How I Read 20 Books in a Month
And how you can too.
This pandemic has made us do unusual things. A lot of people made bread, many found new hobbies, some even started their TikTok career. While I did attempted these too, I decided to challenge myself to read 20 books in 30 days.
Why did I do this?
As a child, I loved to immersive myself in different universes, befriend all the characters I encountered and learn about the complexities and beauty of our world. I could spend hours and hours reading and I read so much — I loved it! But sadly, I don’t really read anymore. Since high school and college, I’ve only read a handful of books and in the past 5 years, films, TV shows and YouTube videos replaced them.
So, in 2020 I set myself the goal to read 20 books. It seemed challenging, but doable. But then I watched a documentary on the most beautiful bookstores in the world by filmmaker Max Joseph, and it was a huge wake-up call: I’m 21 years old, and if f I keep reading at my current pace of 2 books a year, I’m likely to die having read less than 150 books… If I didn’t immediately make a change, I’ll never read all those books I put on my reading list.
And so I said “forget that, I’m gonna read those 20 books in a month instead”.
1. Set a Target
These were the my rules for the 20 books (feel free to adapt them to your own wants and needs).
- 20 “new” books. They needed to be 20 books that I haven’t read yet.
- Minimum 200 pages. The books turned out to all be between 200–400 pages.
- No sequels. To encourage myself to read a variety of stories, I decided not to read any sequels if a book was part of a series.
- Many genres. I decided to explore a mix of genres, from autobiography, to fiction, fantasy, to philosophy, etc.
So day 1, day 2 go by, and I read for 1–2 hours in the morning, until my mind saturated and started to wander. I then read for an hour or two after lunch and did the same before bed. This worked really well for the first couple of days so kept to this routine and really surprisingly, I managed to read a LOT.
2. Enjoy it
So my routine for the first weeks went like this: I read for 1–2 hours in the morning, until my mind saturated and started to wander, after which I went about the rest of my day and did some work. I then read for an hour or two after lunch and did the same before bed. A week into the challenge I managed to read 6 books. Six!
Reading should be fun.
That was my first lesson. Because if you like a book it becomes so much easier and you read a lot faster too.
When I was in high school, reading wasn’t always fun. We would always tear the books apart, try to find hidden meaning in the words, over-analyse each character. Maybe that’s a reason why a lot of us dreaded it. Even in Law School, because I had to do so much reading for class, it was exhausting and I didn’t want to read more as a hobby.
Start with something easy to read and that makes you want to turn the page. So if you’re not enjoying a book, you don’t have to finish it. I used to think it was somehow disrespectful to the author if I didn’t read every single word and page. But now I realise that’s just ridiculous and that mindset was hindering my reading. Also, you don’t need to read ‘the classics’ or the most acclaimed books. Once you have the habit, you can turn to those if you like.
Re-visit your faves. If you don’t know where to start, re-read a book you used to love before, or think of your favourite films & TV shows. The books are usually better than the films and you already know you’ll like the story!
Read with friends. Often times I read things and all I wanted was to talk to someone about it. Join a book club, ask your friends if they want to read a book at the same time.
3. Get rid of obstacles
Identify what obstacles are preventing you from reading and address them. Mine were time and distractions.
Obstacle 1: Time
“I don’t have time to read”.
Time is one of the most frequent obstacles to reading, that was always my excuse. And I know that actions express priorities, that nobody is too busy and that I have to make time, but it’s easier said than done.
Obstacle 2: Distractions
Even if you do have time, the second frequent obstacle is distractions. How can you focus on a task that demands your full attention if you are so easily and constantly distracted by, say, your phone? There is soo much stuff out there competing for our attention, whether it’s the news, Instagram, Netflix and that does not help when you want to focus on reading.
Solution: Substitution
To prioritise reading & minimise distractions, what you need is substitution: instead of adding to your already growing to-do list, you need to substitute a form of entertainment for reading. It is not a daily increase, but a daily decrease.
Look at your screen time. How much of your activity can you substitute for reading? 1 hour less on Instagram, Facebook, or Netflix means that you can read 60 pages. If you do that every day for 1 week, you can read two 200-page books — if you put that way, my choice is so obvious.
Pro Tip: switching your phone to airplane mode or turning it off for half-an-hour can help you get rid of distractions.
4. Build a habit
Just like any habit you want to implement, it is not gonna be easy at first. You need to be consistent and strict with yourself, especially in the beginning. It’s not enough to do it for 5 days straight and forget about it for months.
Do it every single day until it sticks. It’s discipline! Which is a skill I’m going to need for the rest of my life, and so I forced myself to read every single day, even if sometimes it was just 30 minutes.
5. Change your mindset
One thing that helped was a change of mindset. Looking at the challenge at a large scale was scary. 30 days is a LOT, that’s going to be a lot of hours — no. Take it day by day, whether it’s 1 page, 1 chapter or 10 minutes, if you do a little bit every single day, by the end of a month you’ll have accomplished a great deal!
6. Recognise reading as an investment
Books are not just a form of entertainment, but also an extremely powerful tool. Throughout history we’ve been dependent on our muscle power to survive but nowadays it is with your mind, your knowledge, your skills that you navigate life.
You can learn so much with books and not just factual stuff but you also learn so much indirectly. With fiction for example, you get to delve into different worlds and new situations, and by following the thoughts of really complex and unpredictable characters you can learn so much about human behaviour and even yourself, because authors are really observant people and base their characters on their own human experiences.
The level of detail in books is insane. So really get to exercise your imagination. Close your eyes for a second and picture this:
“Bella is sitting in her usual spot on the old wooden bench near the red brick wall. As she observes the people walking past her, some rushing and some taking their time, she can’t help but think of how weird human behaviour can be. Suddenly, a strange man walks up to her. He stops right next to her bench and smiles at her. She stares back wearily. He then slowly reaches out his hand to touch her. Bella jumps and is ready to lash out in self defense. How dare he? Then something changes and the stranger seems apologetic. He straightens up and says: stay right here little one, I’ll go get you some food.”
Plot twist — Bella is a cat! With the same words and details, everyone’s going to imagine a different world. What does Bella look like? Where is the red brick wall? What time of day is it? Who is the strange man?
Taking notes
With some of the books, reading wasn’t enough to make the most out of it. So I took notes on a piece of paper I also used as a bookmark, it helped me engage with the information more and ultimately remember the book better. I wrote down interesting facts, quotes, noteworthy pages and] at the end, I typed them up so I can easily find them.
My Verdict
I read 20 books, a total of 6408 pages in a daily average of 3 hours and 40 minutes. Now that I’ve read those 20 books it makes so much sense — why was I not doing this before? We procrastinate things soo much and most often they are things we know are good for us.
If you’re like me and used to read a lot more books in the past, I hope my story gives you that initial push to get started. Reading is a hobby that anyone can do — picking up the guitar isn’t necessarily an option for everyone (because you need a guitar) but reading is really accessible. And if you don’t like reading the traditional way, you can always listen to audiobooks.
This is one of my proudest achievements so far this year. I was able to fall in love with reading again and create a habit for life. I was reminded of just how much I love reading and telling stories!
