There’s Only One Way I’m Able To Read a Book per Week Without Hating the Process

It’s hard to keep up with new books coming out. By now, the total number of published books should have exceeded 4 million and that’s in the U.S. alone. Ain’t nobody got time to read all of that. If your younger self was instantly disappointed once he or she discovered it was impossible to read all the books that existed in the world, I can relate.

. . .

Having moved around a lot in my childhood, I was comfortable with being alone. Each time I moved, I left my old life and the people in it behind. Social Media did not yet exist, so there was no easy way to keep in touch. Building a personal network wasn’t on my mind yet and nowhere near as important as reading books or playing hide and seek.

The library, on the contrary, this sanctuary for my mind, was always there, anywhere I went.

I devoured entire series of books. I couldn’t wait to lose myself in one and get through the books I took home, and exchange them for a new batch as soon as possible. As a regular face at the local library, no one bothered me when I took a pile to a corner table to just sit there, turning pages for hours.

. . .

The love for books and reading is still within me.

Reading helps me unwind. It also trains my focus, maybe the most essential skill in a world of ever-declining attention spans. To stay focused, so you can finish any task that requires more brainpower than doing one scroll on Social Media. The effort.

I used to worry about “maintaining a consistent reading habit”. The more books you read, the more ideas and insights you have to toy with, and the more knowledge you gain.

I want to read all the books I can. I tried to set a “goal” for the number of books I want to read, but this didn’t work for me. I don’t like racing towards the end of the chapter or read for the sake of hitting my books-read count.

I want to enjoy each page, and take in the knowledge and ideas that are presented to me. Some books take me longer than a week to get through. Some spark ideas for stories. Others I want to re-read thoroughly, summarize, and then write a story about. Beating myself up from not finishing one book per week makes me feel worse. It spoils the fun of reading. When I continue to read the book I should’ve finished last week, I feel guilty for not being “on par” with “the others”, or reading “too slow”.

So now, instead of trying to “keep up” with others, I read at my own pace.

Maybe I’m doing it wrong?

If I’d really want to read one book per week, I could divide the total page numbers of a given book by 6, so I’d know how much I have to read per day and leave one day to transfer my highlights or notes into a digital format (I highlight my own books, write down meanings of words I didn’t yet know, and add sticky notes with my own ideas about a specific passage in the book).

. . .

How I can manage to read one book per week

Polyglot YouTuber Lindie Botes applies this approach to her language learning. She doesn’t put insane amounts of pressure on herself to stick to a rigid schedule. She learns the language she wants for a given day, but still tracks her progress in Toggl and paper notebooks, so she has an idea of how she’s progressing and how much time she spends per language. This keeps the process fun.

The only time I read a book per week was when I wasn’t counting at all. I did it for pleasure, or out of interest. I’d get one book at a time, escape into it, look up surprised that I reached the last page that fast, and get a new one on whichever topic I was curious about. One at at time, without having the next one lined up. Going with the flow, so to say. With this approach, the reading felt easy and light, not like a chore.

This is the process I will stick to when it comes to language learning myself, and reading books. Reading shouldn’t feel like a drag. And when it does, maybe there’s a better approach to take.

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This post was previously published on Change Becomes You.

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