How to Find the Time to Read

Perhaps one of the biggest challenges facing anyone who wants to read substantial books is finding the time. I thought that I had set myself a modest schedule to make it through Middlemarch, but each week I find myself racing against the clock to conquer those pages by my Monday deadline. (And two weeks ago, I didn’t make it at all.)

As much as it is a pleasure, reading is a habit that one needs to cultivate, and I’m not there yet. On my morning commute, podcasts are still my go-to escape from the ridiculous crush of passengers on the streetcar. When my partner and I are both home at the same time, I’m reluctant to reject her company for some fictional characters. If I do have some free time, I feel compelled to placate my Fitbit and its tyrannical demands.

So how do people find the time to read? Searching that question online yields a wealth of listicles, but many aren’t very helpful at all. Many articles seem to think that carving out tiny slivers of time are all that you need to knock off a novel. (Read in the bathroom? How long do you think I plan on staying in there, WikiHow?) As Oliver Burkeman noted in the Guardian, freeing up even 30 minutes isn’t enough to silence my brain and fully immerse myself in Dorothea Brooke’s world.

I did find a few decent tips, however, that I hope I can put into practice.

Put your damn phone away. For me, this is the biggest time suck, but at least I can blame my brain chemistry. The Bustle’s Emma Oulton writes that we’ve become addicted to the dopamine rush we get from every ping our phones deliver when we receive a new notification. It gives us a sense of accomplishment that books can’t deliver. I need to stop letting my smartphone make me dumb.

Give up that show you hate but watch anyhow. The Huffington Post doesn’t suggest giving up television entirely, thank goodness. (Is anyone in the world more insufferably smug than the person who doesn’t own a TV?) But there are definitely a few shows we can all easily abandon without becoming a bore. Almost nightly, I grit my teeth through a stream of @midnight. I complain while host Chris Hardwick and a rotating panel of guest comedians fail to find anything funny to say about the day’s events. I think I can live without that in my life, and instead use that time to read.

Quit reading random news articles. Lifehack really has my number with this one. As a child, I grew up with Entertainment Tonight as my number one news source, and although I don’t know who most of today’s celebrities are, I am oddly concerned with the minutiae of their lives. I’m a total sucker for the “trending” articles that Facebook so helpfully feeds to me on the right column of my timeline. And once I’m in the vortex, it’s hard to get out, thanks to the “You may also like” suggestions that await me at the bottom of every puff piece. (No, I can’t believe what the cast of the Goonies look like now!)

If I ever pull myself out of that clickbait quicksand, I might have time for Tolstoy.

Only buy a new book after you’ve finished the one you’re reading. With this tip, The Muse broke away from other listicles, which almost all suggested surrounding yourself with books so that you never have a shortage of reading materials to match your every mood. But I like this self-disciplined approach. Reserving a trip to the bookshop as a reward for completing a read is a real incentive to finish a book. And it might help stall the growth of the towers of titles around me that are perpetually threatening to topple.

Ignore what you “should” be reading. Another tip from Lifehack, and one that I struggle with. Although I’ve got a couple of degrees in literature, I’m always embarrassed by what I haven’t read and am constantly trying to fill those gaps. But inching through a Saul Bellow novel that I can’t stand isn’t doing me any favours. If I don’t like it, I need to let it go, no matter how canonical it may be.

Schedule time to read. In his Guardian piece, this was Oliver Burkeman’s sole suggestion. It might be the most difficult but essential tip to tackle. Reading won’t become a priority in your life organically; you need to make it a priority. Unlike checking my phone to see how many likes my latest cat photo has scored, it won’t be second nature. (It won’t even become a habit for over two months, according to a study cited by this Huffington Post article.)

So, that’s a disappointment. Just as I discovered that strapping on a Fitbit wasn’t a shortcut to outrunning my middle-aged body, it turns out that there are no real lifehacks that will make me a reader. I can’t find time: I need to make it.

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