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Reading can be daunting . Hearing people reading 1 book a year to over 1 book a month. We know how beneficial a book can be, yet we are still lazy to finish the book or even start reading it.
We tend to collect and let it dust on the bookshelf. Feeling accomplished by seeing our books aligned together on the shelf. But deep inside we know we should have read at least one of the books.
I too had problem reading books, there were a time I realized the number of books I got to finish were countable with just using my fingers. And even in times, when asked how many books have I read - I would reach out at the back of my head and find NOTHING.
I tried to create a habit during my long travels going to my internship. I glued my habit of reading “while waiting for the bus” “while I'm in the bus” “while I'm riding the jeep”. My habit of reading was too glued on those situations. But when Covid-19 outbreak started at February, workforce started to work from home, and as an internship, my internship went on a halt.
1 month is all rainbow and sunshine then later on you realize its been 3 months now, and so on until you remember that your cousins birthday party at that location was last year. Last year that felt like yesterday.
Don’t get me wrong there were some great things that happened to me during the pandemic, But that would be another story.
I’ve notice even the struggle to read at least one before this year ends. I wanted to accomplish at least one book. Since my internship halt I had started many books but never tend to finish.
So I stepped back, to see where am I doing this wrong. I tested my ability to read a page around 90 sec, not so interesting but once I multiply the number of pages it had. With some simple math I found out I can finish the book within 7 hrs. How interesting is that.
Within 7 hrs theoretically I can finish that. What more if I read at least 1 hr a day I would accomplish this within the week. So I created a spreadsheet so that in the future books I’ll just smack it into my spreadsheet and determine how long will it take for me to accomplish the task.
Once you know how much time is required to read, you get the sense how fast you can actually accomplish and finish the book. The goal becomes attainable, instead from reaching a star you realize it was just a light of a tower up a hill. Something attainable.
But the question how are you going to keep on reading. I tend to visualize and schedule my one hour a day reading by dividing it into 4, giving me 15 minutes to read. Just 15 minutes equally distributed within the day will feel like a simple YouTube video. But not knowing that I got to accomplish already 60 hrs.
SUMMARY
Reading can feel daunting especially seeing how thick or reading the number of pages. But once you realize (the amount of seconds it take for you to read one page) * (the amount of pages in the book) divide with 360 you get the hrs you need to finish the book.
Plan and schedule ahead, keep a regular schedule make it a habit by sticking it to a time. With consistency it becomes a third hand. Want to read a hour a day, don't do it in one go, but divide it.
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