Building a Reading Life

Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.” — Socrates

For as long as I can remember, I have loved to read. And life has been kind enough to continually surround me with good books. My dad tells me that mom would read Dr. Suess’s ABC book to me repeatedly when I was a toddler. In elementary school, my grandparents made a habit of sending me top-notch children’s literature on my birthday and Christmas — Julie of the Wolves, A Light in the Attic and the Nancy Drew mysteries stand out in my memory as formative favorites. When I was eleven, our school put on a “reading challenge,” where the individual who clocked the most pages read would win the grand prize: a large pirate’s treasure chest of electronics and gift cards. I took on the challenge with determination and narrowly beat out a formidable opponent (Greg was the one of the most driven students I remember from those days). I don’t remember anything from that prize, but I do remember the joy of marathoning my way through many books. My reading spree dropped off significantly in high school and college due to a severe lack of downtime (school, homework, extracurriculars and work? How do high school and college students survive?) There are a few notable exceptions, such as one semester in college where my assignment was to read through all of Tolkien’s major works.

Surprisingly, I began to read more once I had my first baby. I found myself awake for hours each night nursing and decided that I would take advantage of the quiet, dark hours to read. In the course of Emmaline’s seven months of nursing, I read Les Miserables and Brothers Karamazov. It astounds me to write that, but in reality, anyone who has a solid three hours per day of devoted reading time could easily pull that off. Em, my sweet, colicky newborn gave me an unexpected gift — hours of uninterrupted time to give a good book my undivided attention. That was six years ago. While I no longer burn the midnight oil each night (a gift I was more than willing to give up to escape eternal zombie mode), I make focused reading a daily habit, as protected as possible. I believe we humans are capable of forming our lives around good, challenging literature. I also believe that our society has largely lost a heritage of attentive reading and thoughtful argument that we would stand to benefit from regaining. Let’s take a look at two interesting anecdotes.

I recently read an article from the Freakonomics blog that blew my mind: Common Sense by Thomas Paine, a rather sophisticated and intensive read, sold 500,000 copies in its first year — 20% of the colonial population. The equivalent adjusted for today’s population would be 60 million copies in a year (for emphasis, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone has sold 120 million copies to date). Leaving out for the moment the many literary injustices of the time, such as lower literacy rates for women and slaves, this number is astounding. Common Sense was being widely read for pleasure. I have read through a few paragraphs of Common Sense before, and I struggled to keep my vision focused, much less understand a good deal of what was being said. I was a little appalled that I struggled to understand a book that colonial shopkeepers once read for pleasure.

As another example, let’s compare the format of the presidential debates of 2016 vs. 1858. In the 2016 Clinton v Trump debate, each of the six segments consisted of 15 minute chunks with two minutes to respond to the moderator’s questions. Alternatively, “during the seven Lincoln-Douglas debates in 1858, the first speaker talked for one hour, followed by a 90-minute rebuttal from the second speaker, and a 30-minute closing statement from the first speaker (see link).” Can you fathom a modern presidential debate where each candidate is allowed a full hour to make their argument? No interruptions, no stalking. Not only would the candidate have time to build a cohesive argument, but the environment would demand a different type of engagement from the audience. The Lincoln-Douglass debates were popular, drawing as many as 10,000 spectators. I am doubtful that our soundbite-driven culture would be able to tolerate, much less give attention to, a debate of that format.

I believe that these two examples serve to show that while our society has a proliferation of printed resources like books, magazines, internet articles and newspapers, we are less able to enjoy the benefits that those resources have to offer us than we once were. If the information does not come easily and quickly, we decide that it’s not worth our time (for an interesting book on the topic, see Amusing Ourselves to Death). I’ve taken this realization as a personal challenge to fight my natural inclination to read lazily and instead strive for what I call a “reading habit” — a reading life characterized by challenging myself to deeper understanding and growth. Every day, I do my best to ensure that I have at least 30 minutes of time to devote to this. I don’t hit it perfectly every time, but I try to set myself up for success, and the rewards are well worth the effort. This past year has been a transformative year in many ways for me, in large part due to several excellent books that have shaped the way I think and view the world. Here are some things that have helped me commit to a reading habit:

• Get a new mantra — Words have power, especially the words that we tell ourselves. The quote at the beginning of this post sums up my mantra about reading: “Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.” If you find that voice in your head saying, “I feel that I have to read when I don’t want to,” say, “I get to read right now.” What an incredibly privileged time we live in! The access to literally any topic that you care to learn about is cheaply, readily available for the taking. Your disinterest is likely the only barrier between yourself and an excellent self-education.
• Attach reading to an existing every-day activity — Every night before I go to bed, I try to read for 20–30 minutes. Since I go to bed every day, anchoring reading to this activity helps me to remember to incorporate it. The more often I do it, the more it becomes an ingrained habit. You could attach reading to your morning commute (thank you audiobooks — yes, they count), breakfast or your afternoon cup of coffee.
• Replace an unhelpful habit with a reading habit — In The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg describes the reasons why we do the things we do every day, for better and for worse (a helpful read if you are trying to jumpstart a good habit or kick a bad one). One important element in addressing an existing habit is to look for your personal trigger. Let me explain. An example of a poor habit in my life is mindless snacking due to boredom. Here, the bad habit is mindless snacking, the trigger, boredom. Think of a habit you’d really like to kick (the low-hanging fruit for many of us would be mindless social media consumption). Figure out what your trigger is for that habit — common triggers are boredom, stress and fatigue. When you feel the trigger coming on, pick up a book instead. It will be difficult at first, but will become default over time. You are using a trigger that you already deal with regularly to introduce a new habit into your routine.
• Make books accessible throughout your home — A great tip I picked up from Patrick Collison, CEO of Stripe, a prolific reader. (His booklist is inspiring to me. When I think there’s no time to read, I remind myself of Patrick and how much busier his life is than mine.) He places books all throughout his house in easy-to-access places, which means they are easily accessible in spare moments. All bookstore employees know that books faced cover out have a much higher chance of being picked up than ones tucked away on shelves — adapt this principal to your personal bookshelf and keep those books visible.
• Keep a few different genres going — I always keep three varieties of books in circulation: fiction, enjoyable nonfiction about a subject I don’t know much about and challenging fiction/nonfiction. This works well for me and keeps my reading enjoyable, broad and adequately challenging.
• Track your time — Another useful tip for when you’re sure you don’t have time to read (or exercise, or call your grandma, or any other thing you’ve been putting off). It’s remarkable how much time we recover simply by shining a light on how we regularly use our time. If you’ve got 20 minutes for Twitter, you’ve got 20 minutes to expand your horizons through reading.
• Read actively when possible — a helpful takeaway from How to Read a Book. If you’ve ever read a book and realized a week later that you don’t remember anything from what you’ve read, you weren’t reading actively. Active reading requires more discipline than mindless reading — think binging a Netflix show vs. watching an episode and talking about what you liked with a friend. I read actively by keeping a pencil in hand, sitting in an active posture and underlining/taking notes in my book as I go. If I really care about remembering specifics, I will make flashcards for the items I want to remember.

What are ways that you incorporate a reading habit into your routine? I’d love to hear from you.