Sunday, February 16, 2014

Get Into A Reading Rhythm

Many people ask me how do I manage to get through so many books and my response is that I have a reading routine and rhythm. I'll share my recipe with you. Try this for one month and see how much progress you make. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. A sitcom generally airs for a half of an hour at a time with dramas and soap operas airing for an hour or more. Instead of watching the sitcoms or drama programs, turn the television off and use the time to read. That's right......READ.  Let's say that you watch three sitcoms for a half of an hour each. Choose three books that you are currently reading or would like to read. Read each book for a half of an hour each (the same time you would have spent watching the sitcoms). Set a timer if you need to in order to keep you on track. At the end of the thirty minutes, change to the next book and begin reading it and at the end of that thirty minutes, move to the third book. If you do this once a day for a month, you will be absolutely amazed at the number of books you will complete in that time and ultimately in a year. It's not that we don't have the time to read, it's more like we don't TAKE/MAKE the time to read. If television is not your thing and you spend an inordinate amount of time on the computer or on social networks, the same recipe will apply; just insert the computer in the blank where I have TV above. In fact any other time consuming activity will work to fill in the blank. In other words, I am asking you to substitute reading for one of the other activities. I cannot express the myriad benefits of you doing this here in this post. If you cannot do the ninety minutes, start off with thirty minutes and work your way up. Give up one sitcom to read a few chapters in a good book. Research says that anything done for thirty days becomes a habit (good or bad), so give it a try and watch how quickly you increase the number of books you have read in a week, month, and year's time. Happy Reading! Something to critically think about. I invite you to download for free The Reading Circle App on Itunes, Google-Play, or Amazon.  I also invite you to listen to The Reading Circle each Saturday morning beginning at 6 a.m. ET on gobrave.org and locally in northern NJ on WP88.7 FM. Lastly, I invite you to follow me on Twitter @thinkcritical01.  

1 comment:

ArchivedProfile said...

hmmmm. Something tells me that getting people to skip out on their sitcoms is going to be a hard sell :) But you're right, limiting time in front of the idiot box and on social media outlets is bound to free up a considerable amount of time. I actually do a great deal of reading on the Metro to and from work. For really good books, I find that I want to keep reading once I'm off of the metro and can get through those a lot faster because I'm reading at home too.

As someone once told me, you find time for what you don't want to do, you make time for what you want to do.