I love to read. I read both fiction and non-fiction, and I especially love books about history, particularly twentieth-century history. I read for five hours a day, four hours with a regular book and one hour with an audiobook during my daily exercise. Because I’m always to be found with a new book in my hand, people often ask me for tips on how to get more reading done. I don’t have any magic elixir or mantra that can help people concentrate better (if I did, I’d have aced every exam I ever sat for!), but I do have a simple tip that anyone, young or old, can follow.
Before I go any further, I should clarify that I didn’t always have the time or the will to read as much as I do now, my love for books notwithstanding. These days, it’s too easy to get distracted by various entertainment options – TV shows, films, social media – and I used to struggle to allocate time for my favourite hobby while juggling work, TV shows, films, and friends and family time. I tried various ways to get more reading done, like setting aside time on the weekends. These methods invariably failed because something always demanded my attention, and it was just easier to postpone reading than an outing with friends or a TV show I’d been waiting to watch. After all, the book wasn’t going anywhere.
I also found it difficult to concentrate on a book for an extended period. Some online research told me that I wasn’t alone in feeling this way. Apparently, all that binging and social media-ing we’re doing are eroding our attention span. Televisions and films are mediums that can be viewed passively because we’re being shown and not told stuff. However, books, by their very nature, tell and don’t show. If you’re reading, say, the Lord of the Rings, you need to imagine Frodo going on his epic journey, relying on the visual clues Tolkien has provided. It’s far easier to just watch the Lord of the Rings films instead, which draws you into the whimsical yet believable world Peter Jackson has created. That’s why if you interview ten people, a majority of them will probably have watched the films but not read the books.
There are other factors stacked against reading in India. In a developing country where the goal is to become upwardly mobile, a lot of parents consider reading anything besides textbooks a waste of time. Few parents actively encourage their children to read by buying them books. Fewer still enforce the reading habit in young children, a group that is particularly malleable to conditioning. Because of this, children find it difficult, if not impossible, to read for pleasure. According to Cressida Cowell, author of the popular children’s book series, How to Train Your Dragon, “Children are beginning to associate books, and the whole decoding process of learning to read, with something that is difficult or a struggle, particularly if they have dyslexia or another learning difficulty.” The current generation is especially vulnerable because it has grown up with smartphones and YouTube.
A lot of my younger cousins and nieces and nephews refuse to read. Their parents have described the experience of trying to get them to read as ‘pulling teeth’. Of course, parents are also responsible for the current state of affairs. How often have you gone to a restaurant and seen a large family at a dinner table with the adults sipping margaritas and talking among themselves while their children play games or watch videos on their phones or tablets?
This laissez faire attitude towards parenting can have some serious consequences. According to psychology professor Jean Twenge, “It’s not an exaggeration to describe iGen [children born between 1995 and 2012] as being on the brink of the worst mental-health crisis in decades… Eighth-graders who are heavy users of social media increase their risk of depression by 27 %. … Teens who spend three hours a day or more on electronic devices are 35 percent more likely to have a risk factor for suicide, such as making a suicide plan.”
So how do we make time for reading during the limited leisure time we have between eight hours of school/college/tuition classes/extracurricular activities/work and eight hours of sleep? Is there a solution that can work for everyone or almost everyone? In a word, yes. But for the solution to work, we need to accept that the old way of reading is dead. We no longer have the time and/or the ability to read for hours at a stretch because of our eroded time spans and other factors (work, studies, parenting) that demand our attention. We need a way to read for this new era – and that brings me to my preferred reading method.
Like everyone else, I too am incapable of reading for too long, so the method that works for me is to break down my reading time into four hour-long individual sessions. After assessing my typical workday, I realised that I had four hours in a day where I either did nothing or wasted time watching YouTube or TV shows: breakfast, lunchtime, tea time, and dinner time.
I read about twenty to forty pages an hour, and I realised that if I spent these four hours reading, I’d end up finishing eighty pages a day, or nearly two books a week (assuming each book is three hundred pages long)! Now, this may sound simple, but think about your typical morning. In your hurry to get to work, you probably wolf down your breakfast and bolt through the door like a flash of lightning. If you’re a parent, you have kids who need to be woken up and dressed and fed. Who has the time to read in the middle of all this?
But here’s the thing: you don’t need to read for an entire hour like me. Let’s say you eat your breakfast in fifteen minutes. Try reading while you do it. How many pages did you manage to finish? Five? That’s perfect because it’s probably all our distracted minds are capable of in the mornings anyway! Now try reading five pages at lunch, during your evening tea or coffee, and during dinner. That adds up to twenty pages. Hmm, doesn’t seem like much, does it? But actually, twenty pages a day adds up to six hundred pages, or two books, a month – which in turn adds up to twenty-four books a year, which in turn adds up to twelve hundred books over fifty years!
OK, you’re thinking, that all sounds fine, but I can’t read during breakfast because my family members make too much noise, I can’t read during lunch because I have to sit with my office mates and it’d seem rude, I don’t get any time for evening tea, and I watch the news during dinner. All of these are perfectly valid reasons, and I agree that a one-size-fits-all approach would be impractical.
That’s why I encourage everyone to come up with their methods: Can’t read during breakfast? No problem! Do you take the train or bus to work? Maybe you’re one of those lucky few who have a car and a driver. Use that commuting time to read! No way, you’re thinking, I need that time to watch my favourite TV series. And that’s fine! Given how bad traffic in India is, it probably takes you more than an hour to get to work. You probably don’t think you can read for that long. However, the average TV drama lasts forty-five minutes. That leaves you with fifteen minutes to spare. Try and spend at least those fifteen minutes reading.
Similarly, if you can’t read during lunch, then set aside a fifteen-minute break just for reading. You don’t even need to go to the break room. Just turn your monitor off, set an alarm on your phone, and get going! Before bed, you may prefer to watch the news or spend quality time with your family instead of reading. That’s great! But right before you go to bed, instead of picking up your phone to watch that twenty-minute sitcom, spend fifteen minutes reading. Trust me, you’ll sleep a lot better knowing that you not only got cracking on that Anthony Beevor that’s been lying around on your shelf for ages but also reduced your screen time.
A couple of things: first, remember to keep your phone away from you while you’re reading. In fact, switch it to the silent mode and tuck it into your pocket or backpack, or hide it away in a drawer. That “ding” sound that we automatically associate with a notification is like a siren’s call, and very few of us are strong enough to resist it! Second, if you’re struggling to read despite using this method, then don’t lose heart. Reading, like any activity that requires cognitive effort, is not easy. Keep at it; it’ll get easier over time. Remember that your brain cells are getting a workout, and that’s just as important as getting a physical workout. I can assure you that once you’ve been doing this for a while, you’ll be able to read faster and focus better (regardless of external distractions). These are skills you’ll find useful in other areas of life as well.
So there you have it! They say reading is a dying art, but with the right motivation and the right method, it doesn’t need to be. I hope everyone who wants to make more time for reading finds this article useful. Good luck!