Why Do I Get Sleepy Every Time I Read?
The Technique to Read More Books For a Lazy Reader Like You
When I said “Like You” in the subtitle section, I talked about my experience as I tried to learn how to read a book (without constantly feeling sleepy) in my earliest twenties. I never hate books but I'm not too fond of the idea I would feel pleasantly tired and sluggish every time I try to open one page of the so-called “smart” people's hobby.
I wish my parents know about babies learn by mimicking their parent's behavior. Even so, books were too expensive. They would prefer to buy cooking oil and one kilogram of wheat flour to make gorengan.
I kept refusing to read until…somehow I sat in a bachelor’s program chair called Philosophy degree (don’t ask why) so by refusing to read a book I basically died.
I used this technique to make peace with the drowsy effect. But first, you must involve these 3 rules to receive your ultimate goal, being able to actually enjoy reading a book.
1. Scientifically, your brain HATE doing HARD things.
Yes, we humanely like to do something that occurs with the least energy, the faster way, and the easier tasks. But at the same time, we want something huge, something extravagance, a big achievement.
I pray for the law of the paradoxical life we have.
Understanding this embedded human nature helps me to focus on solutions rather than complaining about why we are like that, I hate life, and the worst I hate myself. You might want to dig more into this issue to let your thoughts see themselves in the mirror of truth.
2. A Challenge: 66-Day Rule (It’s not 21-Day Rule).
You might hear about how long it really takes to form a habit to do anything. In this case, you want to keep opening pages without missing one single day.
If your goal is to read more books (as a lazy reader) then you must unlock the habit characterization. You need to tell your brain that reading (the hard stuff to do) is basically water for your body.
So, give yourself a challenge. Print your July until September calendar, stick it on your bedroom wall, and make an X cross in red or green huge marker in every single day you passed the challenge to read.
3. The BEST MOTIVATION in case you want to GIVE UP.
Even If you happen to want to give up on the second or third day, try to remember the X mark and the effort you make for just printing the calendar. And back to 1 of 3 rules.
“How we value effort is determined by what we experience in everyday life. We have this whole learning history” — Veronica Job.
Now, here’s the technique to read more books.
THE TOMATO TECHNIQUE
You might be familiar with “Pomodoro”, meaning tomato in Italian word. The standard procedure for the technique is basically you have 100 minutes to be loyal only to the book you read.
You read for 25 minutes with no distraction, especially with your damn phone notification. Use the “Do not disturb” mode if you reading a book from something “online”.
Henceforth, you allow taking a 5 minutes break in every 25 minutes session of reading time. Note this, you are FORBID to use a 5 minutes break to sweep your finger into Instagram, TikTok, and TWITTER. But, you can do something like making an abstract doodle, talking to your pet, sleeping on the floor, and doing 50 push-ups.
Here is an illustration to help you to understand the technique:
The “Long Break” means you can just stop to read OR do the second session to read again.
But…
I happened to be the worst kinda people, so 25 minutes felt like torture, talking from my experience.
So, I changed the total of 100 minutes to ONLY 40 MINUTES. This particular choice I made because the 25 minutes doesn’t really work for me, as I never properly read a book. Surely, it was just for the first week as I kept my challenge upgraded. Until I reached 100 minutes of reading time without feeling the need to take the break time option.
Conclusion
It is a very simple technique and yet if you refuse to involve the 3 rules, the Podomoro technique might be ended up being a 2 months relationship.
I still learning how to read a book until now and I guess this activity is not exactly for smart people as I stigmatized before.
Reading is a path to getting to know the world in order to help to know myself. And I still don’t know who and what exactly I am. So, I necessary still to read a book.
Original Sources: Pacific Vocational College, and Life Hack.
Anyway, thank you and long life the fighters!
More articles I wrote about art and culture:
