often forced myself to finish a book, even If I did not like it at all and didn't get any value out of it. Nowadays If I start a book and don't enjoy reading it after the first 20% I stop and pick up a new one. Even if I only find specific chapters of a book interesting I skip the ones which dont resonate to me and this is completly fine.

3. Not talking about books

After reading a book share your thoughts on it with a friend, in a book club or write about them online like I do. You will get a different perspective on the content of the book, because everybody sees a book differently and you can get a lot of value out of a conversation with another individual that has a different perspective on the book. In addition you remember more of what you read, because you actually make the time to process the book and this can be especially helpfull when reading non fiction books, where you actually want to apply the stuff you learned to your own life.

4. Make it a habit

Set a time in the day where you take the time to read. Especially right before bed time is good for picking up a book, because what would you do instead ? You would probably scroll through social media or watch something on TV, which severly decreases the quality of your sleep because of the bluelight and often holds you up at night, because it's hard to stop scrolling through the infinite pool of social media. So pick up a book instead and read until your eyes get tired.

5. Get a kindle

This is probably pretty controversial, because many people still prefer physical books over ebooks and I do get those people, because it is way nicer to hold a physical book in your hand and you can put it in your shelf after you finished reading it. A kindle is just more portable, you can save hundreds of books on there and you can highlight things and get imidiate access to those highlights on any device. In addition books in the kindle store are often cheaper and it reduces the friction of reading a book, because you can get immediate access to it after you bought it in the kindle store.

To wrap this article up I want to give you some recommendations of books I just read recently: