My experience of adopting a reading habit and reading 100 books a year

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If you have been thinking about adopting a reading habit or have just started, it can help to research other people’s experiences, and this is my story. My reading habit was started five years ago and still continues to this day. Overall, it has been a very useful habit and the easiest to keep. In many ways it helped improve my performance on other personal projects by providing knowledge, thinking points and ideas that I would have otherwise missed. But it does take time and requires commitment, which you need to factor in.

This is just one of many stories about a reading habit, and just one person’s experience. But hopefully, you will find it useful and may help give you ideas about your own reding habit.

The beginning

I had never been a heavy reader before, and certainly never enjoyed fiction. There were years when the only things I would have read were textbook sections, and these were forced required readings. However, over time I noticed that there is a strong narrative in the press and on the internet, almost akin to a reading cult. Reading was a “superpower”, there was sloganeering of “leaders are readers”. The message was clear, it was posited that reading is the basis of learning and self-development and a necessity for everyone.

Even now it is a strong emotional narrative, it stirs the FOMO anxieties that not only am I missing out, but by not joining the reading gang, I will suffer substantial negative consequences. From this tension, I thought that maybe I should look into this in a bit more detail. Obviously, there was always the argument that the current “gurus” are only saying such things to push their wares and to raise their profile. I felt that these messages placed the reading habit as part of a larger “Buy My Book” campaign, and hence, was a bit sceptical.

However, the counterargument is that there have been many figures, from the historical, such as Benjamin Franklin, Andre Carnegie etc., to the more modern who have emphasised the benefits of reading and noted it as one key element to their success. Although I had little time for the “Buy My book” campaigners, I felt that there probably was a substantial range in literature quality, and I could focus on quality and simply avoid the “gurus’” wares. Thus, it appeared that there was enough of a justification to give reading a try.

Well, giving it a try is a start, but how much commitment should I be making? What should I be reading? Should this just be limited to books? What about newspapers, magazines, and reading online?

I hadn’t read a newspaper or magazine in many years, and I had not been following the news much. There was something at the time about being more engaged with emerging developments and current affairs, which are more relevant to newspapers and magazines. However, as I was starting a new habit, I knew that taking on too much would overwhelm me and this new reading habit would not stick. So, as this was just a trial, it would be easier to stick to books initially. Also, as I was never much of a reader to begin with, I was starting from scratch, so making it easy on myself seemed prudent.

An initial idea was that books could give me a general background to topics of interest and these may help put emerging developments and current affairs into a better perspective. This would fill in the context to what was being said in newspapers and magazines aiding a better understanding of the developments and their repercussions. Also, I could explore newspapers and magazines by reading a selection at a later date and seeing which would be the most useful to me.

Because there is no reason that I cannot extent the reading habit, it could be gradual development. Starting with books and getting this well-embedded, this would provide a strong platform to build from. I could then extend this by adding a weekly newspaper as a next step. This could be followed by adding magazines that would be useful etc. The key point is that this was not an all or nothing process, like many habits, they can be designed to gradually build-up from a small starting point to help improve their “stickiness”.

The next question is then which books and how many books should I be reading? As this was going to be a goal it needed to be specific. Because I had yet to form a clear definition or vision of what exactly I wanted to get out of this new reading habit other than beginning one, there were no fixed set of book titles chosen.

Therefore, I was left with the number of books to read in a year as the most relevant measure of the goal. Also, this amount would need be challenging, so I chose 100 books for a year. I convinced myself this would be a challenging but an achievable goal. If I found after a year that this did not bring much benefit then I could either abandon the habit or revise the target number of books for the next year with better knowledge from this experience. In subsequent years, a target of 50 books per year was beneficial but also freed up more time to practically implement the lessons drawn from them.

This was a good starting point — I have an easily measured goal. However, what should I be reading? Now, this was more of a challenge.

The challenge was to set a direction. But with reading, like with many things I start, there is a knowledge and experience gap. There is some figuring it out as I go. However, after some reflection I found that I could make some decisions on what not to read.

Reading, I always felt was for a purpose, such as to learn something new. My mentality has always been that books are not meant to be read, they are meant to used — to accomplish a specific goal; goals can be abstract, such as gaining a personal education or becoming more rounded. This may be a blinkered view for some, but we are all different and have different reading tastes.

For instance, I could not understand nor appreciate the great novel — the canons of literature never influenced, inspired or appealed — so a reading habit would not stick if I just focussed in these. So, I will focus on non-fiction; it also should be noted that my experience may not be reflective or relevant for anyone with a desire for fiction.

So, apart from not reading fiction then what should I read?

What is it that you want to get out of your reading habit?

This question was so important, and something that I discovered fairly late. The importance, was that reading could be very relevant to what I was trying to accomplish and actually be supportive — which was true for certain books. So, identifying personal goals and projects and reading around them to improve my knowledge and skills eventually gave a significant and noticeable benefit.

For instance, my writing had always been poor. It had been a weakness throughout my schooling. These weaknesses included structure, grammar, spelling and a coherent narrative. There was not much going for my writing apart from being able to do a single lone paragraph once in a while. Hence, there was significant room for improvement. Also, feedback I received continually implied that my writing skills would hold me back irrespective of any other skills or accomplishments. Thus, improving my writing then became a necessity. As reading and writing are inextricably linked, then I thought my reading habit could substantially improve my writing habit. So, I found a direction — something I want to get out of my reading habit.

Choosing what to read was challenging, but there were some obvious choices such as improve your English books, style guides, grammar guides writing workbooks etc.

However, generalist non-fiction was useful as well — such as biography and the latest ideas books. Now I am certainly not endorsing all of their content; however, books from reputable publishers will have received strong editorial review and proofreading, which ensures that they have a decent standard of English.

The more generalist the work, the more it is written to sell in large numbers. So, they are fairly short and presented with bite-sized ideas in an engaging way. These are simpler and much less effort to read than complex texts. Ghost-writers, journalists etc., are skilled at writing well, including a readable style; the language flows to engage and retain the reader. All good examples of structure and keeping the narrative easy, interesting and pacy. Hence, everything that my writing isn’t, and a good contrast.

Reading many simpler texts provided numerous examples of simple and engaging writing that can be learnt from. The repeated exposure, seemed to have an effect on me, potentially subconsciously through a sort of reading osmosis. I could see the difference in terms of an easy flowing style, and how to structure a narrative and was just absorbing this through examples. Although less direct than a style guide or grammar guide, the repeated examples of good writing in generalist non-fiction helped frame my understanding of what good writing looks like, and in many different forms. Although I many not write to that standard, at least now I know what good is, which I never understood before.

Style guides, grammar guides and writing workbooks provided a lot of practical advice. However, not all were useful — some, especially the older ones, could be fairly pompous, pedantic and arrogant. Although more directly useful, I cannot say that they were entertaining or particularly interesting. They were read for a purpose, and were necessary to learn the field. But they felt forced, like learning scales — they did not provide the context to the purpose of writing or stimulate a desire to write. But they illustrated the mechanics, and helped illustrated some of the structure, choices and narrative in the non-fiction generalist texts.

But, beyond the mechanistic writing books, reading books that explored different writing genres was very useful as well. Reading about advertising copywriting brought home the importance of empathy with readers, the importance of connection and asking — why anyone would want to read what I am writing? Therefore, this provided an illustration of the purpose of writing — not just how to write or writing style.

It was the combination of all these sources that I felt really made improvements — the grammar and style workbooks formed the basis of the mechanics, without which nothing would make sense; generalist non-fiction provided and appreciation of what good writing looks like, so that I could make judgements on quality; understanding different genres and approaches brought an appreciation of what is the purpose in my writing and why would anyone care. This combination slowly started to illustrate to me how writing a text comes together — and how I could adequately express ideas and giving a fuller appreciation of the subject.

Although writing is used an example, I found the same pattern in many different fields. It was a major insight that I took from adopting a reading habit. By reading many books in an area, I began to see the cumulative learning from the books formed a mosaic. I could see the subject wider and, in more depth — each piece providing a different perspective. It was in concert I could begin to see the whole, how things come together and developed a fuller appreciation and an improved and more nuanced perspective.

The improved perspective allowed me evaluate the content, and ask deeper questions from what I learned from other texts. The cumulative combination not only brought a better understanding of the subject but also it generated unique and novel ideas in me. I started to have original opinions and questions, especially when combining different fields in original ways. A personal discovery was made that this could be an excellent method of innovation.

As time progressed, I realised that after reading quite a few generalist non-fiction books, these were no longer helping. Some were good and some were flimsy — ultimately the messages were a repetition and sometimes far too simplistic. Much of the complexity of the real world is lost, or it is someone’s opinion that is never really backed-up with much evidence. I began to question the validity — I started to look at references, and at time struggled to reconcile the reference with what people have actually written — was it valid for a new context or an acceptable interpretation. Was their story shopping and only including the evidence that suited their opinions.

In reality I feel that I outgrew them, and needed something more specialist to really understand and explore the field. To really challenge the opinions, verify them and get a deeper grounding in the field. Also, this presented an opportunity to combine deeper and better understood ideas and perspectives to hopefully get better and more innovative ideas.

As an example, I read some generalist self-help guides and, in my opinion, I found them to be a waste of time and money — I thought they were samey, simplistic, judgemental and neither particularly relevant or useful. Only a few appear valuable, mainly Benjamin Franklin. There are some more specialist books on a particular narrow subject — like personal strategic planning which were useful, such as, “Passport to Success”. But overall, these were far more miss than hit in my opinion.

The importance of engagement

This was another crucial point that I learnt, but this maybe because it resonated with my pre-existing feelings. Books serve a purpose and they are not a purpose in themselves. The insight I gained was that reading solely to read is passive. It might go in, but I found that it did not necessarily stay in. It was using the knowledge that made it stick. Reading about history helped to frame current affairs. But it was thinking and applying it to current affairs that made it valuable, and this helped to ensure that I understood it. Thinking about how to deploy the learning to a problem, or understanding a problem is what gave reading its importance.

For instance, when learning to write, reading books will not make any improvements until the ideas are internalised, understood and put into practice. The writing workbooks helped in reinforcing learning through doing. It was this repetitive process that built the writing “muscle”; exercises brought the grammatical and mechanical improvements. But these were not the only improvements, the deeper feel I had for these made understanding the style books much easier, because I had to focus less on the mechanical aspects — I could trust my instinct more.

By using and reviewing writing and style guides whilst writing kept their lessons fresh and top of mind. As good writing and style is more tacit, continuous practice was even more relevant. Although I gained a feel of what quality looks like from the generalist non-fiction, it is difficult to articulate and prescribe what good looks like. Thus, it can only be really learnt and internalised from a significant amount of writing which only practice can give. So, just re-reading and using supplementary guides at hand would help start the process. Comparing my writing back to paragraphs or sections of generalist non-fiction books that I had read, gave a comparator. I could see how they applied their own style, and what from their approach might be beneficial for me to incorporate. So, each book contributed to the experience in building up the writing “muscle”. Thus, I started to internalise a personal style, but one based on what I had learnt from others, and a particular learning approach was developed.

Read and then write. Reflect. Read some more and then write some more. Reflect, compare against others work and see what improvements had been made and what should now be made.

This active learning process brought a deeper understanding that made learning much easier, because it built on the previous efforts. Improvement was not something that happened immediately, but by continuously doing exercises and applying things, the benefits were noticeable later. From my experience, practice appears to be cumulative requiring commitment and maintenance.

As previously mentioned, in going beyond generalist texts I found that looking into subjects more deeply brought better insights because they are written by experts. They are more complex and specific, and were either written for experts or desiring to gain expertise in the field, hence a smaller audience. These are not easy reads so are not the best examples of breezy easy to read and entertaining writing.

Experts have well-argued opinions and more detailed and specific evidence. Their works are more authoritative and complete — containing many references to other related work. Although more authoritative, they can contain many biases and deeply judgemental. I may not agree with their arguments but, they require me to think much harder, understand more complicated concepts and question things in greater and more specific detail. These are much more taxing with complex and challenging concepts and ideas requiring more understanding and comprehension. The language is usually complex and I feel sometimes the author is just showing-off their vocabulary. But, by looking up words, they did improve my vocabulary.

Essentially, they made me think more, ask more questions which ultimately improved my thinking and range of arguments. This range and complexity of arguments I felt challenged and improved my critical thinking. By looking through references, I started to piece together different fields and see how different field and arguments began, developed and took hold. With a range of more specific and specialised texts, the contentious areas and disagreements become clearer and the biases and judgement of others stand out.

It was in reading a group of more complex texts that it first and very slowly dawned on me how different books fit together. I could see how different fields merge, and critically I could see parallels and approximations between different ideas and concepts. Furthermore, to be proactive, I forced myself to have ideas, challenging those ideas with new information, and trying to have more novel insights and opinions, through broader, wider and more specific texts.

I felt that critically appraising conflicting perspectives and making comparisons between metaphors and related concepts of different fields illuminated wider and potentially contrarian perspectives. A journey was started in having a clear, rounded and reasoned position of my own. I was thinking for myself and slowly becoming an independent thinker. This was a major benefit, and one that I did not anticipate when I started my reading habit.

One lesson learned was that having a lone idea is less important than in placing ideas in different contexts — stretching and seeing ideas in different ways and giving new perspectives. Furthermore, as more complex texts have smaller audiences, the more I read and pieced together, the more unique my knowledge and experience would be.

The argument is that although information is everywhere for anyone to read — would many people actually read it? Do they have time to read it? Do they even know it even exists? How many people would have read the group of expert texts that I have? Could this cumulation of expert texts be giving me a unique learning base? Maybe a unique position to innovate from? Might this be giving me an advantage by combining ideas that no one else may have looked for? Could the connections between fields from more areas provide personal advantages that could be harnessed?

These are useful speculations, but the real benefit is that my comprehension and thinking skills are improving. But this is only due to engagement. Writing comments and questions, using examples, challenging and layering texts is actually doing work. It is much more than passively absorbing information. Maybe the value in reading is what it can provide to doing the work and doing the thinking.

Initially I just read, and after a while I reflected on the experience, eventually asking:

• What have I learnt from books?
• How hard have I tried to extract and understand information from books?
• What ideas have I gained from books?
• What ideas have I generated from reading books?
• Are these ideas novel?
• What have I done to apply ideas from books?
• How hard have I been applying them?
• Are they making me improve?
• How?

Then the question of engagement became clear — I will get out of reading what I put into it.

Reflection posed another and very important question. If I was not reading, what else could I be doing, and would it be more beneficial? This is when I started to question the 100 book a year goal.

Reading takes time

When I started to read 100 books a year, I did not fully understand what that meant, especially in terms of my capacity to learn and the amount of time it would take. Firstly, this averages nearly two a week. With simple books, this is not much of a problem. General non-fiction is often a short paperback.

However, when looking at authoritative biographies these tend to be big — really big. Many with deep research are clearly tomes. Some biographies run to many volumes, and the thoroughness and diligence although commendable, are not books that can be read in an evening. Also, some authors like to place the subject in the context that they lived, and the exploration of these times, which fills many pages; additionally with heavily researched biographies can have a more academic feel with complex language, topics and nuance. Not only long, they require thinking and grasping the context and the times which necessarily takes more time.

As I read more complex and expert texts, I found these can be very long — many are above 500 pages, and I have some 1000 pages and more. With small typeface, hence a dense text, these can take enormous amounts of time and effort to read. Sometimes, with their writing style they can cause significant mental fatigue.

The important point is that not all books are the same. Simply having a goal as the number of books to read can be misleading and lead to incentive biases. For instance, to reach the numerical goal I would choose shorter books at the expense of longer ones to make it easier. This is not the point, and relates back to the purpose of a reading habit. Is it just to make numbers? No! The benefit is from engagement and not numbers. Therefore, defining the goal based on the number of books was useful as a yard stick, but not necessarily helpful. Goals could be restated as the number of pages read or choosing sets of books at the different lengths, i.e., 25, 200-page books, 25, 500-page books etc.,

However, because my priorities change as my knowledge grows, I cannot simply state at the start of the year the actual books I will read. This is because after reading one, it may lead me in a different direction towards my goals. Using the number of pages and groups of books to read in a year were too time-consume to figure out, and so I set the goal in future years based on the number of books I have read previously, and the time that I have available. It was a trade-off, but the size of books and distributions are fairly consistent at a larger number, like 50 or 75 books a year.

In reality, the available time to read needs to be weighed against all my other priorities. Without setting aside time exclusively for reading this would not happen. It had to be prioritised to ensure that the habit remained. I could not have accomplished this without focussing on reading books to the exclusion of other things. The target numbers of books read may have been missed on some occasions, but the habit remained for over five years. But the crucial learning points were that the number of books to read had to be realistic and I had to focus and have the time available to do this — these were the most important because without them there would be not reading habit.

The benefit of trustworthy reading lists

I cannot read everything as there is far too much out there. Also, as I found there is a lot of repetition and dross with reading. It became clear that I needed to both experiment with the books that I read and have direction for choosing them. Reading lists and reviews are useful because they act as curation, but they are dependent on the opinions of the curator. Some curators are better than others. Personally, self-help and “gurus” I just ignore. But over time I found a few useful things out.

Firstly, taking a poll of different book reviews helps. Searching for what are the best books for X and then looking a few review sites are likely to help triangulate on what the best ones are. It usually is fairly quick to search lists and the ones most often highly rated or most commonly cited are usually the best or most relevant.

Secondly, identifying experts. They probably have written a few books and they probably have preferred booklist which can be searched. Because of their expertise, the quality of their curation is likely higher than others. However, there will always be bias, and understanding their perspective is often helpful.

Thirdly, most subjects tend to have well regarded introductory texts. Recent textbooks are likely to have relevant references to more complex texts and are worth exploring. It usually is worth exploring reference pages in books to find out what various sources quote. The more common the book is referenced or reviewed to be credible and quality sources, the more likely it is a seminal text.

Fourthly, college reading lists can be online and these will be curated by an expert teacher. Inspection of these will indicate good introductory and advanced texts that people use for a specific subject. But for some subjects this may not be relevant. However, for most subjects that are organisations, such as professional, government and educational organisations that can provide quality curated references. Because of their expertise, these are often better than what might be identified by a web search.

Ultimately, there are a range of ways to identify potentially useful books, and the different sources can be brought together to give a good booklist. Also, this does not necessarily take that long, it usually is a matter of thinking and resourcefulness.

Conclusion

In conclusion I managed to adopt a reading habit and read 100 books in a year for a few years. The reading habit has been kept up for over five years and it looks set to remain. I feel that I get many benefits from reading, but it is because of the engagement. Books were used and not just passively absorbed. Doing so has improved my critical thinking and the quality of my knowledge and ideas. Thus overall, it has provided me with a great benefit; I would strongly recommend a reading habit, but just make the reading habit relevant to you.

I hope this has been some help to you, and feel free to leave a comment below.