How to start reading more

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By John DeVries | February 7, 2008

As a kid I never really got into reading. When all the other students found a place in some corner of the classroom to read, I simply picked out a book with neat looking pictures in it and spent the next hour looking at them and daydreaming about what I would do after school. Not surprisingly, I wasn’t a very good reader once I got into grade school. My mom was a bit worried about me; thinking I was perhaps slightly developmentally challenged, she had me work with educators outside of school who could teach me not only to read better, but to enjoy reading. They succeeded in the first aim, but initially, not so much in the second. God bless her, my mom never made me feel like I was inadequate or different, she was very supportive and I never felt abnormal. I thought every kid got this treatment!

As I grew older however, I watched other kids enjoy books and novels much more than me. I read perhaps only two or three books a year for enjoyment. Over time I started wondering if maybe I wasn’t as smart as other kids. I also didn’t understand why other people seemed to enjoy reading so much. To me, reading was a lot more work than I thought an entertainment medium should be.

I ended up reading a fair amount in high school and a great deal in college because it was required of me. But I still didn’t enjoy it all that much. It wasn’t until I made books an extension of my actual life purpose that they became more than just useful; they became essential.

Read as an extension of your mission in life

Why do you get up in the morning? What is your purpose in life? What kind of a person do you want to be in 10, 20, or even 50 years? When you die, what do you want to have done while you lived?

These are extremely important life questions you need to answer. If you’re having trouble getting food on the table, oxygen in your lungs, or shelter over your head then I would encourage you to forget about meaning and purpose for a moment and focus on taking care of the bare essentials. For the rest of you, don’t spend one more day of your short and precious life in avoidance. Decide what you’re here to do.

My goal each and every day is to love people to the best of my current ability, enjoy each moment in a state gratitude, and to better myself and others by solving some of life’s problems and giving the best of what I have in service to those around me. And that is a far more powerful reason to consistently absorb new knowledge than some arbitrary goal or objective.

I use to set silly reading goals: Read all the classics before I die, read two books a month, or read one book a month.

But none of those goals ever really resulted in me reading more. However, the moment reading a book became an essential way for me to be a better person, love other people, and change who I was for the better, I couldn’t put a book down.

The trick is to first understand you, then apply that understanding to your search for knowledge. I am extremely utilitarian. If I don’t feel like something I am thinking or doing is going to produce tangible (or significant intangible) results for me, I quit. That doesn’t mean you need to be this way, but understanding that part of me helps me pick out literature I find applicable to my life and circumstances. What inherent personality traits, beliefs or values do you have which will translate into reading material you’ll enjoy?

Read to solve problems

Homo sapiens have been solving problems on planet earth for roughly 40,000 years. For the last 2,300 or so, they’ve been writing about it - in books! Sure, you’re unique, special and different from everyone else. But it’s a safe bet that whatever problem you’re having right now has been faced and probably solved by thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people before you. And I’m guessing at least a few of those folks have written a book about it.

Want to fix a relationship or get out of a broken one? Get a book. Need a new career but don’t know where to start? Read a book. Do you need help grieving over a loss? There are books about that too!

First, go to your local library and search for every book on your problem. Pull all the ones off the shelf that look interesting and take a few minutes to search through each one. Check out the ones that seem like they will be most helpful.

Second, go to Amazon.com and read the reviews for books that look like they could be helpful. Buy used copies of the best ones. If I’m in a hurry for some new information on a certain topic, I just buy the book new so it ships faster. Don’t be cheap, it’s just money. You can’t take it with you.

There are two main benefits to reading about solutions to problems. The first is that it helps relieve some of the stress surrounding the issue. Just knowing someone else has been there and got through it will help you feel better. Second, if you consume a few books about one topic, you’ll find you suddenly have a significantly larger amount of information to work with once you try and devise a solution.

Even if you don’t find a new solution to your problem, you may at a minimum find that your current answer is validated by other sources, maybe even by people seemingly smarter than you.

Read to change and improve your life

Words can be life changing. Why do you think quotes are so popular? As you consume more material you’ll find more and more that while you read, one particular line or sentence jumps off the page almost as if it was written just for you. Instead of having life altering epiphanies once a year, you’ll start having them once a week, sometimes even multiple times a day.

If you apply the new knowledge you gain consistently, you’ll not only find you easily make new connections between seemingly unrelated topics, you’ll also find your life can improve dramatically. I can’t think of a much better reason to read a book.

Read because it’s fun

I rarely plow through a book just to finish it. If I’m not getting anything out of it in the first 100 pages I usually toss it, sometimes in the first 20.

Read it because you enjoy it. Don’t sensor yourself. If you like romance novels (not my personal forte) that’s fine unless you feel like it’s hurting you in some way. You might not get much out of it intellectually, but not all reading needs to be an intellectual endeavor. But even when you’re reading something with more substance, you should be enjoying it. If not, then you’re not on the right track. Do some soul searching to learn more about yourself, or read a greater variety of books to discover your interests.

Conclusion

Now that I read for the above reasons, I can easily put 1-4 books into the ol’ noggin per week. I used to read that much in a year. Pretty sad hu? You can do the same. If people start getting irritated that you’ve always got your head stuck in book, you must be doing something right.

A Note of Caution

If you’re reading on a topic that is sensitive, embarrassing for you to talk about, or taboo, don’t read around other people. They will probably ask you about it and then possibly nose around and prod you for information if you appear at all uncomfortable.

Your own thoughts, goals, beliefs, values, and problems are just that - your own. If you feel confident enough, don’t hesitate to share those things and your reading with people you trust. But if you’re even the slightest bit personal or protective about something, it’s best just to keep it to yourself. You’re bound to have enough doubts of your own regarding your problems and the changes you face in life. Don’t invite the criticism of others to add on to any self doubt you may already harbor. It’s none of their business, and that’s fine.

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