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It’s one of the most popular New Year resolutions: to read more. Apart from losing weight, that is.
Reading helps you relax and once you build a reading habit, books can become your best friend.
But reading isn’t just a hobby. It also helps gain knowledge and learn skills for professional success.
All good skills take some effort and focus to evolve. Developing a reading habit also needs similar dedication and techniques.
How To Develop A Reading Habit
Like all life skills, the habit of reading books can play a great role in the transformation of your life. Quite often, reading books can give you clarity or a fresh perspective on certain problems or challenges.
Some of the world’s most successful men and men are voracious readers. Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, even frequently shares his favorite reading lists with his social media and blog followers.
Let’s look at five practices that will make you a better reader:
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Set your Reading Goals
To make reading a habit of reading, you need to set some reading goals. Some people set ambitious goals such as reading a book a week or 50 books a year.
If you want to develop the reading habit, set an easier and more attainable goal. Maybe start with reading for 10-15 minutes a day or 10 pages a day.
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Choose your reads every month
If you are a beginner, start with reading on topics that interest you. It could be fitness, sales, current affairs, food, travel or even popular fiction. The idea is to enjoy whatever you read.
Try to switch between themes every month to ensure you don’t get overwhelmed. You might run out of steam if you read 10 self-improvement books back to back, but reading a mix of biographies, humor, and fiction will ensure your interest doesn’t sag.
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Integrate your reading habits into your routine
Reading sporadically in bursts where you pick up a book and read it from start to finish in two days is not the ideal way of becoming a habitual reader. Set a daily limit and stick to it.
Allocate a fixed time for reading. Read more and more as you develop the reading habit, it is important to read at a fixed hour as it trains your brain to look forward to reading at that particular hour and makes the habit stronger.
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Avoid distractions to build the habit of reading
Minimize all distractions to build the habit of reading books. Find a comfortable corner and cut your TV and internet time so you can focus on reading.
Many people skip words that are new to them or words they find tough to understand. Instead of skipping words, make it a practice to understand their meaning and, if possible, use them in your writing or conversations. This will not only enhance your language skills but also make you enjoy reading.
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Make books a part of your environment
One of the best ways of developing reading habits is to integrate visual clues into your environment. Behavioral experts recommend that if you want to build a habit, you should design some reminders. Keep a book by your bedside or on your work table.
If possible, join an online book club or readers’ communities. Interacting with people who love reading is going to stimulate you to read more.
Conclusion
Reading books is a very empowering skill. If you are looking to build the habit of reading books, Harappa Education’s Reading Deeply course is the perfect fit for you. It will familiarize you with tools and concepts like Adler’s 4 Levels of Reading: Elementary, Inspectional, Analytical, and Comparative reading. Once you complete the course you are unlikely to ever find yourself short on motivation to read!
Explore topics such as the Importance of Reading, Types of Reading, Levels of Reading, Verbal Communication, Nonverbal Communication, and the Types of Communication from our Harappa Diaries blog section and improve your reading quotient.
