How I Make the Time to Read

If you’re a huge fan of reading like I am, then you want to spend as much time as you can possibly muster into reading your book. You carry it with you everywhere you go. You open your e-reader app on your phone whenever you’re forced to wait anywhere. You might even create a space for yourself without any distractions for optimal reading.

So how do you make the time to read? Well, let’s first talk about how much time do you have?

I currently spend about 3-4 hours a day reading. It works out for me because reading is what I do and share here on the Internet. Despite not really having a full time job, I still manage to fill my day with content to create, messages to follow up on, and then take care of things around the house. But it gives me a good chunk of my day set for a project or two and that’s where the reading time comes in.

I know not everyone gets 3-4 hours a day. I know some folks only have 30 minutes a day to read, but what if I told you that 30 minutes is enough? Check out this YouTube video about time and reading:

There’s a lot to take away from this video, but the biggest takeaway is that if you allot yourself 30 minutes a day to read (and that could be a meal, that could be an audiobook on the drive home from work), then you can read way more books than you imagined. When you do the math, you’re able to read much more with just 30 minutes a day. I feel like I’m selling you on an ab routine, but like any skill in this life it requires practice. Once you’ve built a habit of reading daily for 30 minutes, then you’ll find that reading everyday is manageable and your reading life will thank you.

The biggest component to this is you must make time to read. Similarly to working out three times a week or spending an hour on the phone with your mom every Sunday, you build a habit to reading every single day. Pretty soon, you’ll see that you want to read more and dedicate even more time to reading. Like any habit, you must build it. It won’t come to you easily, but if you can spend three hours on Tiktok everyday and somehow still do your job and spend time with your family, then you can also read a book for thirty minutes.

The other major component is finding the right books for you. We are inundated with so many books all the time. Not only do you see recommendations at bookstores or with your close friends, but now with social media there’s an overabundance of recommendations. New books are published every week and thousands upon thousands of books are published every year. So how do you choose the right book for you?

That requires you looking at yourself and figuring out the genres you like to read. Do you want to gather more knowledge? Perhaps nonfiction is right for you. Do you like a little more escape and read something light and easy? Then maybe a romance novel is for you. The advantage of having a thousand books being published yearly is that there are thousands of choices. You don’t need to rely on the New York Times Bestseller list (although that gives you a good idea of what to read next or put books on your radar) because the choices are endless. Amish chaste romances? Got ’em. Thrillers featuring a female character that somehow is also an amateur detective? Done and done. Fantasy novel based off the retellings of some obscure folklore from Eastern Europe? You know it exists. The biography of that one dude who won that one battle during The Revolutionary War? Yeah, it’s there. Figure out what works for you and read those books.

Here are some other tips and tricks that I also use whenever it comes to a reading session. Of course I don’t enter a reading session without the proper tools and perhaps these tools will also help you when it finally comes down to reading.

Set a reading time

Figure out how much time you can dedicate to reading and then make the habit of reading everyday. For me, I set my time for the hours between 2PM and 6PM. Depending on my day, it might be more or less, but those are my undisturbed reading hours. I don’t look at my phone. I sit up in a distraction-free space. My husband even knows to respect those times because that’s when I’ll be the most focused.

The first part of creating a healthy habit is to actively do it. Actively set up the time. Actively focus on the book. Habits take a while to develop (from my experience, it’s about a month), so keep reading and keep setting up a time and eventually you’ll see yourself just sitting down and picking up the book without having to actively make the time for it.

Make it an event

You’re about to sit down and read, so you might as well make the most of the moment. Make yourself a cup of tea. Set up some cookies. Get into your pajamas and pull up that comforter you love to wrap yourself in. Light some candles. Throw up an ASMR room on your iPad or put on a calming playlist. Creating space for yourself to read and get lost in a story is important especially if you have many distractions around you. It’s also a form of self care. Giving yourself the time to read and making it an event with your favorite treats, drinks, and whatever else you want is similar to that of taking a long and luxurious bath. You’re treating yourself to a lovely session, so might as well reap all the benefits.

Worry less about how much you’re reading and more on what you’re reading

The major piece that always makes me read less is trying to figure out how much to read. If I assign myself 200 pages in a day (which I don’t. Yikes), then I might feel beholden to that. It might jack up my stress and anxiety and then I’ll feel failure at the end of the reading session because I didn’t reach my goal. Don’t worry about when the story will end (unless the book is boring, then end the story right now), but allow yourself to be immersed in it. The story will eventually end as all stories do, so just enjoy the journey. You’ll eventually get to the destination.

Stop when you feel like it

While you may assign yourself only 30 minutes a day to read, you’re also not held to that. Like assigning yourself pages to read, assigning yourself time could be just as stressful. Allow yourself to take breaks. Give yourself the space to not read if your mental health isn’t optimal. Reading is meant to be enjoyed and while we’re here trying to develop the habit of reading daily, stopping after 10 minutes isn’t going to be the end. The only time you should worry is if the book will keep your attention. If you’re not into the book, then dump it. There are far too many books to choose from in this world for you to read a story that you’re not enjoying. Enjoy your reading.

Use a focus app like Forest to keep off your phone

If social media and your phone pose as your biggest distraction from reading, I highly recommend a tool like Forest. This app basically forces you to not look at your phone. You set your time to focus, grow “trees” on the app while you’re away from your phone, and if you ever check your phone or close the app, you lose the trees you’ve grown. It also comes with a myriad of different trees to pick from, settings for music, and you can even compete with friends on how much you can stay off your phone.

I use this app daily because I constantly check social media. It’s a habit of the job! So, putting the focus app on makes sure that I don’t pick up my phone unnecessarily. And I do take breaks. Once I’ve reached the time I’ve set, I take a little 15-minute break to see what’s happening on the Internet.

And if you can’t manage that or if your mental health has been crap because the pandemic, the election, the end of the world and 2020, then audiobooks might be for you. Having the mental power to read a book might just be out of your reach at this point and that’s totally okay. The unpredictable future of our lives really takes it out of all of us and it’s double if we’re struggling with work or finding a job. Audiobooks is like having someone read the book to you. You still retain the story and still get deeply into it, but you don’t have to use the additional mental power to read and comprehend at the same time.

But most importantly, enjoy it. Reading is for you and our worlds always make a way to collide with each other and the restraints we put on ourselves with other components of our life can make reading even more difficult. Enjoy reading because it’s really a gift that keeps on giving.

I hope this blog post helped! Here’s some other blog posts I’ve written about the subject:

• How to Build a Positive Reading Habit