How to Enjoy Reading Books — 4 Tips for Reading More

There is no better life hack than reading books.

If you’re not reading much for this reason or another reason you may have, then you are probably missing out on many personal development opportunities.

Don’t worry, in the following sections, I will explain to you how to do it without much effort.

Build a routine

I find it really helpful to build reading into my daily routine.

So my nighttime routine consists of me brushing my teeth, getting changed and putting my phone across the room so that it won’t distract me while reading.

This means the only thing I can do when I’m in bed is either sleep or read through doing that for the last like two, three years.

I just kind of read every single night before bed and I read until I feel tired. I’m falling asleep, I’m gonna close the book, put it on the bedside table and I will fall asleep.

That is just the way I’ve built reading into my nighttime routine and so it’s pretty easy for me to finish, one book a week.

Recently I’ve read lots of books, “Bad Blood”, “Shoe Dog” and “Third Door” in particular, that have kept me up way into the night because I’ve just enjoyed them so much.

Change your mindset

I found that when I developed this mindset, it kind of changed the game for me. The mindset was that

It’s okay not to finish a book

Previously, I had this view of like books being this sacred, prestigious object that if I was kind of reading a book, I would have to finish it before I move on to the next one even if I found it boring.

In a way, we’re sort of treating books more like blog posts, if you were reading an article on the medium you wouldn’t feel the sense of shame if you didn’t get to the end of it.

We should treat books much like we treat articles or blog posts on the internet, in my opinion. When I internalized that mindset, I found it a lot easier to read more consistently.

Screw the classics

It’s okay not to read the classics.

This is again, a thing that I used to have back in the day. This was ages ago when I used to think, if I’m reading I should read something good rather than just reread “Harry Potter”.

Who cares if the classics are classics, I don’t really care I wanna read for enjoyment and I wanna read to help my life get better.

The advice I often give to people is that when you’re a beginner and reading, and you don’t read very consistently the thing to start with is not something like Charles Dickens even though it’s a good book or like Jane Eyre, you know, like these classics that people say are good.

The trick is to start with something simple like “Harry Potter” or you know, some great fantasy or a fiction book that’s easy to read that makes you wanna turn the page because once you get into the habit of reading, then you can start exploring down the avenues of these fancy classics.

Skimming is good

It’s okay to skim through the books.

Basically, there are 2 modes of reading

1. Reading for Enjoyment

Reading for enjoyment is more like reading fiction. So if I’m reading for enjoyment, then I won’t really care about highlighting passages or taking notes.

I’m reading for the enjoyment I’m also okay with skipping bits. If I got the main idea so I don’t need to read absolutely every word.

2. Reading for Information

When I’m reading non-fiction, so, in that case, I’m reading for information or inspiration stuff. So, my tactics for reading are a lot different, I am completely okay to skim stuff as well.

Sometimes might even start by looking at the table of contents and just kind of scroll through and see which bits of the book caught my eye.

If there are bits of the book that are boring. I’ll just close the book and read something else.

Like I’m treating these books exactly like I’m treating articles or blog posts. I’m not feeling guilty for skimming or for not finishing one.

I hope you found this article valuable and learned something new from it. Feel free to leave a comment below.

Happy Reading!