If I can start a daily reading habit, anyone can. I am now reading an hour a day, I’m on my 26th book since last November and am excited to have a lifetime of books in my brain.
The urge to start reading more came from realizing I had only read a handful of books in my lifetime and not absorbed any significant amounts of information. Going from reading maybe 1-2 books a year to about 16 books in 2023 so far, I see how much more information I can take in and learn from if I merely commit to reading an hour a day.
🎮 Develop a Daily Reading Habit by Making It a Game
What’s worked for me, miraculously, is simply gamifying reading with the Bookly App. I’m not sure if it’s because I grew up with gaming, but having visual proof of my reading progress has made my brain engaged with competing with my last subsequent reading sessions. Having the Bookly App record my first pathetic 3-minute reading sessions allowed me to respond immediately to my poor attempts at focusing.
I was as shocked as you when I realized all I needed was a stopwatch like the Bookly App to start competing with myself. I’m reading here like I’m playing Mario Kart 🏎️
I stuck with the Bookly App because, apparently, my brain likes the active time recording required to keep me continually focused as I subconsciously look for distractions as I read. I also love, and honestly needed in the beginning, turning on the train background noise to let my brain cozily travel to the world of the book 📖
🗓️ Consistency is Key when Creating a Daily Reading Habit
Another game changer was setting my daily reading goal on Bookly to an hour. The calendar will show me if I miss a day, and this has been enough to kick my brain to want to keep reading for an hour a day. Haha, I’m not sure why this is all I need to keep reading, either.
The first time I missed a day of my reading adventure after about two weeks of reading daily, the burn was enough for me to keep reading with Bookly.
📈 Seeing Your Progress Over Time Is a Great Motivator
Also, seeing each book’s average reading speed and time has been another great motivator for me to challenge myself and see if I’m improving my stats. In the beginning, honestly, it was still tricky to stick to reading. It started with finding that reading was a good way to relax during my workday lunch break and finding easy sci-fi series that I could just dive into. When that wasn’t enough to keep reading, I found having music was another great way to help focus on reading. With Bookly, I found out music helped me read for more than 3 minutes per session, haha.
When that stopped working, I then found myself being able to focus on reading for longer with looping train ride videos and music. I found it became easier to achieve my daily hourly reading goal. It became another game of changing it up to keep things fresh.
⏳ Read a Few Minutes at a Time Throughout a Day
Then, I jumped to strategizing on how to divide my hours of reading per day – another way to gamify reading. With Bookly, it was easy to read whenever my brain felt like it throughout the day and see if, at the end of the day, I’d reached my hour of reading. In turn, this allowed me to dive into the world of the book while simultaneously getting better at focusing on the book.
I started by finding time to read for an hour after work, before dinner, and before bed. I then had a fun time splitting 20 minutes before bed (I sleep late enough to hit midnight), 20 minutes during lunch, and 20 minutes after work. It’s now become another game of how I can effectively split up my reading time to get my hour of reading in a marathon fashion.
💙 Make Sure You Pick Books You Enjoy
Wanting to change it up, I leveraged movie hype and started reading books like the Dune series and American Prometheus, waiting for the movies to release. This also ended up being a great way to have a terrific cinematic soundtrack to read to and dive into these worlds. I was now able to consistently go for 15-minute reading sessions. However, truthfully, I find myself able to handle longer reading sessions when reading fiction. The shortest sessions have been reading art theory, haha.
🦸 A Daily Reading Habit Is Also a Super Power
By tracking an hour of reading each day, I’ve been able to adventure and become a hero against impossible odds in space, see how humankind has evolved from tool to tool, attempt to understand the quantum theory and black holes, think about some of the earliest works of art in Rome, and, recently, I’ve been able to feel what the father of the atomic bomb felt when he changed the course of humanity 💥It’s also been great reading about Paul Atreides’s kids as I wait for the next Dune movie, haha.
I’ve had a great time thumbing through my completed books on the Bookly App and revisiting all the thoughts I’ve collected from what I’ve read.
Also, with our smartphones getting increasingly better at inundating us with everything, I’m glad I can leverage some of that power to develop a daily reading habit with Bookly. Now, my phone can show me cool memes and be a great reading tracker. Thanks, Bookly! I’m a big ol’ bookworm now. I’m gonna read the whole world! 📚
TLDR: I use the Bookly reading tracker to record my reading sessions, so I don’t suck at reading and focusing, haha. I love competing with myself, and challenge me to read more and more.
This article was written by our Bookly Pro Reader JLK 💙
Want to learn more about how you can develop a daily reading habit with Bookly? Make sure to check out our dedicated article.
Make Sure to Track Your Reading Progress with Bookly
Whether you track your reading progress in a spreadsheet, journal, notebook, or app, just remember to do it! Bookly makes it easy to track your progress.
Bookly can help you create a daily reading habit by keeping you accountable and tracking your reading.
And don’t forget that Bloo, your reading assistant, will always be by your side and help you improve by tracking all the books 📚 you read.
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