Do you enjoy reading but have trouble finding time? Read our tips

Can you take the time to read or feel like you don’t do it as much as you’d like? In addition to the day-to-day obligations, there is a lot of cool stuff vying for our time and attention – video games, series, movies, internet, commitments with friends. As much as we love books, making time for them can be a challenge.

 That’s why we decided to share some practices that allow us to maintain a good reading routine. If you have others to recommend, leave them in the comments!

1- Set aside a period of the day to read (and even read)

If you don’t read because you’re waiting for the time when you won’t have any other appointments, you’re on the wrong track. Even more so if you’re not such a fan of reading, as all the other activities will seem more interesting than the book.

I’ve had this problem of waiting for the “right time” as well, but I found that as long as I viewed reading as a less important task than others (although I preferred it over all of them), I would never be able to finish my books. Not counting the days when I get tired from work and just want to sleep.

But even in those cases, I never went to bed early – I always ended up getting distracted and wasting a ridiculous number of hours playing Candy Crush or watching TV.

The solution I found was to reserve a more or less fixed time to read every day. In my case, it’s just before bed.

And it’s important to keep this period sacred: go to a quiet place, turn off the TV, leave your cell phone or anything else that might distract you away.

Don’t worry about setting a specific amount of minutes: sometimes the book will trap you and you’ll be reading for hours; sometimes you will be so tired that you will only be able to read for five minutes before falling asleep. What matters is regularity: better a little bit each day than spending hours reading, but only do it once a year.

2- Buy and/or borrow more books than you can read

It’s common to hear from enthusiastic readers phrases such as “I’ve bought so many books I’ll never be able to read it all!” or “I have books that I haven’t even taken out of the box yet”.

While these things can even be said with outright guilt, that’s definitely no reason to be ashamed. The same goes for someone who borrows a book.

 Wanting to read but thinking that you’ll still have to go after a cool book can make you feel lazy and there’s still the risk of getting distracted along the way.

3- Go to book fairs

Book fairs are great opportunities to help you set up a private library and meet new books and authors. It’s worth taking a look at your city’s calendar and setting aside some money to make a good purchase on these occasions.

Or choose to read ebooks….read all the tips here!

4- Read more than one book at a time

Focusing is good, but we also need to be flexible. And this applies to reading. As much as we enjoy reading, we don’t always feel like facing that particular book.

Sometimes we are more for a philosophical reading, other times we prefer to read about science or we want to escape reality with some fantastic literature

Just try not to give up on the other books: keep the commitment to finish the ones you start reading. Which brings us to the next item.

5- Commit to reading a certain number of pages before giving up on a book

I’ve seen a lot of people give up on really good books because they didn’t like the front pages. And this seems especially common when it comes to literary classics, often because the language used is more complicated, or because we have already started reading full of expectations or prejudices.

The truth is, for me at least, almost no book is really cool from the start. And it takes time (sometimes longer, sometimes less, depending on the work and our level of concentration) to get used to the narrator’s language and personality.

But a spoiler: you get used to it. And if you find that it doesn’t, make sure you’ve really tried. For that, I suggest adopting the “50 page rule” (or any other reasonable number you prefer). It consists of only giving up a book after reading this minimum number of pages. Until then, the story has already developed a little and you had time to get involved with the work

6- Always carry a book or ebook with you

How about picking up a book instead of exchanging messages or looking at the social media feed? Often, when I know the wait is going to be long, I even take more than one book to be able to choose the one I focus on the most.

If you liked the tips, leave a comment! I’d love to hear from you!