Originally published on my blog.
TL;DR
25 minutes reading daily is enough to read 30 books per year.
In this blog post I'm going to show you a simple math behind reading 30 books per year, so read on.
Facts
Do you know what's the average number of books that people read per year?
Google says it's about 4 books per year. I bet you know a lot of people that actually read closer to 0 😎
Anyways, here's a simple math behind reading 50% more than the average, so 6 books per year.
The Premise
Would you agree that spending 5 minutes on reading per day is really not much of a time investment?
Great.
And, would you agree that in those 5 minutes you could (on average, depending on the book) read 5 pages?
Great.
Except that 5 pages is not that much, right? It's actually negligibly small number.
Extrapolate
As with anything worthwhile in life, what if you decide to extrapolate that on a longer period and read those 5 pages per day for a whole month?
That's 5 * 30 = 150 pages.
Again, not much, right?
Average book page length
According to this blog post, there are 240 pages in a typical mainstream novel.
Again, to make our math simpler, and to not take the lower number, let's say a typical book is 300 pages long.
Extrapolate even more
If you continue your pace of reading 5 pages per day, and manage to do it for a whole year, you'll end up with reading 6 whole books!
WOW!
Yes, by just spending 5 minutes per day on reading, you could easily read 50% more books than people do on average.
Upside
If you start with 5 pages a day, and you maintain that for a month, I can promise you that you'll end up doing more and loving the process. Not just because you'll become a faster reader, but also because you'll fall in love with the process and you'll want to increase these 5 minutes to more.
So now, how do we get to those magical 30 books per year?
Well, if with 5 minutes per day we can get 6 books per year, then we need to increase the number of minutes 5 fold to get to 30 books.
Yes, believe it or not, 25 minutes per day is all you need. Funnily enough, that equals one Pomodoro.
So imagine, how better off could you be after those 30 books in a year? How many new ideas could you get from those 30 books? I'd argue, a lot. But, don't just read, implement what you read as well!
Conclusion
Give it a go, it's a small-time investment that (for starters) you can even do while on the toilet (what!?, you're either way staring at your phone, right? 😎).
All of a sudden, you'll be a reader - and go figure, with just 5 minutes per day 💪
Top comments (4)
Anytime Goodreads or similar comes up with these stats, it sounds really easy, but no one is reading only 5 pages at a time. You read a chapter at a time to get through solid chunks of content instead of the ramp-up of "Oh, what was I reading last time? ... oh yeah, that, k" and then finding a conclusive stop point 5 pages later.
I tend to try to get through a chapter or two a week (depending on size), which allows for more flexibility while still having a measurable goal.
All I can say to that is: great! Whatever works for you, as long as you are consistent with your habit 👏
I prefer to listen audiobooks while on my way to work/home.
Following this I was able to listen 40 books in 2018.
I love audiobooks as well; perfect for running or commuting.