I am a mom, I have 3 kids and they are all very busy little people. They talk to me almost constantly. Today they are between the ages of 3 and 8 but when I started making more of a point to read, they were much younger.
I always loved reading when I was younger, as a teen I read fairly regularly but that sort of fell by the wayside when I went to university. As I finished up my degrees and started working, I started reading more again but that fell by the wayside again when I had my first kid. For years I didn't read anything or one book would take me months to finish until I finally just abandoned it halfway through.
If you're reading this and can relate, I'm here to tell you that THAT'S OKAY! We all have seasons of life where we just don't read even if we want to.
But I am often asked, how do I find the time to read? How do you manage to read so much with everything else you do? Because now I am a full-time mom, I volunteer with two organizations that require a significant amount of work, and I run a successful direct sales business that includes mentoring and training a team. In addition to all of that I read 70+ books a year and write reviews for instagram and a literary magazine.
So here are the things that helped ME when I decided I wanted to read more:
1) Find a good book that hooks you
This is actually exactly why I started this website.
One of the hardest things about starting to read more is FINDING A BOOK! There are just so many options for books and absolutely too many places to look, browsing the best sellers lists and tables at your local bookstore can be so overwhelming. And let's be honest for a moment, books are expensive if you're not going to end up enjoying it and it's just going to end up becoming a paperweight (like literally, a weight of paper).
So how do you pick a book? Usually the best books come from word of mouth recommendations because someone YOU know has already read and enjoyed a book so much that they feel the need to share it.
So tip number one is to find a good book that is going to keep you interested, for this go ask your friends who have finished a book or two recently or come check out my recommendations.
2) Set a goal
When I first started reading more a few years ago (maybe 4 years ago now?), I set a goal to read 30 books in the year. At the time this was a GIANT goal because the year previous I had read about 2 books. I started tracking the books I finished (you can use goodreads, storygraph, or just plain pen and paper for this) and I worked toward the goal of 30. Some of the books I read were quick poetry collections, some were longer YA fantasy, some were typical literary fiction, some were audio but they all counted toward the goal.
This worked really well for me because each time I logged a book I felt REALLY successful and it made me want to do it again. It formed a habit to pick up a book and work my way through it and it also helped me move reading into a priority section in my life (which it now remains to be, if I don't get at least a little bit of reading time every day or two, I start to get irritable and cranky).
The beautiful thing about this is that you can actually set a really small goal and get all the same benefits from it. you could decide you wanted to read 12 books in a year (that's 1 a month), or maybe you just want to read at least 10 pages of a book a day, or maybe 3 chapters of a book a week, whatever is realistic for you, it doesn't matter what the goal is because no matter what you're still working your way through a book!
3) Read on Audio
This one sometimes gets a bad rap but guess what, studies say we get the same amount of benefit from listening to a book on audio as we do reading a book. Which makes sense because children still benefit from being read to, right?
The beauty of audio too is that you can be reading/listening while doing other things. I often listen to audiobooks while I'm driving (make sure its appropriate if you have kids in the car), while out for a walk, while washing the dishes or cleaning the house, or any number of other things that prevent me from sitting with a book but don't require my full brain attention.
The other awesome thing about audiobooks is that you can actually get a ton free through library apps like Libby. Almost all of the audiobooks I listen to I borrow for the library. And then if I don't like the narrator (which has happened from time to time), I can simply borrow a new book.
4) Join a book club or do a buddy read
If you're not someone who reads quickly and regularly already, joining a book club or buddy read that is semi relaxed about its deadlines is a great way to get you reading. Having a deadline keeps it on your radar but if it's a relaxed, no pressure, flexible deadline it makes it more comfortable and less like an assignment (because let's be real here, we're doing this for leisure!).
Having someone to discuss books with as you read and finish them absolutely increases the experience of the book.
5) Always have a book with you
You'd be surprised at how often during the run of a day you may get 5-10 minutes to crack open a book just because you have it with you. The wait at the doctors office, waiting to pick up your kids from school or the bus stop, getting to work a little early for a meeting, being finished early and having to wait in your car a few minutes so you're not too early for the next thing. If you had a book with you for all these random instances of "waiting" in your day, you may be able to get a few pages read here for there.
Reading is a really important part of life. Literacy is a really important part of life. But in the whirlwind of scheduled life many of us get away from the "reading for pleasure" part of reading. Reading for pure enjoyment can have far reaching benefits including increasing critical thinking, modelling reading behaviours and habits for children, increasing empathy, mitigating anxiety, and so much more. It keeps brains working while relieving them of the stresses and pressures of day to day life. Plus it can be fun, funny, heartbreaking, heartwarming, scary, spooky, informative, hopeful, interesting, and entertaining.
Reading has becoming one of the absolute joys of my life and I hope it will become one of yours too.
- Larissa
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