Cal Newport’s Tips to Read More

Reading time: 5 min

The Reading Paradox

If you know me personally, you also know that I’m going through an amazing yet tough time in life. Which means I’m not reading loads.

Between moving house, my daughter catching every possible seasonal bug and passing it to me, my full-time job, and the dreadful, constant flow of submissions and rejections, sitting down with a book looks like a daunting task. What I find myself doing instead is watching other people talking about books or how much they enjoy reading.

Please don’t judge.

Recently, I stumbled upon two snippets of Cal Newport’s podcast, the Deep Dive, and I thought that his tips to read more were astonishingly good.

You can watch the videos here and here, if you can’t be bothered to read this summary, but if you can’t be bothered, why would you watch the videos?

Yep. We’re all caught in a paradox.

1. Read interesting books

If you want to read, you must make sure you pick books you truly enjoy, especially at the beginning. There’s no point in keeping War and Peace on your nightstand for a year. Grab something else. Maybe you like history, or perhaps an epic fantasy, or even a self-help book. Building the habit is much more important than struggling through what you think you’re supposed to be reading.

2. Schedule time for reading

Cal Newport compares reading to working out, and I think it’s a fair comparison.

Nobody treats the gym as somewhere you go when and if you’ve got nothing else to do. At least not the people who never skip leg day. Those people schedule their workouts, and their schedule is usually quite rigid.

Why should reading be anything different? Put time in your calendar if you want to make time for any activity.

And yet scheduling, sometimes, is not enough. Not to paraphrase James Clear, but you need to build the habit first.

2.1 Get there slowly

Imagine you want to run a marathon, but you’ve been sitting on your, ehm, chair, for the last ten years. Would you say that going for a 40 miles jog is a smart move? Of course not. Ten minutes on the treadmill is all you need to aim for.

Reading is exactly the same.

Cal proposes to schedule 10 minutes a day, 5 days a week for 2 weeks. And make sure to have a great book to start with.

If you can do this, then increase to 20 minutes for another couple of weeks. Then 30. When you get to 40, if you are still on it, don’t increase the time you spend reading, but start introducing difficult books, the ones that would have put you off when you first started.

3. Build rituals

This, again, is to help you build the habit of reading. Pour your favourite drink. Sit next to a crackling fire, or in a stylish coffee shop, or lay in a hammock. Make it a moment you look forward to, and the process will get smoother and smoother.

4. Push it towards the end

Do you know the feeling when you’re approaching a final chapter and you just want to know how the story ends? It happened to me a few times. Maybe I have been reading a novel 20 or 30 pages a day, but then, I smash through the final 70 in a single sitting because I can’t possibly put it down.

Cal suggests to be intentional about this.

When you get to the last quarter of a book, especially a good one, just schedule 2 or 3 hours in your diary and finish it.

By simply saving those couple of days for each book you read, you’ll find yourself reading much, much more.

Small differences, in the long run, produce massive discrepancies in outcome.

5. Make your phone boring

If you decide to try only one of Cal’s tips, this should be the one.

Your smartphone has been designed and optimised to capture ALL of your attention. If you want to increase the time you spend reading, make it unappealing. (Thanks again James Clear!)

Delete o block social media app, turn off notifications, or simply leave it in another room and reading will become your go-to activity when you’re bored.

Have you ever measured the time you spend on your phone? Try. I beg you. And think; ten years from now, would you rather have read 50 more books, spent more time with friends and family, or having checked 5,000 more posts on Instagram?

Alla prossima